PANDEMIA  — the movie

LAIWAN Director, Writer
JOHN FUKUSHIMA Cinematography, FX 

Duration: 8 minutes (with one minute black leader interval before replay)

Commissioned by the Libby Leshgold Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art & Design, Outdoor Urban Screen, 2021
For more information visit ECUAD.

DATES August 30, 2021 to February 28, 2022
HOURS 8:00AM to 9:00PM
FREE OUTDOOR VIEWING
LOCATION Emily Carr University Campus, Urban Screen, Wilson Arts Plaza, 520 East 1st Ave Vancouver BC V5T 0H2 See on Map
CONTACT Libby Leshgold Gallery | libby@ecuad.ca

PANDEMIA The Movie (2021) is a sequel to Barnacle City The Movie (2016), continuing LAIWAN’s explorations into mock sci-fi “tiny action” movies. It is a speculative fiction, imagining a world of interbeings, when what we consider “alien” return home to a place of their belonging.

Stretching imaginative possibilities of a future city or a city that once had been, that is of a dream, a poem, as in Barnacle City, wondering in this speculative non-spectacle about what could be more alien than what we already have here. Of surrealisms found in abundant ecosystems, toward a renewal for biodiversity along the False Creek Flats, encouraging a return of native fauna and flora, local micro-creatures and Indigenous stewardship. This imagining may indeed be “alien” for current systems of gentrification and urban development.

PANDEMIA also plays with Hollywood constructs of space and science fiction alienness. While Barnacle City referenced a scene from the movie Dune (1984), PANDEMIA dances with quick scenes from The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Black Hole (1979). What results is a quirky, intriguing proposition imagined during challenging times of Covid and global climate crises.

With starship appearances by: SS Rosehip (Rosa rugosa), SS Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), SS Misty Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro), SS Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), SS Clam (representing Saxidomus gigantea), and others, including special guests Kamaya Leo & Lily Wyss, with gratitude to Cease and Senaqwila Wyss.

pan·de·mi·a, noun = affecting a large population
from Greek pándēmos “common, public” (pan- pan- + dêm(os) “the people” + -os adjective suffix) + ia

Acknowledgements to Susanna Browne, Cate Rimmer, Libby Leshgold Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art & Design, City of Vancouver Archives, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and their communities.

Additional thanks: Dr Lawrence Chan and Carmen Dueck at Integrative.ca for the location shoot of the opening scene.