Directing
Shu Lea Cheang
Born January 1, 1954 · Taiwan (age 72)
Taiwanese-American director Shu Lea Cheang is a pioneer in the field of media art. Having embraced the internet and hacking culture early on, recognizing both its capacity to enslave as well as liberate, mixing that with queer and sexually explicit imagery bringing something new to the cultural landscape. Cheang describes herself as both a ‘cyber homesteader’ and a ‘high-tech aborigine’ hinting at…
Known For
Fluidø · 2017Fluidø
★ 4.12017
MovieScience Fiction
It is the year 2060 and AIDS has been eradicated. However, in some, the HIV virus has now mutated into a gene from which a drug can be produced that has become the white powder of the twenty-first century. With a virtually supported scanning system, secret police are trying to identify anyone who carries this gene. Filmed in Berlin, Taiwan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang’s science fiction dystopia revolves around a struggle to gain control over the production and exploitation of bodily fluids. Her film is like an orgiastic opera; a breathless round of bodies, secretions, performances and sexual acts often performed in the service of an overriding economy. An unusual, largely experimental and deliberately parapornographic drama in which the borders between the sexes as well as homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- or intersexual are constantly blurred.
UKI · 2023UKI
2023
MovieScience Fiction
UKI’s storyline unfolds as we follow a defunct replicant REIKO dumped on Etrashville - a vast dump for tech - who tries to pull themselves back together with the help of Etrashville's transgenic inhabitants. Parallel to REIKO’s trajectory is that of an infected city where we are made aware of the reckless schemes of the biotech enterprise, GENOM Co.
LOVER LOVE · 2026LOVER LOVE
2026
MovieAnimation
LOVER LOVE, a new commission for the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art by Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954), begins with a portal. A window is flung open and the gray wall of an apartment block dissolves into a turbulent, overcast sky, against which a smoky being is enveloped by a six-winged seraphim—an angel of the highest order. This collaboratively scripted film moves between physical and virtual space: between performances in a motel room, a junkyard, and city streets amid surrounding nature, we can see desert plants blooming anthropomorphic appendages and souls escaping inhuman oppression to take transhuman flight.
Sex Fish · 1993Sex Fish
1993
Movie
A euphoric lesbian sex video features a group of women in a frenzy of erotic scenes with poetry, slowly dripping water, fancy goldfish, and an ecstatic score by Sheila Chandra. Experimenting with pro-sex feminist media practices and pornography, Sex Fish was made as a collaboration known as E.T. Baby Mania.
Fresh Kill · 1996Fresh Kill
★ 5.31996
MovieScience FictionDrama
Shareen and Claire, a lesbian couple living on Staten Island, find themselves ensnared in a vast conspiracy involving a ghost ship of nuclear refuse, ominous television commercials, and deadly cat food.
Fisting Club: Episode 1 · 2019Fisting Club: Episode 1
2019
Movie
"Welcome to the Fisting Club, The first rule of the Fisting Club is : Never talk about the Fisting Club."
Coming Home · 1995Coming Home
1995
Movie
She loves her, and she loves her too. She is Japanese and she is Australian. The awkward fitting of bodies into a small space is just one of the allegorical scenarios dramatized in a pressing appeal for lesbian rights.
LOVEME2030 · 2005LOVEME2030
★ 4.02005
Movie
Paris, like the other metropolitan cities in Europe, was flourishing because of new crossing urbanities, while tension was born between the conservative and the new types of Europeans. By the year of 2030, the new races of Europeans have a chance to return to their hometown where the standard of living began to improve. In anticipating the exodus of reverse migration, LOVEME2030 wishes to defer the unfinished love stories until year 2030. Love me, not now, not here. LOVE ME when I am gone.
Filmography
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