Mo Bai (Black White)
This short experimental documentary introduces a Chinese trans-identified Taoist monk, Mo Bai. In English, this Chinese name Mo Bai means black and white. He was a Buddhist monk before and he can recall what happened in his previous lives. Those memories and religious practice influence how Mo Bai answers this question “Who am I”. While disrupting the dual relations between black and white, this film applies dual channel projection, looping and “speaking nearby” to represent Mo Bai’s narrative of transformation, reincarnation, and temporal extension throughout history.
This film is being screened in the short film program Feminism Around the World.
Director: Xiao Hu
Xiao Hu (胡潇) is a filmmaker and scriptwriter born in Shandong, China. She received an MFA degree in Film Theory and Practice from the Central Academy of Drama (China) in July 2014. Subsequently, she acquired her second Master’s degree in Gender Studies at Queen’s University (Canada) in Nov 2017. When working on her final Master’s research project, she made the documentary Mo Bai (Black White) Which is based on the contexts and theories of her essay “Nostalgia, Racial Melancholia, and Asian American Woman Intellectuals”.