PORTFOLIO

LILLY ZHUANG
zhuanglilly.jpg@gmail.com

about the artist

FILM

HERE [premiering at BFI FLARE 2025]
narrative fiction; ‘25

in an empty space
creative documentary; ‘25

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CYAN
experimental documentary; ‘25

When I Look At You
experimental documentary; ‘24

AND I THOUGHT OF HOME
experimental documentary; ‘23

AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE
experimental documentary; ‘21

PHOTOGRAPHY _[includes]

01. MY MOTHER WAS A GIRL ONCE (’23)
[multiple countries]
“home sick”

02. GENTLE HANDS (’23)
[U.S.]
“touch”

03. CAN’T SEE THE TREES (’23—’24)
[multiplie countries]
“our forest”

04. PASSAGES (’22—’24)
[multiple countries]
“a single line”

WRITING/PRINT _[includes]

01. LULUO : THOUGHTS ON A LINE
artist’s catalogue
catalogue writer/editor/producer

02. ZHUANG HONG YI: KALEIDOSCOPE
artist’s catalogue
catalogue writer/editor/producer

03. Notable Essays ^[academia]

“Tracing the Gap: (Re)negotiating Melancholic Space in the South China New Wave" (MA Dissertation, ‘22)

“Performance of the Everyday: The Politics and Poetics of Boredom in the Films of
Wong Kar-wai” (BA Dissertation, ‘20)

(*available to read upon request)

[still from HERE]

DIR. LILLY ZHUANG
WRITTEN BY PETE RESTRICK
PROD. BY CHRISTIAN DAMETTO

Past screenings at BFI FLARE 2025
- 23.03.2025 @10.45am
- 26.03.2025 @8.50pm
- 30.03.2025 @5pm

HERE (2025) [narrative fiction]

HERE tells the story of the unlikely romance between Kaden and Lucas, two teenagers resigned to work the East Riding strawberry fields over the Summer.

Desires disentangle in this new, uninhibited, and sun-drenched environment, as the two boys tentatively begin to explore their feelings towards one another in secret, a kinship that forces them to confront their own internalised homophobia, shame, and sense of belonging.”

[still from HERE]

IN AN EMPTY SPACE [2025]
DIR. LILLY ZHUANG [creative documentary]
with FU CHENGXI

[still from IN AN EMPTY SPACE]

Tracing the thoughts of a Chinese actor reflecting on what makes a character, 'IN AN EMPTY SPACE' makes visible the roots and motions of a person in the process of becoming, weaving together the narrative of a diasporic stage between his London flat and the woods in which his alter ego roams, echoing words of a young Hamlet.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CYAN [2025]

From the borderlines: A lyrical landscape of cyanotypes, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CYAN is a portrait film in fragmentation, engendered by thoughts on queer personhood and displacement through the lens of creative fugitivity.

[still from AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CYAN]

Following fragments of conversations, a mother and daughter grapple with the narratives that inform their lives – across cultural, geographical, and generational gaps – while pondering self-utterance because and despite the frustration of language.

[still from WHEN I LOOK AT YOU]

WHEN I LOOK AT YOU [2024]

DIR. LILLY ZHUANG [creative documentary]
with LU LUO

[still from WHEN I LOOK AT YOU]

AND I THOUGHT OF HOME [2023]
DIR. LILLY ZHUANG [experimental documentary]
"A letter to a city in pieces for a voice on the other side of the phone that echoes in a song sung for a mother tracing the timber of a line of fragmented light; shimmering, flowering, shifting over the course of a day spent thinking."

[still from AND I THOUGHT OF HOME]

AND I THOUGHT OF HOME is an experimental project centred on the notion of chance and contingency as five creatives, strangers to each other, are put into conversation through their multimedia work, addressing feelings of loss, longing, nostalgia, and frustration to document the liminal place of home at the interstices of sociopolitics and personal poetics.

[still from AND I THOUGHT OF HOME]

[still from AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE]

AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE (2021)
DIR. LILLY ZHUANG [experimental documentary]
AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE is a play on Jonas Mekas’ idea of diary filmmaking through deeply personal expression made plural. Five people record whatever their attention was drawn to without any further instructions, expectations, or limitations, for 24 hours across the span of a week.

A group of friends' attempt to snatch the eternal out of the ever-fleeting, a way of stopping something that overpowers all of us: the flow of time.

[still from AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE]
AS FAR AS OUR EYES CAN SEE within the Restrictions of Temporality and the Limits of a Hundred and Sixty-Eight Hours: A Visual Diary written by five hands instead of one.

_{A LAST LULLABY: MEMORIES OF HAN OPERA [in development]

DIR/PROD LILLY ZHUANG}
A tale of a dying art, A LAST LULLABY weaves an image of Chinese Han opera through the voice of someone who used to enchant its stage.

Focussing on the politics and aesthetics of crossdressing, the film unfolds across time and abstract recollection to question the notion of performance in spaces both public and private.

[moodboard image]

[moodboard image]

MY MOTHER WAS GIRL ONCE (2023)

Juxtaposing her mother’s stories of childhood with the reality of what she found in her family’s hometown, this series of images portray the fragility of personal memory within a rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape in Guanghan, China.

MY MOTHER WAS A GIRL ONCE is an attempt – and the ultimate failure – to come to terms with the artist’s own roots, growing up so far away from the spaces her mother knew as a child.

PORTFOLIO - FILM