Filmmaker Statement

The film takes the viewer on an embodied journey moving through a space in which its existence in reality or the imagined is debatable. Alike how the alleyway is a physical bridge between two main streets, the film presents a series of juxtaposed images that might seem opposing on the surface – the seer and the seen, the outside and inside, young and old, low and high, the leaving, coming, and returning – but are co-existing elements that sustain the living and breathing of the alley. The tactility of witnessing inherently embodied by the 16 mm celluloid is mirrored by the witnessing(s) of the tourists, the residents, the non-human subjects in the space. Via a constructed soundscape in which sonic elements from eastern spirituality find their prominence amongst real-life sounds, and through an embodied camera eye that moves freely in the geographical space of the alley, the film evokes a sense of magical realism which gives texture to the meditation on the Chinese American identity.