About the Film:

Edhi Alice is a film project consisting of two feature-length documentaries that are both the same and yet different: Edhi Alice: Take and Edhi Alice: Reverse. Conceived under the proposition “Transgender is Cinematic,” the project aims to offer audiences a distinctive cinematic experience while fostering dialogue across the community.

Edhi Alice: Take begins from the perspective of lighting director Alice, who has been pushed away from the film set, as she confronts her own body, and transitions to the journey of another protagonist, Edhi, as she encounters new sensations within hers. The film establishes the relationship between the two characters through its cinematic structure, continually drawing the audience’s attention to the act of filmmaking itself. Here, transition extends beyond an individual’s life story, unfolding into a cinematic experience that encompasses relationships, the body, and the perception of space.

Director’s Note:

Edhi and Alice are friends I met through human rights activism. Working with them led me to cinematically re-encounter the concept of transition. For many, a transgender person’s transition is understood as a linear process involving hormone therapy, gender-affirming surgery, and legal gender recognition. But the transition they described was something more. In their experiences, transition was a fleeting yet recurring sensation—like layers continually forming an identity. Identity, they showed me, is not a fixed or completed state, but something fluid, endlessly constructed.

I came to see this transition as a time and space of potentiality, and I sought to explore it through a cinematic sensibility. Edhi Alice is a film about the transformations that occur when two different worlds meet. In Edhi Alice: Reverse, the narrative flows from Edhi to Alice, while in Edhi Alice: Take it moves from Alice to Edhi. Through these mirrored structures, the project seeks to sense and illuminate the transition of a transgender person within the transition of a film itself.

When the end credits roll, is the film truly over? I imagine the edited-out shots, the deleted data, and the unchosen scenes continuing to drift around the film long after it ends. Edhi Alice places its trust in the boundless imagination and expanded possibilities of these floating fragments. My hope is that this film is not an ending, but a beginning—for imagination, for dialogue, and for contemplation.

This screening is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here. 

About the Speakers:

Ilrhan Kim is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of PINKS, a collective focused on queer and women’s narratives. Her debut film, Mamasang: Remember Me This Way (2004), won the Women’s News Award. Two Doors (2011) attracted over 70,000 viewers with only 14 theaters and was named one of the top 100 Korean films. She also produced Miracle on Jongno Street (2010), Korea’s first documentary on gay coming out, and Nora Noh (2013), about a pioneering female designer, which premiered in IDFA 2013.

Speaker: Ilrhan Kim, Director, PINKS

Speaker: Ohyeon Kwon, Producer

Speaker: Edhi, Actor

Speaker: Alice, Actor