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Students’ documentary ‘Queering Movements’ looks at South Asian dancer’s life

(Courtesy of Yen Dinh)

By Breanna Diaz

Oct. 27, 2020 8:06 p.m.

A class project turned into a healing experience and a film festival selection for a group of three UCLA students.

“Queering Movements,” a six-minute documentary about a queer South Asian artist directed by UCLA alumni Rino Kodama and Ceci Sheng and edited by fourth-year gender studies student Yen Dinh, is now playing in the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The film is streaming on the festival’s website until Saturday only for Southern California viewers as part of the festival’s #LIFE 2020 shorts program – a series of short documentaries reflecting on meaningful moments in life. Originally produced for an ethnocommunications class, Dinh said the documentary allowed the group of student filmmakers to shine a light on queer, transgender and nonbinary communities that are often underrepresented in the film industry.

“We banded together because all of us are gay and trans and the rest of the class was mostly straight, so we really wanted to focus on the identity that we had in common,” Dinh said.

[Related: Dance club seeks to provide inclusive, accessible space for kids with disabilities]

The documentary was filmed in the winter of 2019, Dinh said, and later submitted to the festival by class instructors Tadashi Nakamura and Janet Chen. Dinh said the group essentially had free reign over what to create a documentary on. The short film highlights Spun Jay, also a friend of Sheng’s, and their experience as a queer, transgender and nonbinary artist who finds healing and liberation through dance.

Dinh said people of color in particular struggle to get their stories told in the film industry, but within POC groups, there is also a whole community of queer, transgender and nonbinary people who are further excluded. Projects like “Queering Movements” – which increase queer and transgender representation – can help individuals unapologetically be themselves, they said.

In a similar vein, Kodama said they learned a lot about themself as they found ways to relate to Jay during filming. As someone with experience in traditional Japanese dance, Kodama said they were inspired by watching Jay embrace their identity through their performance in a show called Hibiscus – an event where Black and brown queer artists showcased their cultural dances.

“The dances embrace eroticism in their narratives and music, and they refer to different deities and their ancestors,” Kodama said. “I was really moved when I first saw that performance live. It’s pretty rare to see just specifically Black and brown queer and trans performers.”

[Related: Virtual film screening and panel delves into sexual violence in sports, college]

Throughout the film, Jay also shared their experience with exclusion from UCLA dance and cultural clubs whose dance styles are generally very gendered, Dinh said. The documentary shows how Jay and the other participants of Hibiscus perform dances unrestricted by gender roles so as to fully celebrate their queer, nonbinary selves and embrace their bodies.

As Dinh edited the documentary, they said they found themselves inspired and fascinated by Jay’s interview in the film. Dinh said they were moved to recognize their own ethnic identity by hearing Jay discuss the impact of colonialism on South Asia and how Jay found personally liberating ways to honor their ancestors through dance.

But one challenge the team found themselves facing was finding ways to visually incorporate the past – such as parts of Jay’s childhood and the Hibiscus performance – into the documentary, Kodama said. The group worked around the problem by having Jay recreate their Hibiscus dances in an on-campus studio space, filming B-roll of the artist’s makeup and costume process as well as using their childhood pictures in the documentary to bring Jay’s past to life.

While film is not Sheng’s artistic medium of choice, they said their own digital art continues to be thematically centered around gay, transgender and nonbinary topics. Dinh, on the other hand, is set on pursuing film, and they said they are striving to bring more representation for queer and transgender people of color in the film industry.

“Simply existing as queer, trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming is already hard because we live in a world that constantly tries to erase our existence,” Dinh said. “Telling our stories, standing our ground and saying that we are still here and we continue to be here takes a lot of strength, but it’s in the hopes of bringing us more visibility.”

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Breanna Diaz
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