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Slanted - Full length

What started as a live circus and drag show became a short film, amidst the pandemic and has the benefit of living on to showcase East Asians in artistic art forms where we are not well represented.

Through contemporary circus and drag, Slanted explores themes around colonization, xenophobia, identity and our own intercultural challenges.

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Note: There are 2 versions of the film including the full length at 44:46 minutes long (as shown in Vimeo link) and a shortened version at 32:52 which includes 3 less chapters.

  • Renée Mak
    Director
    Pause. Shift. Rebound
  • Carlo Fortin
    Director
    Almost, Kuya, White Lady
  • Renée Mak
    Writer
    Pause. Shift. Rebound
  • Kasha Konaka
    Writer
    Locked Upside Down
  • Renée Mak
    Producer
    Pause. Shift. Rebound
  • Renée Mak
    Key Cast
  • Kasha Konaka
    Key Cast
  • Chris Murdoch
    Key Cast
  • Shay Dior
    Key Cast
  • Skim
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Other
  • Genres:
    Circus, Drag, Theatre, Asian Culture
  • Runtime:
    44 minutes 4 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 1, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    18,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Shooting Format:
    Dig - Blackmagic Pocket Cinema
  • Aspect Ratio:
    17:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • TELUS Optik TV Community Showcase Channel
    Canada wide
    Canada
    May 15, 2023
    Community Showcase for Asian Heritage Month
  • Self Released Screening
    Vancouver
    Canada
    May 15, 2022
Director Biography - Renée Mak, Carlo Fortin


Renée Mak is a multi-disciplinary circus artist and creative extraordinaire based in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Unlike so many circus artists out there, she started her circus journey late at the age of 22. Despite a great desire to learn dance, gymnastics and diving, she grew up in a culture that greatly discourages creative endeavors and had no background in any sort of movement or creative realms. What started as a means to lose weight became an empowering, artistic journey that has become an integral part of her identity.

​Through tenacity, hard work and the gracious support, encouragement and inspiration of so many – she has become the artist that she is today. For Renée, circus is an empowering medium to explore movement, femininity, sexuality, comedy and other themes.

Renée is one of the principles of the all-female circus collective.

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Director Statement

In 2020 and 2021, catalyzed by intersections of polarizing political rhetoric and the COVID-19 pandemic – yellow peril reared its ugly head again. What even is yellow peril? To the uninitiated, it is a “racist color-metaphor that represents East Asian peoples as an existential danger to the Western world”.

By all accounts and perceptions, it was dormant or even extinct. But we in the East-Asian community have always known it was there. It took mass shootings and violent hate crimes for the world to start to take notice, yet even still there are instances where yellow peril isn’t taken seriously with rampant rhetoric being that anti-Asian racism is a hoax.

Slanted explores the East-Asian diasporic experience in westernized countries where we straddle identities that we did not ask for, as both model members of the community and as perilous invaders. It is both an educational piece of our realities, and a celebration who we are.