MA Performance: Screen Screening 3

AXIOM, by Yilan Yang

This film explores how human behaviour is shaped by unseen systems of rules. Set within a space, a figure encounters fragmented instructions and gradually attempts to interpret and follow them. Through repetition, error, and adjustment, the character learns to navigate an ambiguous structure without explanation. Using visuals, controlled movement, and subtle shifts in lighting and sound, the film examines the relationship between control, perception, and adaptation, revealing how individuals internalise external systems through action rather than understanding.

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Cast: Yu Cao
Director: Yilan Yang
DOP: Yuexiang Li
Sound Recordist: Zhaoyue Wang
Gaffer: Junhao Fu
Assistant Director: Kangqiao Jiang
Sound Designer: Mavis Wong
Thanks: Tianyu Chen
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Resonance, by Weiquan Shen

A dystopian short film set in a near-future city on the brink of energy collapse. Scientists discover that human neural resonance can generate power, leading to a system in which those who fail to synchronize are sealed inside industrial drums and forcibly “calibrated” through repeated impact. The film adopts a reverse chronological structure, moving from outcome to cause to gradually reveal the logic and cost of this system. During a public ceremony, a drummer attempts to disrupt the rhythm but is immediately executed, while the system continues uninterrupted. Through stark, minimalist imagery and oppressive spatial design, the work explores control, conformity, and the violence embedded in collective order.

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Cast: AI generation
Director: Weiquan Shen
Sound Designer: Guanhong Chen
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Dear Distant Days, by Mimee Wasuda Thongdee

In a pawnshop which only open when it rains, Merry restored her forgotten memories through the exchange of her beloved carousel music box.

“Merry goes up and down round and round…”

Merry discovers a place where pink peony blooms earlier than usual while an orange tulip linger longer into the season. The two flowers that are not meant to bloom together, but for a brief moment in May, they shared the same sunlight, rain, and beautiful moment where two different seasons align in their own time.

“Dear Distant Days” explores the mechanism of time and cyclical loop of memories through the motion of the Carousel and Kodak Carousel Projector. This film is dedicated to every late bloomer still finding their own season to bloom.

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Crew: Pimpisa Raksrithong, Thanatphong Charurangsimes
Written and Directed by Wasuda Thongdee
Producer and Director of Photography: Aom_full
Super8 Cinematographer: Kechen Qian
Assistant Director: Pattarasuda Somjest
Production Manager: Atnices
Art Director: X.her__
Assistant Art Director: Kanittaphat
PICO House Production
Tang Chack Art Department
À LA CARTE Cinema Rental & Service
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A Day of Luma, by Xinyi Xu

A Day of Luma follows a high school girl living with bipolar disorder across two nearly identical days, where the same routines unfold under shifting emotional states. Moving between the classroom, the journey home, and her bedroom, the film reveals how mania and depression reshape the rhythm and texture of everyday life—from heightened energy and brightness to stillness and emptiness.

Alongside these familiar spaces, symbolic inner landscapes emerge, translating Luma’s emotional experiences into visual form. The film invites the audience to inhabit a world where perception is constantly in flux.

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Cast: Xinyi Xu, Eirian Zhang
Director: Xinyi Xu
Editor: Xinyi Xu
Sound: Xinyi Xu
Director of Photography: Angus
Production Design: Xinyi Xu, Jinyi Ji
Special Thanks: Kich, Ann
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Auto Renewal, by Leah Xingyu Li

AUTO-RENEWAL is a dystopian lo-fi sci-fi short film exploring memory, grief, and the commodification of human emotion in a near-future world. Kael attempts to access his dying father’s final funds through an outdated biometric system, but a routine transaction spirals into a disturbing confrontation with technology, identity, and loss. Blending retro-futurist aesthetics with intimate emotional tension, the film examines what remains of love when memory can be copied, edited, and endlessly renewed.

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Cast:Kael Jr.: James Brace, Nurse: Polina Liu, Orderly: Skaidre Rudokaite, Crying girl: Tacie Marlow, Kael Sr. : Robert Firth
Director: Leah Xingyu Li
Producer: Millie Aoki
1st AD: Keming Zhang
DOP: Kyle Han
Gaffer: Steven Shih Pin Wang
2nd AC: Yilan Yang
Production Designer: Zihao Shen
Sound Designer: Chris Lee
Costume Designer: Yulu Hou
Costume Designer Assistant: Xingtong Lyu
Make up Artist: Umi Shi
Editor: Zack hok Shing
VFX Artist: Chem Wang & LJ
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How to make Li Jun, by Jingyi Ji

This film begins with an attempt to reconstruct my mother, Li Jun, using a mannequin. Through repeated acts of dressing and arranging, I try to make her present. In daily life, the figure is maintained through performance—positioned and treated as if she were still there.

This fragile continuity breaks in a dream, where the figure falls apart and the illusion collapses. What is held in reality cannot be sustained in the unconscious.
The work shifts from reconstruction to recognition. She is no longer something to rebuild, but something already embedded in my gestures and ways of seeing.
I carry her forward.
In memory of Li Jun.

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Cast: Jingyi Ji
Director: Jingyi Ji
Editor: Jingyi Ji
Sound designer: Jingyi Ji
Special thanks: Roz Mortimer, Xinyi Xu , Yanhong Liu
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Res nullius, by Xintong Xu

Res nullius is an essay film examining the "ontology of survival" for China's 9000 million stray animals drifting within a legal vacuum. In the absence of animal welfare laws, these creatures collapse from "private property" into "ownerless things"—devalued objects viewed merely as public safety risks. The film juxtaposes the intimate narratives of rescuer Long Qiu Si Yu with harrowing imagery from Nanjing and Laian, set against cold institutional data. Through audiovisual collage, the project reveals how life is reduced to "non-existence" within the social hierarchy. It ultimately asks: in an urban space unready to embrace them, what is the weight of individual rescue amidst such systemic loneliness and ethical imbalance?

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Cast: Long Qiu Si Yu and her husband, the cats and dogs rescued by Long Qiu Si Yu, Zhu Zhu.

Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Editor / Narrator: Xintong Xu
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