They is a four-channel film installation takes audiences into four women’s world to closely examine their ritualized daily lives, their obsessions, their struggles, and their determinations of being who they are. The four women are different but mirror each other: they deal with difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, and desires that trouble them while also celebrating their own existences in a subversive but almost meditative way. The title of this film is derived from the gender-neutral pronoun they. They in this film is both singular and plural, referring women as unique individuals who are plural, but whose bodies have been marked as the other.

My approach to the subject matter in this film is underlining women’s bodies as a site for social political transgression and resistance. Through employing symbolic gestures, poetic rhythms and repetitions, this film reveals a complex reflection on how identities are mediated through screens and performances, and how they arrive to us through time. This multi-channel film installation draws from cinematic and performance traditions, striving to create new visual narratives that enable audiences to experience temporal dimension of the body directly, at the same time, providing a key for understanding corporal power in today’s digital era.

The film available upon request

Cast: Carla Coma, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Jacqueline Van De Geer, Enok Ripley
Director: Chun Hua Catherine Dong
Video: Michael Wees
Editor:Daniel Araquiel Dietzel
Color: Jean-Maxim Desjardins
Sound: Mitchell Stafiej
Music:Shane Turner
VoiceOver: Alison Matthews
Text: Giacomo Leopardi
Assistant Camera: Victor Chan

Chun Hua Catherine Dong thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support