From May 3 to 4, senior Avana Wang, in collaboration with masters student Yuli Li and senior Marissa Ding, hosted the Luna Lens Film Festival at SCA 112.
As Wang’s senior thesis for her Media Arts and Practice minor, the event spanned multiple days, including a workshop on April 18 and a weekend of screenings in May. Fourteen films were screened during the festival, including five student-submitted shorts.
The workshop in April hosted by Luna Lens Film Festival saw artists Eiko Otake and Wen Hui teach participants how to use their bodies to “explore memory, trauma, and how to use body connections as a way to communicate with one another,” according to Li, a co-organizer of Luna Lens. The event also held a screening of “No Rule is Our Rule,” a documentary feature by Otake and Wen.
Following the screening, Ding moderated a panel and Q&A where LA-based photographers Yasara Gunawardena, Amanda Villarosa and Angella Choe answered questions about their career journeys and experiences as freelance photographers working in travel, portrait and editorial photography.
In May, the festival continued, with screenings of movies from the 2010s and 2020s, including “Female Directors,” “The Cloud In Her Room,” “Dance with Third Grandma,” “The Feeling of Being Close to You,” and “Full Month.” A compilation of short films and feature-length movies, Luna Lens took the opportunity to create a sphere for Asian female and nonbinary filmmakers as well as to celebrate independent films.
“I came from this art village in China and grew up around indie filmmakers. So when I came to SC I was kind of having to adjust to how the school and the industry in general function in a really traditional and narrative focused way. And throughout my years here, I’ve been wanting to see more indie, independent, and experimental films around campus, but have not really had a chance to find anything like that. So this is very much a project that I’ve been wanting to see and have not gotten the chance to see,” Wang explained.
The goal of the film festival was to not only showcase diverse portfolios but also to create a sense of community and connection through meaningful and thought-provoking discussions between featured creatives and festival attendees.
Wang felt that during the two events in April that “we really felt a sense of community building happening in real time, especially during the movement lab. And it was just really interesting to see people of all ethnicities and gender and just age, even, to come together within this one space and kind of like, converse with each other and be just like, intimate and vulnerable in this safe space together.”
Beyond film screenings, Luna Lens hosted filmmaker Ash Goh Hua, the director of “The Feeling of Being Close to You” and “Full Month” for a Q&A session. Goh Hua explained their process behind making the two films as well as their intentions in creating heartfelt stories about mother-daughter relationships. They emphasized the importance of creating authentic stories that feel honest to the creator in order to truly capture an audience that resonates with their work.
On May 4, the festival featured its second set of films, which included screenings of “Shirkers,” “Lemongrass Girl,” “Foliage,” and “Coby and Stephen are in Love.” USC student films were also featured, including “Closer” directed by Josey Cuthrell-Tuttleman and Arjun Kochhar, “Conscious | Unconscious” by Fiona Nellist, “Baraye” by Daniella Raphaël, “Home” by Sifan Alison Wu, and “Hand-Me-Downs” by Kayla Wong.
The festival offered an endless range of themes and topics. From mysterious and suspenseful to relatable and homey and touching on relationships, love, and loneliness, the culmination of these works shows just how impactful representation in the entertainment industry can be. Li mentioned “No Rule is Our Rule” as an example.
“The documentary is about Wen Hui and Eiko after how they first met in Beijing, after many years of not seeing each other. And they started talking, they started talking about all their past as individual artists and how they came together to start working on this piece, ‘What is War.’ And ‘What is War’ is about how one Chinese woman and one Japanese woman approach the concept of war from very different standpoints,” she said.
One film featured, titled “Hand-Me-Downs,” was directed by Kayla Wong, a Chinese American senior at USC pursuing a degree in Film and Television Production at the School of Cinematic Arts. The film was written by students Megan Dang and produced by Natalia Bryant and Josey Cuthrell-Tuttleman, and follows the story of two sisters and their complex relationship on the eve of the wedding. To Wong, it is a heartwarming story about sisterhood, love and family that many audience members could relate to.
“I think about family not being just like through blood, but also being about choosing each other and finding those reasons to connect and have that love,” Wong said. “And I think that that’s something that really spoke to me. I love films about family, and I love films about women.”
The Luna Lens Film Festival was more than just a senior thesis—it was a call to empower more Asian women and nonbinary creatives in the film industry.
“I think what we are interested in is not only for audiences to come in to see the films on screen, but also knowing that their bodies can be mobilized too,” Li said. “So there is an actual active communication between what is happening on screen and who is sitting in front of the screen.”