AMIHAN: A Review by Sofia Migaly
From AMIHAN by Ji Stribling
In honor of Pride Month, this is the third installment of our weekly Reeling Pride Month Film Showcase presented by MUBI. We are also celebrating the upcoming 41st edition of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival.
Thanks to MUBI we are thrilled to present the universally critically acclaimed MONEYBOYS, accompanied by the short film AMIHAN, by local Kansas-City based filmmaker and previous guest on …Like Clockwork (A Podcast of Chicago Filmmakers), Ji Stribling.
Don’t forget to take advantage of MUBI’s exclusive 30-day free-trial offer at www.mubi.com/reeling
Trailer for AMIHAN edited by Rowan Meskimen.
AMIHAN (2021) is a brief yet powerful collection of abstract scenes and acts which immerse us in conflict of all types. Ji Stribling (they/them) condenses experiences of aggression, violence, catharsis, sorrow, and hope into concentrated moments; Stribling uses analog film as a means of condensing lived space into a material - a flickering artifact of events and emotional explorations, oscillating between an illusory world and a document of “reality.” Grounded by bodily interactions, the work bursts of oblivion as light leaks and shaking cuts push the representations of the human subjects, including the filmmaker themself, into abstractions out of the reaches of the mechanical eye’s attempts at reproducing and reanimating “human experience”.
The analog haze with which everything is rendered juxtaposes often unsettling or outright disturbing portraits into a surreal document of a metaphysical space, confronting gender and identity. The work’s performances capture, through the pure pathos of protruding musculature and rubbery masks, Stribling’s psyche and relationship with gender that is at once anonymous and deeply personal. Confident in its presentation and atmosphere, the film’s open-ended nature allows us to draw our own conclusions from each unsettling scene.
While this work is open to each viewer’s individual interpretation, AMIHAN contains undercurrents of queer eroticism which make it especially moving during Pride Month. Despite the film’s mournful, pensive qualities, it ends on a promising note that gives the viewers a sense of hope.
For tickets: www.chicagofilmmakers.org/upcoming-screenings-and-events/
A review by Sofia Migaly
