"Time is a loop", I wish (2024)

• 65%
• 2024
• Yue Hua

From filmmaker Yue Hua comes the 16mm film, "Time is a loop", I wish—a tender rumination on time and loss. This sweetly evocative personal piece pairs nostalgic-feeling film footage of toys, wobbly cradle Balance Balls, and light and shadow, with Hua's poetic reflections presented as hand-drawn text on screen. Hua shot the 16mm footage intuitively (not to or for a script), wrote the text separately, then put them together in post-production creating an evocative capaciousness further enchanted by an airy score. "When I was little, time was slow and I thought I could catch time," Hua tells us, "Now, I made a wish." Embedded in that wish is gentle reckoning and liberation through which she offers a soothing, cinematic, beguiling respite.