Dear Diary...

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A diary is not an autobiography. A diary is a process, a conjunction, a moment ceased, an and & and + and, heading towards an unknown future. Sine Screen and not/nowhere’s experimental diary film programme explores the potentials of the diary form as an incomplete self-archive, a mode of self-representation that destabilises the idea of the fixed subject through recording temporal accumulation and lived presence.

The diary film has influenced the avant-garde tradition from its emergence in the late 1960s until present day and this programme traces the much over-shadowed history of East Asian artists working with the diary form from the 1960s until the present day. Structural cinema traditions are reinterpreted through intimate, lived realities, while performance reflexively stages the fictions we construct around the concept of the ‘self’.

Primarily composed of female filmmakers, the programme considers the intimate act of filmmakers turning the camera on themselves, aware of the tension between embodying both the subject and object of the camera’s gaze, breaking down the boundary between fiction, self and cinematic meaning.

The programme includes UK premieres of Kim Minjung’s From My Cloud (2025), Haruka Doi’s He Was Here, and You Are Here (1985) and a 16mm projection of Taka and Ako (1966) by Takahiro Iimura and Akiko Iimura.

Programme:

Taka and Ako | 1966 | dir. Takahiro Iimura & Akiko Iimura | 13’ | USA

A double portrait of filmmaker-lovers Taka and Akiko as they shoot each others’ photo albums, including images of their separate childhoods, their wedding footage and their travels, as if examining how two singular archives and lives become one.

He Was Here, and You Are Here | 1985 | dir. Haruka Doi | 8’ | Japan (UK Premiere)

The narration of the filmmaker begins with the image of the “you” in her mind, as she repeatedly crosses a crosswalk. The image leaves the screen and is projected everywhere, even on the toilet bowl and the artist’s body. And the “you” of now.

The Sleeping Flower | 1991 | dir. Utako Koguchi | 7’ | Japan

An intimate portrait of Utako Koguchi’s grandmother that stages everyday conversations between the artist and her grandmother alongside a haunting construction of her grandmother’s fictive funeral – as if made in rehearsal for the unspeakable moment.

The Place Which Isn’t Necessarily Wrong | 1996 | dir. Hiromi Saiki | Runtime | Japan

The enormous amount of modern stars surrounding us is not a fantastic sparkle of light, but a litter of false information. The “I” in this film collects messages from an imaginary research company. A unique personal film that confronts the fictionalised reality on an equal level.

Fallen Day | 2025 | dir. Xiaolu Wang | 9’ | USA

A dragon dance troupe, an aikido class, an ice skating rink. Three scenarios or scenes through which the sensation of falling, or learning to fall, become metaphysical ruminations on modes of existence that draw strength from letting go.

From my Cloud | dir. Kim Minjung | 2025 | 13’ | South Korea (UK Premiere)

An exercise in excavation and a reflection on impermanence, Minjung Kim’s From My Cloud delicately sifts through and assembles videos from her personal archive, rescuing moments both banal and sublime from the digital ether.

Lucky luck, this is Qigong Tai Chi luck gate to Dantian to keep practicing Qigong inner strength (translated) | dir. @cengyanhan | 2025 | 1’ | China

A TikTok of a middle-aged man’s Qigong exercise routine.