BISFF2025｜PRISMA 棱镜

A Translational Reality

The word PRISMA across many languages while keeps the same meaning. It refracts and disperses, revealing the inner gradations of light while giving language and culture new forms in transmission. Like a translated word itself, it never settles into a single, unified meaning. It is always in motion, in convergence—generating new spectrums within the interstices of light and language.

Cultural identity is never an already-given essence, but a form of “becoming rather than being” (Stuart Hall). It is not discovered but constantly named and rewritten through the interplay of difference and history.

PRISMA thus focuses on image practices shaped through the flows and translations of culture. These filmmakers take personal experience as a point of departure, traversing linguistic, geographic, and emotional thresholds to re-inquire into the relations between self and world through the medium of the image. Within these movements, one might sense a refracted Chineseness—not as a center of identification, but as a drifting, generative, and perpetually transforming after-resonance of perception.

Culture, as Homi Bhabha reminds us, is “a translational reality,” and its true power arises “from the moment when the fragments of a broken vessel fit together once again.” Just as light is dispersed within a prism and yet regains wholeness in the very act of dispersion, PRISMA does not portray a singular identity. Instead, it develops an emergent sensibility through processes of translation and re-translation: a sensitivity that captures the migratory experience through images, and a gesture of reconstructing belonging through rhythm and texture.

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?

Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,

in that gray vault. The sea. The sea

has locked them up. The sea is history.

—Derek Walcott, “The Sea Is History,” Collected Poems 1948–1984, Faber & Faber, 1992, p. 364.

PRISMA does not ask “who belongs where.” Rather, it concerns how images can re-complicate the notion of belonging itself. Diaspora is no longer a rupture but a state of continuous becoming—a mirrored existence refracted through light, completing its own rebirth and recollection through motion. (DING Dawei)

翻译现实

“PRISMA”一词，在多种语言中都意指棱镜。它折射、分解，使光显露其内部的层次，也让语言与文化在传播中获得新的形态。如同被翻译的词本身，它从不稳定为一个统一的意义，而总是在移动、在交汇，在光与语言的缝隙中生成新的色谱。

文化身份从不是一个已然存在的本质，而是一种“持续的生成”（becoming rather than being, Stuart Hall）。它并不被发现，而是在差异与历史的交织中，被不断命名，又被不断改写。

PRISMA棱镜由此聚焦那些在文化流动与语境转译中形成的影像实践：他们以个人经验为入口，穿越语言、地理与情感的界面，在影像之中重新探询自我与世界的关系。我们希望从中或可感到某种被折射的Chineseness——非作为认同的中心，而是一种游移、生成、不断变形的感知余韵。

文化的本质是一种“翻译现实”（a translational reality, Homi Bhabha），而真正的力量，来自“破碎容器的碎片彼此契合”的瞬间。正如光在棱镜中被分解，也在分解的过程中重获完整。PRISMA棱镜不描绘统一的身份，而是在翻译与再译的过程中，显影一种生成中的感知：一种以影像捕捉迁徙经验的敏锐，一种在节奏与质地中重构归属的姿态。

你们的纪念碑，你们的战斗、英灵，何在?

你们的民族记忆何在？先生们，

就在那片苍白的墓穴中。是海。海

封存住它们。海即历史。

PRISMA棱镜并不追问“谁属于哪里”，它关心的是影像如何让“属于”重新获得复杂性。离散不再是断裂，而是一种持续生成的状态——一种在光线的折射中彼此映照的存在，于运动之中，完成它自己的重生与回溯。（丁大卫）

诗歌出自：Derek Walcott, “The Sea Is History” in Collected Poems 1948–1984, Faber & Faber, 1992, pp. 364.

中文译文引自：《德里克·沃尔科特诗集》，鸿楷译，上海文艺出版社，2024年，第439页。

check here to see the full list for PRISMA: A Translational Reality

Then The Wind Stops, Jin Wentian, 2025

PRISMA - 1

Southwest Corner | 大吉大利

Zachary YAP 叶永杰

2025 | 0:12:07 | Singapore | English | World Premiere

Sudden Rain | 春来发几枝

Wang Yu, Jaro Minne 王瑜, 亚罗·明内

2024 | 0:29:40 | Belgium, China, France | Chinese Mandarin | Asian Premiere

Then The Wind Stops | 落地的风

Jin Wentian 金文天

2025 | 0:12:04 | Australia | English | World Premiere

Safe Trip | 一帆风顺

Wang Xiya, He Yuyue 王曦娅,何毓玥

2024 | 0:11:23 | UK | Chinese Mandarin | Asian Premiere

Ice Cream, Ice Queen | 冰淇淋女王

Jeremy Chi 迟天宇

2025 | 0:17:01 | US, China, New Zealand | English, Chinese Mandarin, Korean

Rising, Evelyn Hang Yin, 2025

PRISMA - 2

birth date | 生日 SANG NYIT

Janssen Ewaldo 黄林辉

2025 | 0:15:27 | Indonesia | English, Indonesian, Chinese Dialect | International Premiere

Mango Seed | 芒果芯

Berni Jiang 蒋博妮

2025 | 0:14:00 | Australia | Chinese Mandarin, English | International Premiere

A Little Regret in Helsinki | 赫尔辛基的小遗憾

Haohao Qiaoshi Liu 刘巧诗（好好）

2025 | 0:13:10 | Finland | English, Chinese Mandarin, Finnish, French | Asian Premiere

Rising | 守望

Evelyn Hang Yin 尹航

2025 | 0:17:02 | US | English | International Premiere

Selection | 祝日

Zhang Yaoyuan 张曜元

2025 | 0:23:03 | Mainland China, Japan | Japanese, Mandarin Chinese