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Opening the Bird Cage

Director: Stephanie Flood

Synopsis: Opening the Bird Cage is an experimental short documentary about a Filipino-American adoptee’s journey into her adoption and reunion in her birth country. It opens with old photo albums and personal mixed media, layered with her own vocals and music to encapsulate her childhood isolation. A montage of video follows, capturing a recent journey back to the Philippines, a reunion with birth family, and of her back in the United States, editing this same footage in hopes to tell this difficult story. Stephanie adds poetic elements such as using her mixed media as a metaphor of a "cathedral" that she built inside herself when she felt broken in the past. Minimalistic narration of her life and experience streamlines her story from the past, present and to a final conclusion, after having gone full circle in a conflicted but wholesome life.

Watch the film with the Trailer URL.