Doors 7:30p
Program 8:00p
Tickets $12

UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

Please join us for a very special evening presenting the dynamic and powerful work of filmmaker and artist Elysa Wendi, here at UnionDocs. 

Formally trained as a dancer and choreographer, Wendi approaches her film practice with a strong choreographic impulse. Her work incorporates documentary, audiovisual essay, and expanded choreography, and is heavily influenced by her personal movements across Southeast Asia, traversing the amorphous boundaries between borders, languages, and histories.  

The three films in the program range in subject matter – from a journey through Hong Kong’s disappearing urban landscapes, to a dancer’s reflections on memory and illness, to an intimate conversation between two filmmakers amidst a turbulent storm – but they are all bound by Wendi’s careful and attuned treatment of movement, memory, and cinematic time.

Wendi’s films have been screened widely at film festivals, including Jihlava, Le FIFA (Montréal) and Image Forum (Tokyo), and awarded in Hong Kong (Gold Award, 28th ifva) and Taiwan (Best Experimental Film, 17th South Taiwan Film Festival), among others.

We’re thrilled to be joined by Elysa Wendi for a discussion following the screening and hope you’ll join us to engage this rich and resonant work.

Program

1958 Delivery by Elysa Wendi

14’46 mins, 2017

1958 Delivery follows a funeral flower delivery man searching for an address across Sheung Wan—from Hollywood Road to Tai Ping Shan Street. Inspired by Nagano Shigeichi’s photographic book Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958, the film pauses between condolences and erasure, reimagining trapped souls in houses destined for demolition, suspended between past and disappearing landscapes.

As I Imagine My Body Moving by Elysa Wendi

30 mins, 2022

Facing a debilitating illness, a former dancer recounts her life of movement—onstage, traveling and now through remembrance.

Room 404 by Elysa Wendi & Lee Wai Shing

29’41 mins, 2023

A never-ending typhoon in 2019 Hong Kong transposes two directors into an unsettling existential 404 error. Trapped in their hotel room while gazing out at the chaotic landscape, the duo begins questioning the role of artists through intimate dialogues and introspections.

Program Duration: 74 mins

Bios

Elysa Wendi is a filmmaker, artist, and curator whose practice spans performance and the moving image. Preoccupied with the abstraction of memory from place, time, and biographical traces, Wendi examines these themes in her live and filmic works. Straddling the amorphous boundaries between borders, languages, and cultural practices, she works through hybrid documentary projects, audiovisual essays, and meta-choreographic rituals to explore the auto-fictional narratives of bodies and movements.

In 2015, she co-founded Cinemovement with film producer Jeremy Chua, a platform facilitating trans-disciplinary film creation through laboratory settings in different cities across Asia. She has served as festival curator for Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival since 2021.