THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PRESENTATION: "Homecore” (Oct 13-Oct 19)

Written By Michael Workman

WATCH THE TRAILER (CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR THE FULL MOVIE)

Description
The 12-year-old girl has a mundane life with a repeating daily routine. As she wakes up every morning, she senses the objects in her house strangely changed position. One day, she finally finds out the mysterious secret between her house and herself.

Homecore is a VR animation speaking to the nostalgic complications between future and past, memory and reality, self and others. Inspired by Lacan’s Mirror Theory, Homecore sees urban domesticity as an enchanting no-exit space of self-reflection through the protagonist’s looped daily life.

Runtime: 12 minutes 54 seconds
Best Viewed: VR / 360 Degree Headset

Director Biography - Qinru Zhang
Qinru Zhang is an NYC-based animator exploring uncanny femininity using digital animations. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022 with an Honorary Degree in Film/Animation/Video. She is known for her unique use of eerie aesthetics in her feminine narrations. Her animation The MILF Film(2021) has been selected for Palms Spring Animation Festival, online showcase Avatar GIF by RaindenINST, group exhibition Alpha by :iidrr Gallery in NYC, Situation exhibition in Xiamen etc.

Director Statement
I have always been frustrated to see women represented in an idealized form—the beauty, the sexy fighter, or the mysterious plaything. Avoiding these labels, I presented myself using digital avatars without obvious gender traits on the internet, a digital space I considered safe. The more I hid, the more puzzled I was about my identity representation until one day I decided to take the definition of femininity back to myself, to women. I no longer hide in the digital space. I modify what typically meant ‘feminine’ in my way—Instead of creating innocent girls or caring wives as men always imagined in their narrations, I make the uncanny, glitched, and arbitrary females the protagonist of my animations. On the intersection of virtuality and reality, I give the uncanny female characters life using Virtual Reality and establish female autonomy through their unvarnished desires.

Credits & Specifications:
Writer & Director: Qinru Zhang

Cast:
Xiner LanKey
Qinru Zhang

Collaborator:
Yuxin Chen

Completion Date: May 20, 2022
Country of Origin: United States

Michael Workman

Michael Workman is a choreographer, language, visual and movement artist, dance and performance artist, writer, reporter, and sociocultural critic. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity magazine, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and elsewhere, Workman is also Director of Bridge, an artistic collective and 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization (bridge-chicago.org). His choreographic writing has been included in Propositional Attitudes, an "anthology of recent performance scores, directions and instructions" published by Golden Spike Press, and his Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries Vol. 1, the first in a 3-volume series, was released by StepSister Press in October 2018 with a day-long program of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently, two of his scores were accepted for publication in a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing.

https://michaelworkmanstudio.com
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