Singapore, 199589 Singapore
Screening with Post-Show Q&A with Director Hoo Fan Chon
This film is presented with the T Project in commemoration of International Transgender Day of Visibility.
This photo-video essay is part of an ongoing project “Anita & Ava – Photography as a Self-restorative Tool”, which looks at how two childhood friends explored their gender identity through photography, as they transitioned into adulthood.
Fan Chon originally found this series of photographic portraits of the late Ava Leong taken in the 1950s and 1960s in which she self-restored from an adolescent boy to a woman in an antique shop in Penang. After he got in touch with Ava’s surviving lifelong friend, Anita, the collection expanded and he carried out a series of interviews with Anita to gather background information on these photographs.
A compilation of audio clips of Anita’s voice is used as the foundation of this video essay and are juxtaposed with a selection of Ava and Anita’s photographic collection that reveals their journey of self-discovery through studio photography, Anita’s working experience as a school lab technician and her life on stage as a woman impersonator. These photographs symbolize a time when they, together with their peers from the transgender community, were allowed to explore their sense of self while contributing to a lively cosmopolitan artistic culture in Malaysia.