Kitty Yeung

A time and space that get mixed up, A brother and a sister, One who loves starting fire, Whereas the other loves extinguishing it, An unusual relationship.

Two girls fantasize about making a declaration to the world. Youth is overrated. Depression, cynicism, rebellion. Poetic, and beautiful. How caricatured. Like how everything sounds better in French, even if it’s merely Google Translated. So we are here, to destroy the camouflage. Back to our reckless but satisfied souls and bodies. Ephwaipi, a homophone of ‘FYP’ (Final Year Project) is the debut short of Kitty Yeung and Candice Ng. The film, which also acted as their graduate thesis film, is the manifesto of two teenage girls about gender, romance and labour exploitation. Together, they seek to declare freedom from their teachers, lovers, bosses, and the most notorious villain of all — social norms.

Reenacting the suicide episode of the last Ming emperor, Chong-zhen from the classic Cantonese Opera Floral Princess, this experimental short film blending Cantonese Opera and modern dance elements reveals the journey of the defeated emperor accompanied by his faithful eunuch, Wang Sing-yan, on their way to the summit of Coal Hill to end their lives. Apart from inviting new perspectives towards their ambiguous queer overtones, it also explores the crossroads of life and death, authority and obedience, love and sacrifice, power and duty, that befall under the traditional patriarchy.

Part-stylised performance film, part-interview feature, this film dives into the “tropical futurist” creation story premised on Filipino pre-colonial identities, myths and artefacts and speculative decolonial fantasies. At the heart of this story lies a “swamp” - a primordial black hole, a portal to nothing and everything - which gives birth to a nonbinary deity. VOID is a divine response to the pain and trauma of the present apocalyptic era, a futuristic body that is also a composite of historical-ancestral imaginaries.

Kevin, a young theatre director from Hong Kong, is searching for ideas for his next play with his team, hoping to get funding for an overseas production. Frank, a middle-aged hairdresser in Berlin, is performing his daily routine. Coincidences bring them together, though their friendship is dictated by the parameters of the smartphone. Kevin decides to adapt the stories of the Berlin Wall to the stage, as old memories of living in East Berlin come flooding back to Frank. Shadows, in their literal and metaphorical sense, become the third wheel which silently alters their lives and turns into a story that transcends the boundaries of reason. Through this experimental work, director Terence LI sheds light on the inner space-time of the queer and the displaced.