This short-film programme positions the family archive as a starting point from which to illustrate complex personal histories of belonging and acceptance in diasporic contexts. Sylvia Schedelbauer’s Memories (2004) offers an incisive commentary on the unreliable and slippery nature of memory, as the filmmaker (re)constructs the family archive and questions her parents’ past to grapple with disorientating cultural coordinates. In Sea in the Blood (2000), Richard Fung weaves together two stories of love and illness. Through home movies, photos, and testimonies, the artist connects his sister’s rare blood disease with his lifelong partner’s AIDS diagnosis, placing them both against Trinidad and Tobago’s history of colonialism and independence. Notions of personal archives are complicated by historical disturbances and artistic attempts to reappropriate and interrogate cultural artefacts. In Oh, Butterfly! (2022), Schedelbauer embarks on a polyphonic critique of American imperialism via Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, blending elements of her family history. Various opera productions and film adaptations are superimposed on home videos and audio excerpts from David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly (1993), constructing a multi-layered rumination on multiracial love and its sociopolitical implications. Fung’s Dirty Laundry (1996) similarly combines fiction with fact to postulate the hidden history of the gay Chinese diaspora in Canada. Not precisely an autobiographical account, the film’s point of departure is nonetheless a family photo (albeit fictional), hence attesting to the foundational role the personal plays in inquiries into the politics of history-making. Programme: Memories, Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2004, 19 minutes Sea in the Blood, Richard Fung, 2000, 24 minutes Oh, Butterfly!, Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2022, 19 minutes Dirty Laundry, Richard Fung, 1996, 30 minutes Presented by Sine Screen, curated by Ren Scateni. Ren is a film curator and writer whose practice embraces experimental works and artists’ moving image exploring the interstices of political, disruptive, and liminal identities. His writing has appeared in various art and film magazines including ArtReview, Hyperallergic, and Sight and Sound. Ren is currently Curatorial Lead at Glasgow Short Film Festival and has been/is working across curation, consulting, mentoring, and PR for festivals, cultural organisations, and agencies including Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Queer East, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, BFI Doc Society, and Square Eyes. Ren is a Trustee of Alchemy Film & Arts.

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