NZ Filmmaker features in Four International Film Festivals

May 17th, 2018

Auckland’s rising star of Film, Nicole Chen’s new short film to feature in four international Film Festivals already this year.

While Hollywood fashionably postures around the #MeToo movement, New Zealand filmmaker Nicole Chen’s film project lends compelling gravity and reality to the truly vulnerable. Her new film “Away” is a short film about a woman with a traumatic childhood and her journey through the dark shadows of humanity.

“Away” has as its inspiration the sadness of child abuse, abandonment, and neglect. Nicole’s imagery is a silent scream, told through the senses, images, sounds, and memories of a woman haunted. The film has a hidden storyline, with disorientated and fragmented shots that reflect the emotional experiences of broken memories. The final scene will haunt your waking daydreams. (Link to preview: https://vimeo.com/254976636

“Away” is a Finalist in Girls Don't Cry - Persephone's Daughters Film Division (USA) - A site that is dedicated to empowering women who have experienced various forms of abuse and degradation; an Official Selection of ‘Short+Sweet’ (Sydney) with live screening in March 2018; an Official Selection of the Top 100 reviewed film festival 'Short to the Point’ (Romania); and an Official Selection of Manifesto Film Festival (Amsterdam) – a rebrand of the Norwich Radical Film festival where Nicole’s first film “Jianjie” was screened.

“I love your beautiful short film. It’s lyrical and tells its story visually – a skill that many filmmakers never fully achieve” - Peter Caranicas, Deputy Editor, Variety Magazine.

About Nicole

As a child, she lived in China just north of the Hong Kong border during the Golden Film era, watching every movie she could lay her eyes on. To her, filmmaking was an unreachable dream. Fast forward 15 years and a graduate from Auckland’s SAE Film School, her graduating film, “Jianjie”, written, directed and starring Nicole was Critically Acclaimed and screened at 2016 Norwich Radical Film Festival, and was Semi-finalist in the 2017 New York State International Film Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLXDHapLvvc&t=289s

She is attracted to exploring characters living at the edge of the abyss, a step away from greatness and destruction, exploring angles to reveal the complexities of humanity, and human emotions in situations where the characters are trapped, fighting to find their way out. She talks about us, us humans.

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