The Gray-Haired Men

Iqra, a poet in an orthodox family, conceals her pregnancy, confiding only in brother Aadil. Her husband's sudden death forces her to reassess her desire for freedom.

On April 1st, 2022, my grandfather passed away and i felt lost. I think my path changed when, some days after he passed away, i was offered a small VHS camera. "Moving Memories" is a visual journey that makes the viewer reflect on our momentary presence on earth and questions the nature of memory. Throughout this journey, we get to the conclusion that memories are more than just static photographs in our minds, they're alive and in constant movement, changing while we evolve as individuals. These memories have influence and help us to move on.

As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.

A short film poem about transitioning to the next chapter of your life

A film-poem created for Counterclock Journal's 2023 Patchwork: Film x Poetry fellowship, featuring an original poem by Mackenzie Duan and animation by Evan Bode.

The wanderer Rascal embarks on a psychotic and contradictory journey to break out of the ego bubble in which his self-loathing and isolation have inserted him in. After his metamorphosis, his soulmate, Paloma, makes him realize that life is as complicated as it is simple - and that all that's left to do is to live.

A documentary recording wildlife in Lancaster, Dundee and Fife, shot on a Samsung Galaxy A51.