April Lin 林森, (Tending) (to) (Ta), film still, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

[ID: Lilac-hued digital image. A person’s head and shoulders are upside down. It looks a little like they are below water, but that could be an illusion. Their ruffled shirt floats like a jellyfish, and two jellyfish hang beside them. Where this person’s mouth would be is a strange, large, bead-like bubble filled with distorted lilac light.]

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6.20pm Friday 17th September

Queer East is an LGBTQ+ film festival that showcases rarely-seen queer cinema from East and Southeast Asia. Seeking to amplify the voices of Asian communities in the UK, the festival explores the forces that have shaped the current queer landscape in Asia, and aims to encourage more inclusive narratives. The second edition of Queer East Film Festival takes place across London from 15 to 26 September, with three dates here at The Horse Hospital on the 17th, 23rd, and 24th.

On the 17th of September, join us for an evening of artists’ moving image work. Four artists from across the world query the relationship between real and imagined realms. Their works reflect on female sexuality, bodily experience, and desire, presenting multifaceted perspectives on queer pasts and futures.

Resurface (2021), dir. Wei Zhou - [8 mins, United Kingdom] - Resurface is a work about transformation and healing, about the material experience of intangible memories and their re-surfacing as visible marks, be it temporary or permanent. Through the intense proximity of visual and distanced memories of the voice, the erotic oscillates. 

Grand Bouquet (2018), dir. Nao Yoshigai - [15 mins, Japan] - Grand Bouquet is a beautiful surrealist work about a helpless woman who confronts a black object with a power greater than hers. The object shoots her questions, which the woman has to answer, but she cannot speak out loud. Instead of speaking, she begins to throw up beautiful, colourful flowers. Nao Yoshigai’s film screened all around the world, was selected in the 2019 Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, and won various awards at festivals internationally.

The Women’s Revenge (2020), dir. Hui-Yu Su - [16 mins, Taiwan] - Prior to the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, a group of films influenced by the European wave of exploitation movies was produced in the 1980s. This filmic genre would usually portray a severely oppressed heroine enacting a bloody vengeance. The Women’s Revenge uses these films as a starting point for re-examining problems of body regulation, modern discomfort, and the mediatized body. The film reflects on the misunderstanding and exploitation of female sexuality in the image system, exposing how the contemporary body is manipulated by image technologies. For the artist, these films point to a black hole in history, in which a mixed bunch of images devour possible clues to the life politics of an entire generation.

(Tending) (to) (Ta) (2021), dir. April Lin - [65 mins, United Kingdom] - (Tending) (to) (Ta) is a narrative-led speculative fiction film grounding itself in ‘tā’, the monosyllabic sound which in Mandarin Chinese encompasses all third person pronouns: 他 (third person male), 她 (third person female), and 它 (more-than-human lifeforms and objects). The film follows an exchange of internal letters between two protagonists who imagine one another across parallel dimensions. Each communicates to an envisioned other, who exists as a possibility beyond their self-perceived boundaries of reality, and these two beings meet in a shared world of imagination. In this reciprocal reach for the unknown, a world that bears an uncanny resemblance to our contemporary reality – colonised by Western capitalist constructs of race, gender and class, and characterised by a collective distance from Ta – opens a portal to another realm.

Total Running Time: 104 min. The programme is followed by a Q&A with artist April Lin 林森.

Tickets available via the link below.

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The Horse Hospital is hosting five programmes as part of Queer East Film Fest 2021. Tickets for each screening can be bought separately, or you can purchase a “QE2021 X THH Pass” that gives you full access to all events held here, plus 10% off drinks. 

Save time and money - five programmes, one pass, only £22.50.

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[ID: Light grey text against a bright blue background. The text reads ‘QUEER EAST FILM FESTIVAL 2021’]