32 Avalyn Wu
This is a short film about my experience as a second generation Chinese American immigrant. It has sometimes been a lonely and disorienting experience, though not without its joys and possibilities. In my own life, I was blessed not only to experience America but also China, where my family moved back to after more than a decade of living here. For high school, I returned to the United States alone, which forced me to chart my own course in this country, where I had a past that was disconnected from my present self. Taking inspiration from the work of Chantal Akerman and Terrence Malick, I sought to depict this feeling of confusion through the visual concepts of absence and presence as well as an elliptical structure. The film concludes with me finding my own light, encouraged by the voice of my mother, to proudly navigate the uncertainty of immigrant life.
