Hyphenated
A Chinese-American teenager struggles to find a place to belong in a crowded restaurant. She tries to sit at the Chinese and American tables, but gets viewed as an exotic curiosity in both. Finally, she learns to combine the two and creates a merged table for herself.
Hyphenated is my graduate thesis film. It's about Irene, a Chinese-American teenager, struggling to find a place to belong in a crowded restaurant. She tries to sit at the Chinese and American tables, but gets viewed as an exotic curiosity in both. Ultimately, she learns to combine the two and creates a merged table for herself.
This is a stop motion film with inspiration drawn from Chinese shadow puppetry and Western articulated paper dolls. To create a unique silhouette for the Western characters, I kept the fold over tabs of the paper doll clothing. For the Chinese characters, I used the long torso and short legs proportions distinct to Chinese shadow puppets.
I wanted to use character design to indicate the cultural code switch of the main character, Irene, and the older woman figure from whom Irene learns to embrace both sides of herself. The physical act of flipping the character provided by stop motion animation further emphasizes this code switch.
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