Mark
Mark


WILD GRASS, 2020
Digital video with sound | 19 min. 45 sec.
Written and Directed by Shan Wu




A young Taiwanese woman’s journey to America reveals an unrealistic fantasy of love, driving her to confront the ways her identity is entangled with beauty, sexuality, nationality and two languages.

Following the journey of a Taiwanese woman from humid and dense Taipei to the yellow sprawl of Los Angeles, the story reveals the conflict between her expectations and reality while she finds herself struggling with a new language and her lack of a car.

She begins a romantic relationship with her American housemate rooted in an imbalance of power. The woman’s difficulties communicating lead to an awakening that forces her to look back on the culture that formed her, which she has been trying to escape.  Through confronting her own image and her failure at communicating, WILD GRASS tells a story of her reflection and the identity shift she experiences. 

We never hear from the woman on the screen nor the narrator.  As the correlation and mismatch between the image and the text become more unstable, the veracity of both the image and words comes into question. The woman’s struggle with her inner self plays out as she runs over and over again in an imaginary landscape— where her memory of water and sound from Taiwan is laid over yellow wild grass.



SELECTIONS & AWARDS
 

Taiwan Competition, Women Make Waves International Film festival, Taipei, Taiwan
Official Selection, Odense International Film Festival, Odense, Denmark
Official Selection, Asian American International Film Festival, New York, NY, USA
Official Selection, Melbourne Short Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia
Best Experimental Film, Brussels Independent Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium
Official Selection, 25FPS, Zagreb, Croatia
Official Selection, Odense International Film Festival, Odense, Denmark
Official Selection, Asolo Art Film Festival, Asolo, Italy
Official Selection, Nickel Independent Film Festival, St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada
Official Selection, ShorTS International Film Festival, Trieste, Italy
Official Selection, Golden Ger International Film Festival, Mongolia
Official Selection, Pune Short Film Festival, Maharashtra, India
Official Selection, Vienna Shorts, Vienna, Austria
Shortlisted, Aesthetica Art Prize, York Art Gallery, UK
Best Student/Thesis Film, The 17th Annual ReelHeART International Film and Screenplay Festival, Ontario, Canada
Official Selection, Experiment in Cinema v16.1, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Finalist, USA film festival, Dallas, Texas, USA
Official Selection, Florida Film Festival, Maitland, FL, USA
Best US Graduate Film, IVY Film Festival, Providence, RI, USA
Honorable Mention Emerging Artist, Taos Shortz Film Festival, Taos, NM, USA
Short Film Market Picks, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, France
Semifinalist, Student Academy Awards, USA (Jan 29, 2021 – Feb 6, 2021)
Honorable Mention/Best Editing, Prague International Indie Film Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
Awardee, Tim Disney Prize for Excellence in the Storytelling Arts, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, USA
Awardee, Multidisciplinary Grant, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, USA