A young man cannot sleep. He ventures into the forest guided by the trace of a sound. A truck moves through the darkness of the night; it stops, unfolding into a stage in the woods, its red curtains billowing in the wind. The young man follows the sound across the river, across the woods, past the shadows of the trees. His torchlight lands upon the stage where an older woman starts her performance. Fireworks explode above the stage like drumbeats. Morning slowly dawns upon the silent woods of Nanxian, Southern China.

Taking inspiration from Anne Carson’s skeletal image, The Glass Essays experiments with the ritual of mourning as a psychoanalytic method in filmmaking, and a mode of exploring fluid identities and queerness. The performance in the film borrows from the tradition of operatic funeral performances in Southern China, where performers travel to homes with a moveable stage-truck. The Glass Essays re-examines the performative role of lamentation in regional Chinese cultures through a queer lens, a process of fluidity and ritualisation as a way to confront the past and its ghosts.

The Glass Essays was developed through the FLAMIN Fellowship; additional support from FORMA Arts and Media; supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England