Private Project

Devotions

An animated short that follows 2 children and their pregnant mother as a typhoon descends on their home. As the storm worsens around them, the family responds to it as a divine test, and are challenged to protect each other in their own ways.

  • Jessica Goh
    Director
  • Ryan Benjamin Lee
    Sound Design
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Drama, Children's, Fantasy
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 56 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 24, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    Singapore
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - California Institute of the Arts
Director Biography - Jessica Goh

Jessica Goh (she/her) is a Chinese-Singaporean artist currently based in Los Angeles, and a recent graduate from the Experimental Animation BFA program in California Institute of the Arts. Primarily engaged in 2D animation, she is concerned with telling stories that exist within the space of mythologised memory, presenting intimate vignettes of real people negotiated through the narrative tradition of folktales and legend.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Early morning on Boxing Day 2001, a tropical depression formed at 1.4N latitude, just off the coast of Singapore. To this day, no other typhoon on the record has formed this close to the equator. All news articles indicate that Typhoon Vamei breezed past the island, doing little to no damage, and dissipated over the Bay of Bengal on January 1, 2002.

Devotions frames the typhoon as the forgotten creation myth that shaped my family, constructing an imagined history starring me, my older sister, and my mother, who at the time was 8 months pregnant with my younger sister. This is my first foray into narrative filmmaking, a sharp departure from the abstract realm of material explorations I've previously worked in. The film is an attempt to recontextualise my past through fableistic frameworks and religious iconography. For the 4 months of film production, I was accompanied every day by the guardian characters of my adolescence.

I hope this film lands as softly for the people viewing it, as it did for me making it.