CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA PRESENTS:
SUNDAY IN NEW YORK
A program of short films by Juyi Mao

SUNDAY DECEMBER 7TH @ MONO NO AWARE : CINEMA ARTS NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
33 FLATBUSH AVENUE, BROOKLYN NEW YORK - LIMITED ATTENDANCE TO 40 - MASKS AVAILABLE
DOORS 7PM – STARTS PROMPTLY AT 7:30PM – FREE OR $5 SUGGESTED DONATION

TRT, 15 minutes. Additional time for discussion / Q & A with Juyi Mao *IN PERSON *

PROGRAM:
Sunday in New York is a program of short films and videos created during my seven years living in New York City. The works meditate on urban solitude, the suspended temporality of the Covid-19 era, and our shifting relationship with nature within a globalized city. Moving between analog and digital media, I explore how images of cities, often consumed as picturesque spectacles or exotic travelogues, reflect systems of desire and control. Inspired by Chris Marker's Sunday in Peking, the title film turns the gaze back onto New York, questioning: Why must a foreigner speak? Through observational fragments and layered soundscapes, the program examines how seeing becomes an act of power and how silence might offer another form of understanding.

Sunday in New York（work in progress, approximately 15 minutes) 16mm on digital, 2025
Inspired by Chris Marker's Sunday in Peking (1956). The film examines the politics of seeing and the authority of the filmmaker’s gaze. In a city built on endless images of itself, Sunday in New York questions who has the right to observe and to speak. Through restrained observation and moments of hesitation, it resists the impulse to explain, allowing silence and distance to form their own grammar of looking.

The Nonexistent River, AI generated video transferred to 16mm, 4 minutes, 2025
The Nonexistent River is an experimental moving-image work that oscillates between the real and the artificial. Combining digitally altered footage of flowing water with AI-generated imagery and an original techno–cello soundtrack, the film meditates on illusion, disappearance, and the digital reincarnation of nature.

Tell It to Spring, Super 8 on digital, 8 minutes, 2024
Hybrid short film that transforms the physical properties of Super 8mm film into multi-layered moving images. Through macro and close-up shots, the film captures the subtle transmission of life and energy between plants, water, and light during springtime in northeastern America. Through digital post-production, the film weaves together the ethereal qualities of nature with intimate body performance. The film perforations become miniature frames, creating tiny windows that house paintings and micro-videos. Within these windows, each subtle movement of the body performer, like spring breeze caressing, engages in a silent dialogue with the surrounding plants. The experimental approach extends to the margins of the film—where key codes beyond the perforations, typically used for frame-by-frame specific identification, transform into concrete poetry. The verses appear as casual murmuring across the film, carrying a sense of introspection and reflection.

Calls and Candlelight, 16mm on digital, 7 minutes, 2023
Calls and Candlelight is a short film that delves into the interplay of hope and connection in the darkness. The candlelight, with its gentle, flickering presence, symbolizes tradition, warmth, and as a metaphor of the enduring aspects of human experience. In contrast, the telephone represents modernity, a technological communication to the outside, offering a different kind of warmth – that of human connection.

A Message from the Last Summer, HD video, 7 minutes, 2021
A Message from the Last Summer is an experimental video diary. By raising questions regarding escapism as a way of expression and a vehicle for collective memory, it examines the mental issues of COVID-19 era from the relationship among individuals, nature and cinema.

Home, HD video, 4 minutes, 2020
Home is a darkly humorous short inspired by Peter Greenaway’s Windows (1975), combining interior wall images with a news-style voiceover and fictional stats to portray an absurd quarantine in an unnamed district.

In the Market, 35mm stills on digital, 3 minutes, 2019
In the Market is an experimental documentary that blends 35mm film photographs, monologue, and sound art. The film starts with a quotation from Karl Marx, followed by a long list of shop names. The spacey rhythm gradually deconstructs and transforms into noisy ambient sound. Most of the film features a walk scene through Zhongshan Road to Bashi Market in Xiamen, China.

Total running time for the PROGRAM: 45 minutes

Bio
Juyi Mao (Hefei, Anhui Province, China, 1991) is an artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his BA from Xiamen University and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Working with digital video, analog film, and field sound recording, he reassembles fragments of displacement into sensory architectures of light and noise. His process merges performative filming, associative montage, and layered soundscapes to explore invisible ties between history and the body. Moving between single channel works and expanded cinema installations, Mao reimagines moving images as poetic reconstruction where time dilates, voices overlap, and the unseen becomes tactile. His recent films inhabit spaces between language and silence, tracing how memory transforms the urban landscape into a living, breathing archive. Recent screening includes Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (FR), Leiden Shorts (NL), San Diego Underground Film Festival (US), Beijing International Short Film Festival (CN), and The B3 Festival of the Moving Image (DE). He has received grants and awards from New York State Council on the Arts, United States Artists, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Queens Council on the Arts. He is a 2023 MacDowell Film/Video fellow, and he has attended numerous other residency programs, such as Millay Arts, NARS Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center.

Statement From Juyi Mao:
I explore the alchemy of time-based media, working at the intersection of analog and digital technologies to create nonconventional audio-visual experiences. By weaving together moving image, sound art, archival footage, and video installations, I transform traditional cinema into expansive environmental encounters. At the core of my work is a deep engagement with contemporary human experience and its socio-political dimensions. I construct layered narratives that examine how individuals navigate and interpret their surroundings, often focusing on the tension between personal memory and collective history. Through expanded cinema installations that blend projection, sound, and physical space, I create environments that challenge viewers to reconsider their relationship with both media and meaning.  My process embraces both careful planning and chance operations, allowing found materials and emergent technologies to influence the final form of each piece. Whether working with decades-old film stock or the latest digital tools, I seek to reveal the hidden narratives embedded within our everyday spaces and social structures.

MONO NO AWARE SCREENING SERIES:
The CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA series will present the work of artists, film-makers and curators who are traveling or presenting special interactive programs in-person. Our hope is to engage the community by showing work with a focus on post-screening discussion. This series is made possible by support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).