Allison Chhorn

Skin Shade Night Day explores the daily routine and rituals practised by the artist’s Cambodian-Australian family, which are reperformed and documented through a process of embodied empathy. Acts of service, such as gardening and cooking, play out as echoes from the past across a sound and image installation displayed in a shadehouse. Spectres, shadows and aural textures conjure up impressions of a place that remembers how its inhabitants once lived.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.

Adelaide filmmaker Allison Chhorn (NYFF 2020) visualises Cambodian-American poet Monica Sok’s poem Letter to the Moon Regarding False Intimacy with an intimate fictional drama of a mother and daughter separated by geography. Shot across Australia, the USA and Canada, Missing springs from research into the Facebook group “Missing People from the Khmer Rouge,” where diaspora members still search for Cambodian family members missing since the genocide.

"As abstract shapes come into focus, dim memories surface. With Blind Body, Allison Chhorn offers an impressionistic portrait of her grandmother Kim Nay, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge. Partially blind, Kim spends her days in a mostly sonic and textural world, in which the sound of rain, the voices of Khmer radio, and distant birdsong summon the sensations of a lost homeland." - New York Film Festival / Film at Lincoln Center

A dress. A couple. He holds on to the past but does she see a future? Or will this be the last time?

A dress. A couple. He holds on to the past but does she see a future? Or will this be the last time?

A dress. A couple. He holds on to the past but does she see a future? Or will this be the last time?

A teenage boy stoner lives with his single mother.

A teenage boy stoner lives with his single mother.

A teenage boy stoner lives with his single mother.

Classic coming of age and iconic bird leaving the nest comingle and mix in this film as Christian boy Stanley discovers new experiences after entering the gay scene.

Classic coming of age and iconic bird leaving the nest comingle and mix in this film as Christian boy Stanley discovers new experiences after entering the gay scene.

Classic coming of age and iconic bird leaving the nest comingle and mix in this film as Christian boy Stanley discovers new experiences after entering the gay scene.

A fifteen minute black-and-white film.