A dreamscape nightmare about the fragile complexities continuously grappled with in diasporic Asian cultures and identities, this film by our Spring Creator Aileen Ye serves as a piece for personal reconciliation between old and new traditions and coming to terms with one’s own cultural grievances.

TONG Spring Creator and award winning Irish-Chinese filmmaker Aileen Ye is making waves in the film industry with her short film, ‘beast 怪物’ Having garnered international recognition this year from Hong Kong’s Movement Festival to London’s BFI Future Film festival, Aileen’s film will be showcased at Berlin’s XPOSED Film Festival and Celestial Festival next month. Supported by the likes of Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Barbican, Beast presents a dreamscape nightmare about the fragile complexities grappled within diasporic Asian cultures and identities.

As a personal expression of the ‘immigrant experience’ and a letter of tribute, forgiveness and beauty in our ever-growing multicultural lives, ‘beast 怪物’ presents two figures symbolising the clash between modernity and tradition, colonised and imported heritage, and the feeling of cultural displacement amongst the ESEA diaspora. The narration from the ‘modern dancer’, Lee Teng Poh, is a personal contribution about external oppression they endured growing up, particularly as a queer Asian.

With the theme of identity at the core of Ye’s work, ‘beast 怪物’ was showcased at both Toronto’s Queer Film Festival and the London Barbican’s Queer East Festival last month.

 

“In a time where ESEA cultures and aesthetics are being capitalised and co-opted for the sake of decoration and exoticism, the visual language of this film actively resists this and provides a different gaze of diasporic bodies, ESEA queerness, and cultural depictions. The whole film is about finally being able to breathe and coming to acceptance about one’s own complex identity, internal and external oppressions, and forgiving the ‘beast’, however one embodies it.” – Aileen Ye

 

Embodied and expressed through a martial arts inspired dance-fight between a traditional lion dancer and modern queer dancer, ‘beast 怪物’ represent both entities seeking to co-exist as each other’s yin-yang and achieve solidarity amongst the social environments of exclusion that they face.

The origins of the Chinese lion dance are fuelled by different stories and lore depending on regions. ‘beast 怪物’ is inspired by one story about a lion who was ordered by the Jade Emperor to remove evil spirits from the world and later invited to stay to keep them from coming back. Both performers fear each other as the ‘bad spirit’ as we follow their journey together and as they learn to accept each other’s distance and closeness in culture.

The idea for the film was conceived at the height of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, with Ye intent on nurturing a diverse Asian space through creative solidarity. As an Asian-led production, the film required a lot of emotional vulnerability which evolved along the process with the performers’ own vulnerabilities. The narration from the ‘modern dancer’, Lee Teng Poh, is a personal contribution about external oppression they endured growing up, particularly as a queer Asian.

‘In a time where ESEA cultures and aesthetics are being capitalised and co-opted for the sake of decoration and exoticism, the visual language of this film actively resists this and provides a different gaze of diasporic bodies, ESEA queerness, and cultural depictions. The whole film is about finally being able to breathe and coming to acceptance about one’s own complex identity, internal and external oppressions, and forgiving the ‘beast’, however one embodies it.’ – Aileen Ye

Awards and showcases for ‘beast 怪物’:

XPOSED Film Festival, Berlin June 15 – 18th, in running for Lolly Awards Celestial Festival, with Q+A, Berlin May 28th Queer East Festival, with Q+A, London April ‘23 NFFTY, Seattle April ‘23 Toronto Queer Film Festival, Toronto March ‘23 BFI Future Film Festival, London Feb ‘23 Movement Festival, Hong Kong Sep ‘22 NOWNESS Asia. As an organisation that informs and connects others with Chinese society and culture, TONG understands that many at the beginning of their journey are currently facing challenges and setbacks. ‘Spring Creators 创造·春’ is an annual program dedicated to supporting five young Chinese talents around the world in their personal projects across music, fashion design, art, digital animation and more.