Private Project

The Space of an Afternoon

Shot across Bangkok and New Zealand, a closed-off Kiwi photographer and a jaded Thai soap actor find a moment of connection when they meet for a photoshoot across time and space.

Made with support from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

  • Chye-Ling Huang
    Director
    The Elephant in the Bedroom Docu-series, Asian Men Talk About Sex, The Han Chronicles
  • Chye-Ling Huang
    Writer
  • Amanda Grace Leo
    Writer
  • Sahil Arora
    Producer
  • Chye-Ling Huang
    Key Cast
    HomeBound 3.0, Shortland St
  • Michael S New
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Contemporary
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    August 1, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 NZD
  • Country of Origin:
    New Zealand
  • Country of Filming:
    New Zealand, Thailand
  • Language:
    English, Thai
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Chye-Ling Huang

Chye-Ling Huang is a queer Chinese-Pakeha writer, director and actor. Co-founder & Artistic Cirector of Proudly Asian Theatre (2013), her initiatives and plays have been a part of the contemporary Asian zeitgeist in NZ.

From a queer Asian diaspora lens, she’s interested in our obsession with binaries and the nuance of conversations around race, sex, culture and identity.

For film, Chye-Ling created and wrote the screenplay of The Han Chronicles, a two episode TVNZ webseries based on her immigrant father in 70’s NZ, and created Life is Easy, a queer body-swap TVNZ webseries she co-wrote and starred in, also hosted on Rervy (worldwide) which was a NZTV Award Finalist.

She was awarded New Zealand Film Commission development funding for her first feature script in 2020, produced Three Dots by Alyssa Medel with the Asia New Zealand Foundation in 2021 and is set to shoot her Film Commission funded short Beast Mode in 2024.

Chye-Ling is a proud member of Equity NZ and a founding member of the Pan Asian Screen Collective.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement


Whilst living in Bangkok in the middle of the Delta outbreak, I was granted funding to deliver a short film about connection. I made friends with a team of fresh filmmakers, including an ex-soap star and a photographer, where the idea sparked (I’ve also been on New Zealand’s only soap). But, I had to make an early return home to New Zealand. I decided to make an artistic pivot and shoot with the same team across Bangkok and Auckland - and present the film as if the characters were still in the same time and space.

In just three minutes, a meeting between two guarded characters becomes a tender and humorous parable of the connections we’ve made and lost in Asia across the pandemic, and the subtle languages we use to replace the intimacy of touch. As you almost need to double take to catch that they never appear together in frame, it also speaks to the possibilities we can achieve with each other, despite distance.

The teams became connected further despite the distance of shooting. Interpreting our creative languages across our teams including our DP Cory who is hard of hearing and lip reads, further embedded a hopeful energy to the short.