Huahua’s Dazzling World and its Myriad Temptations
by Daphne Xu
Cinéma du Réel 2022
Rétrospectives and Cartes Blanches 2022
Official synopsis
Huahua, an eccentric and exuberant woman from Xiongan New Area, livestreams herself dancing, singing, and chatting with fans on the Internet for a living. Cell phone screens, beauty filters, and digital soundscapes reveal a world that Huahua creates with her own image.
The programmer’s eye
Advantageously halting no speech, Daphné Xu manages to grasp the complexity of an individual positioning in the face of digital technology, mixing alienation and powerful appropriation. The “craft” of self-staging also make beautiful family sequences emerge. Right inside the harshness of a Chinese urbanity that filters cannot cover up, Huahua carries us away in her dance, on a thread between exhaustion and her will of emancipation.
Mathilde Guitton-Marcon
Biography and Filmography
Born in 1992, Daphne Xu is a Chinese-Canadian artist and filmmaker who explores the politics and poetics of place, and diasporic affect through photography, film, video installation and printed productions. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from Brown University and a Master's Degree in Urban Planning from MIT. She also produces public art projects with urban planning/design agencies. In 2016, she co-founded Sponge Gourd Collective, an art and research collective, whose publications and video installations have been broadcast and exhibited internationally. She is currently a Fellow of the Film Study Center at Harvard.
2022 : HUAHUA’S DAZZLING WORLD AND ITS MYRIAD TEMPTATIONS - Daphne Xu - Director
2020 : A THOUSAND-YEAR STAGE (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2019 : SHUNQIZIRAN (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2019 : TRI AND KHANH (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2018 : NOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
Daphne Xu
Huahua...
Sensory Ethnography Lab
Eric Masunaga
by Daphne Xu
Born in 1992, Daphne Xu is a Chinese-Canadian artist and filmmaker who explores the politics and poetics of place, and diasporic affect through photography, film, video installation and printed productions. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from Brown University and a Master's Degree in Urban Planning from MIT. She also produces public art projects with urban planning/design agencies. In 2016, she co-founded Sponge Gourd Collective, an art and research collective, whose publications and video installations have been broadcast and exhibited internationally. She is currently a Fellow of the Film Study Center at Harvard.
2022 : HUAHUA’S DAZZLING WORLD AND ITS MYRIAD TEMPTATIONS - Daphne Xu - Director
2020 : A THOUSAND-YEAR STAGE (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2019 : SHUNQIZIRAN (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2019 : TRI AND KHANH (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director
2018 : NOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE (SHORT) - Daphne Xu - Director