Audry Funk
Audry Funk, a feminist rapper and social activist from Mexico came to the U.S. to gain a better career and to continue spreading her voice for social justice. Although she has an influential career in Central America, in New York City she has to rap on the subway and work in a restaurant to make a living.
Audry is strong as an activist; but she is also vulnerable and nostalgic for what she has left behind. The film shows how she rebuilds her life, her ego and her pride as a woman, an immigrant and an artist.
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Yiwei ChenDirector
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Yiwei ChenProducer
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Yiwei ChenEditor
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Audry FunkKey Cast
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Altoveli VelezKey Cast
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Project Type:Documentary, Music Video, Short
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Runtime:33 minutes 45 seconds
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Completion Date:September 10, 2018
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Production Budget:50,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English, Spanish
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
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New York Independent Film FestivalNew York
United States
May 8, 2019
Official Selection -
MEIHODO International Youth Visual Media FestivalFukuoka
Japan
August 29, 2019
Gold Prize
Director, Cinematographer and Editor Yiwei Chen is a filmmaker based in New York. She specializes in documentary and commercial films. After working for a few years as a visual journalist in China, she came to the U.S. to earn her master's degree in Social Documentary Films from School of Visual Arts. Key focuses in her work are women, youth culture, and creatives. Past clients include InStyle, Estée Lauder, Vision and others.
Audry Funk was inspired very directly from my own experience of being a newcomer in the U.S. from a very different cultural background. After living in China for most of my life, I came to New York to pursue my career as a filmmaker. In the first year I came here I met Audry who had only been in New York for one year just like I did. Although we came from very different culture backgrounds, we had already gained many commonalities as new arrivals and shared same values in creative passion, civic duty and women’s rights.
My work takes a critical view of social and cultural issues. Having engaged subjects as diverse as the immigrant rights movement, Asian-American hip-hop music and contemporary women’s voice, my work reproduces familiar visual and aural signs, arranging them into new conceptually cinematic journeys. My films use realistic settings with a large scope to open the imagination and ignite the curiosity of an audience. Although there may not always be material similarities between the different projects they are linked by recurring formal concerns and through the subject matter. The effect of this allows viewers to ‘escape’ and let their guard down, which in turn allows me to open them to ideas and emotions.