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NOMINATED - BEST SHORT FILM
NOMINATED - BEST ACTOR (ZHENGYU TANG)
2020
China / United States
19 mins
Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Sign Language
NYC Premiere
Short Film Competition
| Yiru Chen | |
| Kaiwen Chen | |
| Zhengyu Tang (Xia Qing) |
Contemporary Shanghai, summer. Xia Qing, a boy who has been wearing hearing aids due to hearing loss, has a deep love for dancing. He gains so much joy just from copying Martha Graham’s hand gestures in a dance magazine. A kid with a precocious nature, he sometimes paints his pinky nail red just for that glimpse of beauty. Yet all these passionate pursuits are misunderstood and questioned by his single, deaf mother. Given the opportunity to audition for his favorite dance company once in a blue moon, he has no choice but to return to his body–He seeks his mother’s approval and longs to overcome this obscure self-identity crisis, through the silent language on his fingertips.
About the Director
Yiru Chen film director, poet. She graduated from NYU Tisch of School of the Arts with a major in Film and Television Production and minors in Psychology and American Sign Language. She is pursuing her master’s degree at Columbia University, Teachers College for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education. Her films have a unique style and they always incorporate the explorations of humanity, culture, as well as the connections between the civil and universal emotions.
Photos (Click on Photo to View)
Awards
2020 Shanghai Queer Film Festival – Grand Jury Prize
2020 Sydney Women’s International Film Festival – Best Student Short Film
