What is love beside baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more?
Taking form of an interactive non-linear short film, pov is a reflection on love and identity. The audiences are invited on a first date with Nhan, where they talk to Nhan through a video call, and get to know him through a series of choices. Based on their decisions, Nhan tells different stories of his life. All eventually reach the climax inviting the audiences to get into the room with him.
pov is Nhan's reflection on online dating, where he must constantly edit, refine, and re-introduce himself; again, and again, and again. At the end of the day, who is Nhan? Can a digital avatar ever fully represent Nhan? Or are all these versions simply parallel choices, running beside one another without ever fully merging?
→ Meet Nhan?[...]
I think time is weird in this life.
Too fast to clean up,
Too slow to move on.
When I was young,
I fell asleep under the staircase —
nested in boxes and old furniture.
I hid so no one can find me.
including time.
[NHAN LOOKS DOWN, THOUGHTFUL]
I wanted so badly to build a world where time stays still.
So I could process everything in my pace.
How long would it take to overcome something.
Five minutes?
Five years?
Five lives?
Overcoming is too technical.
How can a human “erase” their memories?
Even when you hard-delete a file, the data isn’t gone.
It’s just overwritten.
The trace stays.
It always stays.
[PAUSE]
[...]
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I love the internet.
What you see is what you want.
What you want, I become.
I can be a teacher,
I can be an artist,
Also, I’m a stripper.
Request is sensual.
Confess your virtue.
Tell me your desire.
And if I can be anything
In this world of binary,
I just wanna be free.
If I can be anything,
Can I be just a lover?
A lover with both hands free.
[...]
the screening of pov is site-spcific. for its time at @gategate.gallery , i turned their dome structure into a living room, where Nhan waited inside the room, on a … Google Meet on a personal laptop. in the midst of the screening, Nhan came into life and performed on a larger screen.
for this, I built a whole replica of Meet with functions and UI that change according to film’s keyframe and audience’s choice. some are obvious like ui change, pop up. some are more subtle. like the chat function actually works during the letter reading scene. or the laptop screen actually slightly glowed up at the “subscribe for more” scene with a real onlyfan link for like 30 secs, (but everyone were busy focusing on the bigger screen atm lol!). i really leaned into the aesthetic of escape room, easter egg. if i can, i’d make the room even more private 1-1 next time.
