re:assemblage collective

― DIFFUSION 9: GHOST DANCE, 72' ―

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Outdoor Screening
August 20th · 8:30pm doors & food · 9:00pm screening
401 Richmond Courtyard · 401 Richmond Street W., Tkaronto

Entrance by donation at the door

Wheelchair accessible venue

The five films in Ghost Dance investigate ghosts both omnipresent and in/visible. From the everyday life of a burial ground and a banana plantation to the lasting phantoms of colonialism, each work in our closing program unearths and speaks on behalf of that which cannot be spoken.

Sedap Malam (Agave Amica) · Gembong Nusantara Cortar un Arbol en Luna Verde (To Cut a Tree on a Green Moon) · Felipe Esparza Pérez An Asian Ghost Story · Bo Wang Spoils · Luciana Decker Laugh and Die · Jonathan Jose Zamora Olarte

An Asian Ghost Story

Directed by Bo Wang
Hong Kong/Netherlands · 2023 · 37'00

Wigs were vital for the rise of the Asian economy in the post-war era. In the heyday of the 1960s, it was the number four export in Hong Kong's export-orientated industrialization. Between Mao's China - the largest source of hair supplies, and the insatiable Western market, Hong Kong functioned as the gateway. In 1965, U.S. Treasury Department imposed an embargo on "Asiatic hair" to cut off foreign currency to Communist China in the hair trade. The highly racialized category of "Asiatic hair" was later revised as "communist hair", to enable the wig industry to develop in U.S. allies, including mainly South Korea and Japan, which led to a significant reconfiguration of light industry in East Asia. Departing from the moment of the communist hair ban, through stories of movement, diaspora and migration, this project examines the role of Hong Kong as a transient space that mediates and sanitizes the connection between different worlds. The relationship between U.S. Imperialism and East Asia order in the Cold War era.

Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker and researcher based in the Netherlands. His works have been exhibited internationally, including venues like the Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, Garage Museum in Moscow, Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands, Visions du Réel in Switzerland, Image Forum Festival in Tokyo, DMZ Docs in South Korea, Times Museum in Guangzhou, Para Site in Hong Kong, among many others. He received a fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2013 and was an artist-in- residency at ACC-Rijksakademie 2017-2018 and NTU CCA in 2016.