Screen/Society--"Within These Walls" (Lenora Lee & Tatsu Aoki, 2024)

WITHIN THESE WALLS
(Lenora Lee & Tatsu Aoki, 2024, 76 min, USA, English, Digital)

In association with Lenora Lee Dance, Lenora Lee Productions, Innocent Eyes and Lenses Films, and Asian Improv aRts, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, powered by Asian Improv Nation. [Photo credit: Yi-Ting (Gama) Hsu photo by Hoa Huynh & Tien Nguyen]

Inspired by experiences of those detained, interrogated and processed at the U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay, WITHIN THESE WALLS is a film in which dance, memory, music, and poetry serve as a meditation on healing, resilience, and compassion. This U.S. Immigration Station is an International Site of Conscience, site of remembrance transformed and animated as part of a community-wide commemoration of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, speaking to the power of individuals and communities to transcend.

Lenora Lee has been a dancer, choreographer, producer and artistic director for the past 27 years. For the last 17 years she, along with her company Lenora Lee Dance (LLD), has pushed the envelope of intimate and large-scale multimedia, immersive dance performance connecting various styles of movement/dance, film, text, research and music to culture, history, and human rights issues. Lenora's works are set in both public and private spaces, inspired by individual stories as well as community strength. From the proscenium, to underwater, to an historic cargo ship, to the immigration station on Angel Island, her pieces are site-responsive, immersive, and interactive, calling audiences into deep engagement with the work and environment. Lenora's work has grown to encompass the creation, presentation and screening of films, museum and gallery installations, civic engagement, and educational programming signifying the power of art as a movement for change.

Tatsu Aoki is a prolific artist, a filmmaker, composer, musician, educator, and a consummate bassist and shamisen lute player. Based in Chicago, Aoki works in a wide range of musical genres, ranging from traditional Japanese music, jazz, experimental, and creative music and producing experimental films.