Overview
Join us for 'Can We Land Safely?', an evocative screening and discussion exploring the intersections of displacement, memory, and personal and historical archives. This special event showcases four compelling short essay films by three emerging Asian female and non-binary filmmakers: Dorothy Cheung, Aria Danaparamita, and Xiao Zhang.
Cheung’s works explores the experience of living in the in-between, Danaparamita’s documentary reveals a violent history witnessed by the landscape, and Zhang’s film represents the complexity of memory through its experimental use of archives. Through an intimate blend of testimony and essayistic storytelling, this programme invites the audience to reflect on what it means to seek grounding and belonging in a constantly shifting world.
Following the 47-minute screening, attendees will have the opportunity to engage directly with the filmmakers in an open Q&A discussion about their creative processes and the histories their films uncover. Whether you are a student or scholar of Film Studies, Asian Studies, History, Gender Studies, or Art History, a cinephile, an art enthusiast, or simply curious about new perspectives in documentary filmmaking, this event promises a deeply moving and thought-provoking experience.
Screening programme
Dorothy Cheung, As a bird that briefly perches (2025) 擇鳥記16'50''
Dorothy Cheung, Reverberation (2023) 浮覆記 5'16''
Aria Danaparamita, Dover 82 (2025) 4'59''
Xiao Zhang, Words Fly Back to the Black Earth (2025) 词藻飞回大地深处 19'12''
Filmmakers
- Dorothy Cheung
(she/her) is an artist from Hong Kong. She works with moving image and poetry to examine identity and home from both personal and political angles, focusing on memory and forgetting. Her moving-image works have been screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, EYE Filmmuseum, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, and M+, and internationally at festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, the London Short Film Festival, the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, and Queer Lisboa. She has received commissions from M+, Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival, and Visual AIDS.
- Aria Danaparamita
(They/them) is an Indonesian artist-filmmaker, journalist and human rights campaigner published in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, VICE and more. Their debut short Dover 82 (2025) was exhibited including at London Short Film Festival, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee Week and the Scottish Documentary Institute’s Doc Screen programme.
- Xiao Zhang
(They/She) is a filmmaker and artist based in Dongguan and Los Angeles. Their work centers on personal poetics of memory, language, body, and diaspora, attending to haptic sites of trace, absence, and exile. They hold an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts and a BFA from the Beijing Film Academy. Their work has screened internationally at festivals and institutions including MoMA Doc Fortnight, BFI London Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, FIRST, BISFF, Prismatic Ground, FRACTO, Antimatter, EXiS, CROSSROADS, REDCAT, Tai Kwun, and UCCA, among others.
- Curator & Moderator: Dr Xinyi Wang
(she/her) is a Postdoctoral Affiliate in Film and French at Cambridge. She holds a PhD in French from Cambridge. Her research focuses on film and wider visual culture, spanning fiction, documentary, and experimental film, as well as photography and video art. Her articles have been published in academic journals and film magazines, such as French Studies and Second Thoughts.
She founded Cambridge Asia Cine-Encounters, a platform for emerging Asian women and non-binary filmmakers to share their films, ideas, and experiences, bridging academia and the film industry. She curated for Queer East Film Festival and Talking Short.
Details
This event is open to all and free to attend - .
Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
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