Orchid
A cyborg woman risks everything to rescue her daughter - her clone - from a dystopian industrial facility. Somewhere between past and future, between truth and artifice, Orchid is a complex and boundary-pushing metacinematic study in the sci-fi genre. An ultra-low-budget film created from scratch by a cast and crew of women of queer and immigrant experience.
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Marit LiangDirectorThe Bridge
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Marit LiangWriterThe Bridge
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Marit LiangProducerThe Bridge
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Cella SumKey Cast"Orchid"
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Tiff ChengKey Cast"Auditor"
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Malaya CassandraKey Cast"EE-12"
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Easton Carter AngleCamera
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Shannon Sears-RiveraAssistant Director
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Marit StafstromLine Producer
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Project Type:Short, Student
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Genres:Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Essay Film, Short Film, Narrative Fiction, Student Film
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Runtime:13 minutes 13 seconds
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Completion Date:January 1, 2019
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Production Budget:2,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Shooting Format:4K
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Aspect Ratio:2.35:1
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:Yes
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The Women's Film FestivalPhiladelphia
United States
March 16, 2019
Official Selection -
Art Slope Film Festival 2019Brooklyn
United States
April 7, 2019 -
Philadelphia Film ShowcasePhiladelphia
United States
May 9, 2019
Official Selection
Marit Mei-tsan Stafstrom is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and artist. She is currently enrolled in Bard College's MFA program in Film/Video. Her short films Orchid (2019) and The Bridge (2018) have received awards at numerous festivals worldwide. Marit works within and beyond the structures of narrative film, creating cinematic artworks immersed in themes of transformation: of body, consciousness, medium, nature and time.
ORCHID (2018/9, PA, USA) was shot on a minimal crowdfunded budget and completed in the span of only four months. The film's DIY production embraces the defiantly amateur techniques of the French New Wave, deploying the familiar genre tropes of classic sci-fi cinema (from Alphaville to Stalker) to explore much deeper questions involving truth and fiction; immigration and otherness; and the nature of the cinematic apparatus.
The film was written, directed and produced by artist Marit Mei-tsan Stafstrom, and shot with a radical crew consisting of entirely women, queer/trans people, and people of color. 20% of all proceeds from ticket sales and festival awards will be donated to organizations protecting immigrant rights.
Orchid draws critically from 115 years of film history to create an entirely new thesis (or manifesto) on the medium, its genres, its radical possibilities.