AFW + NFSA #76: CHINA NOT CHINA — films from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet

7:30PM Tuesday 28 April 2026
The Brunswick Green, 313/315 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
$10 on the door. 16mm projection

An evening of experimental films exploring states somewhere between China and not China.

Active in Taipei since 2021, ReaRflex is a Taiwanese experimental filmmaking collective focusing on artist-self-organised micro-cinema events and celluloid filmmaking. AFW is delighted to be presenting two of their recent works, accompanied by Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie’s Taipei and Hong Kong shot street film China Not China (2018), and Larry Jordan’s psychedelic documentary The Sacred Art of Tibet (1972).

FILMS:


Fur Film Vol.2- Mirror Mirror (In Progress)
Johan Chang, Tzuan Wu & Erica Sheu
In Progress, TW, 16mm, color & b/w, 16 min

Mirror as a verb.  “Mirror, mirror” as a spell. Mirror as a noun.
Mirror somebody/something is to have features that are similar to somebody/something else and that show what it is like a synonym reflects. A sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect.

 A drop of water stays as a temporary form on the fur of the leaves. Through a macro lens, a fragile, ephemeral existence is magnified. All the sudden, one sees it through and feels its clearness, its coldness, and its deformation coming. Delightedness, worries, and sadness come from a moment of stopped time. Trivial matter passes us out of frame as well, so we open our senses, our vision, our hearing to receive from the ecology around us.

海妖嬰唱 Siren's Lullaby
Tzuan Wu
2023, TW, 16mm, b/w, 3 min

The Mermaid exchanged her songs for walking at land, and perhaps, the sound of infants who have not yet learned a language, are like the foam that has not yet floated to the surface of sea. Or, the Silence of Sirens, in a Kafkaian way, might transit a sound underwater. Imagine that this world, which we cannot sense, may eventually turn into a bubble. This film is a repeated exposure experiment of a roll of 16mm film, combining digital and analog image sources, and using pre-determined graphics to structure the synchronization of the sound and image.

China Not China
Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie
2018, AUS, 16mm, colour, 14 min

Hong Kong marked twenty years since its hand over; halfway through the planned forty year “one country, two systems” transition. Taiwan, once imperial China, once Formosa, now ROC on the edge of the PRC. Multiple exposures of street scenes distort space and place creating a fluid sense of impermanence and transition, of two states somewhere between China and not China.

The Sacred Art of Tibet
Larry Jordan
1972, USA, 16mm, colour, 28 min

Created under the mentorship of Tibetan Lama Tarthang Tulka, The Sacred Art of Tibet is comprised of kaleidoscopic images of sacred Tibetan art and sculpture, with a commentary about their religious significance and a soundtrack of powerful mantras and ritual music.