BLOCK 1: LUCID MEMORIES (Transfiguration International Film Festival 2025)

This 90 minute short film programme contains 16 short films: (Klora, Minky) (2025, 9:41) dir. Noopur Dayal | PG Synopsis: Some kids fight at lunch. Director’s Bio: Noopur Dayal generally struggles with balancing her desire to be kind and her urge to cyberbully. She animates on paper. TRIANGLE (2012, 6:00) dir. Grace Nayoon Rhee | PG13 Synopsis: What would you do if a stranger disrupted your daily routine? The choice is whether to accept this person as a friend, or reject him as an outsider. Director’s Bio: Grace Nayoon Rhee (이나윤) is a Korean American artist who moves fluidly between animation, filmmaking, and the tactile languages of painting, sculpture, and installation. Her award-winning works have been screened at film festivals such as Annecy, Hiroshima, and Oberhausen. Squidgasm (2024, 4:18) dir. Sherry Xie | PG Synopsis: A lost young man joins a squid haggling cruise to find the meaning of life. He forms an intimate connection with a squid and decides to do whatever it takes to escape the ship. Director’s Bio: Sherry Ningyu Xie is a queer Asian visual artist and animator based in Montreal and Los Angeles. He is currently pursuing a BFA in Experimental Animation at CalArts. Outside of school, he lives on an island with his two guinea pigs, Apple and Pompom, and a cat, Eliot. WO RM (2022, 7:43) dir. Julia Chien | PG Synopsis: A split worm searches for his bottom half. Director’s Bio: Julia Chien is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker and animator based in Brooklyn. Her films often depict lonely, lowly animals at the bottom of the food chain. She currently teaches traditional animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. Don’t Look at Me Freak (2024, 5:14) dir. Tobi Lee | NC16 Synopsis: A film about dead things on the beach. Director’s Bio: Tobi Lee is a third year student at California Institute of the Arts. Ballad of a Bleeding Heart (2024, 8:31) dir. Fuzhi Zhao | PG Synopsis: Roach, a cockroach tries to prove to the world that it’s not a bad cockroach. All its efforts seem to be in vain. But is there really no point in trying? Director’s Bio: Fuzhi Zhao’s works include 2D animation, stop-motion, and live-action, while she is most interested in mix media. She explores different methods of filmmaking and the intersection between reality and the imaginary. I Think I’m Going to Die (2024, 5:10) dir. Tan Ning Xuan, Audrey Yong, Meghan Poh | PG Synopsis: A young girl finds her body afflicted by a mysterious condition. Panicked, she races through different worlds searching for a diagnosis. This mixed media stop motion film moves between the mediums of sand, paper, collage, puppet, and clay. Director’s Bio: Tan Ning Xuan is a writer, director and editor from Singapore who recently graduated from Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Design, and Media. Her love for stop-motion and mixed-media experimentation inspires her work. The game we lost that day (2020, 1:56) dir. Yuin Peng | G Synopsis: Hazy, faded and overlapping memories from the evening after I played my last secondary school softball game. Director’s Bio: Yuin Peng draws inspiration from the stories around her, romanticizing emotions and experiences with flat, bright and simple colours. She wants to continue exploring mediums and expressions to find a balance between analogue and digital practices. Family Dinner (2025, 4:00) dir. Huayi Yu | PG Synopsis: Tonight, dinner starts with a slice of tomato. Director’s Bio: Huayi Yu makes still and moving images inspired by shapes that seem to tell stories, and she likes blending playful animation transitions with subtly humorous characters. Passing Through (2024, 6:47) dir. Asia Miller | PG Synopsis: A little girl visits her hometown the summer following her parent’s divorce. Director’s Bio: Asia Miller is a queer, mixed Chinese American cartoonist that grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have a BFA in Character Animation from California Institute of the Arts. Their first formally published comic book–“Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!!” releases in the United States in May 2026. Split Ends (2024, 5:48) Dir. Kim Nguyen | PG Synopsis: A woman gets a haircut in the midst of her divorce. Director’s Bio: Kim Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American artist based in Brooklyn. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in Character Animation. Her work focuses on moments of mundane intimacy between people and places that love each other! Sugarcoat (2012, 6:16) dir. Meejin Hong | PG Synopsis: A melting crayon, a curdled childhood. Director’s Bio: Meejin Hong is an experimental animator deeply rooted in the fine arts. She holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts and is part of the team of post-disciplinary artists at Electronic Countermeasures, LLC. She was born in Spartanburg, SC and currently resides with tortoises and other unruly creatures in Winnetka, CA. Thank You For Your Love (2025, 3:17) dir. Jin Lim | M18 Synopsis: 2 dogs timidly grapple to seek intimacy. Director’s Bio: Jin Lim is a Korean-American, queer and non-binary animation filmmaker. Their multimedia animations explore the interwoven human connections of gender identity. Jin hopes their films can raise and strengthen the voices of the queer, trans, and poc community. 0128 BOWL-0-RAMA (2025, 1:50) dir. Tofu House | PG Synopsis: You find yourself in a retro bowling game and discover that you are the ball :0 whaaat? You gutterball with gusto- Journey through the longkang and find yourself crashing into a mysterious Shrub. Director’s Bio: Tofu House Films is a persistent collaborative effort between Annie Hung and Mina Choo, brought together by their shared interest in experimental animation and general queerness. Tofu House is also a platform for other joint creative projects rooted in the spirit of DIY, experimentation, and community. Forever Loons (2024, 1:04) dir. Hahahause | Exemptible Synopsis: Skydancers — erratic, floppy, and full of life. Let us all be loons, always twisting and dancing like there’s no tomorrow… even until the air runs out. Sometimes, we envy them as objects: endlessly moving and entirely unrestrained. Director’s Bio: Hause is a collective of graphic designers who favor fun over function in design and art. Their interests span between memes, internet culture, and T-shirts. Bootstrapping for the Boobied (2025, 15:00) dir. Stella Chen | R21 Synopsis: Maxed out, burnt out, and sex-starved, Amber Su falls under the spell of glamorous self-help guru Coco Ging, a woman who makes desire and ambition feel like different kinds of debt. Repression evolves into possession as Amber molts into a new ego: a worksona. Director’s Bio: Stella Chen is a Chicago-based experimental 3D CGI animator exploring an erotic and anxious interior of queer embodiment. Her low-poly work contrasts the minimalism of its graphics with the messy excess of emotion it depicts. In her films, the exploitative labor of animation is indistinguishable from the obsessive labor of desire.