About – Cinemovement

About

Founded in 2015 by artist-filmmakers Elysa Wendi and Jeremy Chua, Cinemovement is an artist-run platform that hosts interdisciplinary collaborations between artists, performance-makers, and media practitioners. Through an expanding slate of process-driven programmes in different parts of Asia such as laboratories, residencies, and commissions, Cinemovement researches and facilitates new forms of audio visual production that addresses expanded fields of dance, visual art, and cinema with a focus on formal and narrative hybridity and experimentation. Cinemovement is interested in initiating encounters that push the boundaries of interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary processes in artistic practice to set new disciplinary conversations and methodologies.

Till date, Cinemovement has organized six labs and two residencies in Hanoi, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines and Indonesia. The platform has facilitated an average seven projects per lab, some of which found success on international platforms such as Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center (New York), Cinema Du Reel at Pompidou Centre (Paris) and Busan International Film Festival.

Cinemovement is presently led by founding artistic director Elysa Wendi, co-artistic director Liao Jiekai, associate producer Bambby Cheuk, and associate curator and researcher Alfonse Chiu.

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Elysa Wendi (co-founder & co-artistic director)

Elysa Wendi is a filmmaker and artist-curator working between Singapore and Hong Kong. Preoccupied with the abstraction of memory from place, time and biographical traces, Wendi explores these themes in her live and filmic works. Straddling the amorphous boundaries between borders, languages, and histories, Wendi works through hybrid documentary projects, audio-visual essays, and meta-choreographic rituals to explore the auto-fictional narratives of bodies and movements. Her recent film Room 404 was screened in 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded 2024.

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Jeremy Chua (co-founder & Producing Director)

Jeremy Chua is a Singaporean producer and screenwriter. Since 2014, he founded Potocol, that focuses on the international coproduction of Asian films. He has trained at EAVE Ties That Bind, Berlinale Talents, SEAFIC, Produire au Sud, and TorinoFilmLab. His recent works include Makbul Mubarak’s Autobiography (Venice Orritonzi 2022), and Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Rehana Maryam Noor (Cannes Un Certain Regard 2021)

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Liao Jiekai (co-artistic director )

Liao Jiekai is a filmmaker and artist based in Singapore and Tokyo. His unique moving-image practice spans fiction, documentary, performative and experimental forms that often defies categorisation.

He is a founding member of the film collective 13 Little Pictures (Singapore) and production company Prism Pictures (Japan). His shorts and feature films were selected for competition in various international film festivals in Asia, Europe and America, most notably Red Dragonflies (Special Jury Prize, Jeonju International Film Festival 2010). His video works and installations were also presented in visual arts Biennales and group exhibitions, including Brother’s Quarters (Winner of President Young Talent Exhibition, Singapore Art Museum 2013), Bukit Orang Salah (Singapore Biennale 2014), Something from the Ocean and Something from the Sea (Aomori Contemporary Art Center, 2014) and Silent Light (Ota Fine Arts Tokyo, 2020). In 2012, he received the Young Artist Award in Film from the National Arts Council Singapore, for his achievement and contribution to Singapore cinema. His recent works include Faraway My Shadow Wandered (Cinema Du Reel 2021) and On Memory (Sheffield Docfest 2021).

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Sudhee Liao (Associate Artist)

Sudhee Liao is a Singapore- and Hong Kong-based interdisciplinary choreographer, movement artist, and educator.She obtained her BFA from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts majoring in Contemporary Dance and Choreography. She shifts between the roles of being an interdisciplinary choreographer, movement artist and educator. Her work intricately weaves movement, identity, and socio-political themes. She has presented her creations at international platforms. Notable works like The Contours of Silence (Hong Kong Arts Festival), Dancing with Enigmatic Perception (Shanghai Powerstation of Art), showcase her exploration of cultural identity and human experience. Her practice often integrates materials with movement, creating multidimensional performances that reflect on the nuances of existence. Sudhee Liao was an alumni of Cinemovement Lab I and II. Her film Faraway My Shadow Wandered (Cinema Du Reel 2021) co – directed with Liao Jiekai was incubated under Cinemovement Residency program in 2020.

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Bambby Cheuk (Associate Producer)

Bambby Cheuk is a Singaporean film producer focusing on Southeast Asian documentaries. She was on the producing team from Pōtocol for Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Cannes Director’s Fortnight Caméra d’Or winner, Toronto IFF) and Last Shadow at First Light (San Sebastian FF, FF Hamburg). Her shorts have been screened in Singapore IFF, Seoul International Women’s FF, Edinburgh Docufest and DokuBaku IDFF, acquired by broadcasters like Channel NewsAsia and used as educational resources for universities and organisations.

Her heart lies in making films useful to the communities that the films are about. While final films can be a tool for change, she wants to enable change even during the production process itself.

She is an alumni of the Rotterdam Lab, Full Circle Lab Philippines, Docs by the Sea and SGIFF’s Asian Producers’ Network 2023.

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Alfonse Chiu (Associate Curator & Researcher)

Alfonse Chiu is a writer, artist, curator, and master’s candidate in Environmental Design at the Yale School of Architecture. Their curatorial practice examines the representation of space and bodies across time-based media, performance, and their intersections to imagine new forms of justice and expression. They are the programme director of SeaShorts, a pan-Southeast Asian platform for short-form moving image, and they are the director of the Centre for Urban Mythologies.

Cinemovement Ltd is supported by the
National Arts Council under the Seed
Grant Scheme for the period 1 April
2017 to 31 March 2020.