UPCOMING AT DOC NYC in November 2024
Hand Me Down: Xiaohui is the first chapter in an experimental documentary series tracing three generations of Chinese American women through the Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen Protests, and suburban assimilation. Filmmaker Diana Mulan Zhu interviews her grandmother and mother, exploring rarely discussed topics in immigrant Asian families, such as sex education, menstruation, and feminism. The film highlights generational tensions, with her grandmother holding traditional views on gender and her mother embracing a neoliberal form of feminism, in contrast to Diana’s own radical, queer perspectives.
Visually, the film blends archival footage with surreal AI-generated sequences, creating constantly morphing and unstable imagery that reflects Diana’s disorientation with her family’s past. With fragmented translations from Diana’s childhood vocabulary, subtitles are used unconventionally, challenging the audience’s understanding of language and cultural belonging.