Cyan and Chen’s short documentary On the Margins, 2023, has been awarded Best Short Film at the 2023 Venice Architecture Film Festival.

The main feature of the film’s 2023 edition is storytelling through filmic collage. A series of time-based spatial collages highlight the crucial role of thresholds in conditioning an intergenerational and interdependent way of living somewhere between the family and the collective.

This project is part of Cyan and Chen’s ongoing collaborative project Ripple Ripple Rippling, a transdisciplinary framework at the intersection of architecture, anthropology, filmmaking, and performance that attunes to how Chinese rural migrant workers make worlds. Their website can be viewed here.

Image: Film still from On the Margins, 2023. Co-directed by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan.