feminist experimental film archive
co-creator | interviewer | 2017
"Created under the cloud of the Trump presidency and the roiling developments of the #MeToo movement, this archive provides a fascinating snapshot of current anxieties, advice, and work of women and gender-nonconforming artists at different stages of their lives and careers." - The Brooklyn Rail 2018.
In the Fall of 2017, professors Irene Lusztig and Julie Wyman along with their feminist filmmaking students at the Universities of California Davis and Santa Cruz conceived this collaborative project and ongoing collective archive of interviews with feminist experimental filmmakers. Each student was invited to each select a filmmaker, research their work in detail, and invite the filmmaker to have a conversation with them.
As film student at UCSC and an interviewee of this project, I interviewed Valerie Soe - award-winning experimental filmmaker and artist, whose work was formative towards the re-imagining and re-contextualization of Asians and Asian Americans in conventional media and the greater Hollywood machine.
In my conversation with her, the broader question of how to learn from listening, and how to learn from intergenerational feminist conversation attracted attention from the feminist filmmaking industry. FEMEXFILMARCHIVE inspired an interview by NYC's journal of arts, culture, and politics, The Brooklyn Rail, with Irene and Julie, who spearheaded the archive, and myself whose interview with Soe exemplified the mission statement of our project.