Om｜唵, 16mm to digital, 13:24, 2022

Inspired by Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Om is a quasi visual diary retracing the quarantine experience of a Chinese stranded in California during the peak of the pandemic. Traveling between mutated domestic space and contaminated nature, the film explores the rupture in both the personal and the political, as well as meditates upon senses of displacement, paranoia, alienation, and collective trauma.

 

《唵》受赫尔曼·黑塞《悉达多》一书启发，以准视觉日记的形式，重构了一位因紧急状态滞留加州的中国人的日常经验。影片在不断异化的居所与被污染的自然之间往返，呈现了个体在全球性危机中的感知裂隙与心理震荡。通过对感官与时空的诗性编织，作品凝视孤绝与流徙的状态，思索焦虑、异质化与集体创伤在当下语境中的具体质地。影像如同一场内在的旅程，在崩解与再构之间追问自我与世界的关系边界。

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screening: Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Chicago, US, 2023

VISIONS2030 Earth Edition Festival, Futuring, CalArts, Valencia, US, Sep 15-24, 2023

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award: Honorable Mention, Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Chicago, US, 2023

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press: https://www.cinefile.info/?fbclid=PAAabwL9OCXb-vQWv3oYHgEAUX1zaQJuE_5GV2jksBtPcSUfUwjvGVaW9Cpt0

 

"Om, as a word, represents the sound of the divine, and sound is an important element of Yanbin Zhao’s OM (2022, 13 min). Zhao, who lives in Los Angeles, intersperses news coverage of the pandemic with video phone calls with his grandfather in China. He films and records the sounds of the natural environment, devoid of human beings (though not of their detritus), and conjures the Buddha in image and language. Dead leaves, cut flowers, and algae blooms stand in for the devastation occurring outside his isolated suburb." [Marilyn Ferdinand]