Stranger Baby
Substituting sly metaphor for political rhetoric on immigration, Lin examines our world of ethical and racial complexities.
– Quentin Lee, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival
Framed as a mock science fiction, ‘Stranger Baby’ offers different perspectives on what it means to be human and what is labeled alien. A woman is haunted by an androgynous apparition; female characters peer out of sci-fi past; curious faces flicker on a tv screen – their often anxiety-ridden communications issue from technology, memory, and fantasy.
The fleeting images are spontaneously "read" by disembodied voices on the soundtrack whose conflicting speculations reveal the human impulse to assign ready meanings based on visual cues. Excerpts from interviews as well as a scripted narrative also contribute to the film's layered interiority, weaving into an internal monologue that questions the ways our world is dangerous and we are vulnerable to its assumptions. The resulting alternative description of reality addresses both the threatening and attractive aspects of "the alien.”
‘Stranger Baby’ is representative of my interest in combining forms and genres and exploiting elements from various sources. It is neither pure fiction nor pure documentary, however, it borrows from both. I quote from interviews I conducted as well as 1950s science fiction films, and also staged scenes with actors.
Description source: publicity materials