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Festival 2025
Self Portraits


Free EntryShort Form
Curatorial idea by
Emily Jisoo Bowles
Running time
95 mins
Free EntryShort Form

What is revealed when you film yourself? In this series of personal documentaries, queer filmmakers turn the camera onto themselves, probing their bodies as sites of fantasy and discovery, or examining the disjunctions in their personal lives. By searching through home movies and staging re-enactments, the filmmakers construct their own narratives about their lives, embracing ambivalence to reckon with painful family histories and shifting identities.


Tickets


14 May 2025, 7:00 PM
UCL East Community Cinema 
My Therapist Said, I am Full of Sadness
2024
Directed by
Monica Vanesa Tedja
Running time
22 mins
Mixing archival home footage of a childhood in Jakarta and glimpses of their current life in Berlin, a nonbinary filmmaker reflects on their chosen life and relationship with their devout Christian parents.  

Flying Fish
2024
Directed by
Ming Mengmeng
Running time
10 mins
Blending real family archives with fiction, Flying Fish follows a journey of self-discovery through childhood portraits, cross-dressing, and imagination. In a dreamy photo studio, a group of crocodile companions dance freely.  

Before Then
2024
Directed by
Mengzhu Xue
Running time
30 mins
The filmmaker attempts to confess a secret that she has carried with her for years. She presents the secret in the form of a letter in English, which she writes out phonetically in Chinese, and asks her grandmother to read it out loud.  

The Boys who Sit Down to Pee
2023
Directed by
Bonaventure Tain
Running time
22 mins
Boys who step into toilet cubicles instead of standing at the urinals have a secret to hide. The film is a self-discovery portrait of the filmmaker, who has spent 41 years living with hypospadias.

A Journey of the Leaves
2024
Directed by
Yash Zhang
Running time
11 mins
When memories of his father's violence chase him from China, a queer filmmaker drifts into an Estonian town. A wandering traveler, a bookstore owner, a poet's living statue, and another queer Chinese soul carrying similar wounds guide him through the scattered pieces of his past.  

Additional Information



Presented in partnership with Spectra, Queer Non Fiction Films.

Content Notes



Contains distressing themes and scenes of nudity.