Скачать или смотреть Jess X. Snow & Shasha Li: In Conversation

Recorded as a companion piece to PAAFF's program at the 2025 Confluence Film Festival hosted by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University.

Jess X. Snow is a filmmaker, multi-disciplinary artist and author born in Canada, of JiangXi Chinese heritage. Their work explores intergenerational healing, migration, surrealism, multispecies kinships and futures where life and land is sacred. They bring their background in murals, visual art and poetry into their films that immerse audiences into the lives of flawed diasporic Asians struggling to become free.

AFTEREARTH (2018) - As rising sealevels threaten locations touched by the Pacific Ocean in Hawaiʻi, the Philippines, China, and North America, four women give offerings of music, poetry and heartfelt testimonial to preserve the volcano, ocean, air and land for future generations. Shot in locations touched by the Pacific Ocean.

Shasha Li didn’t grow up with cinema, but she wouldn't trade anything for her childhood days spent in the mountains of her hometown of Yunnan, China. While in college in New York City, spotting young filmmakers around Washington Square Park piqued Shasha’s interest in filmmaking. Her first documentary feature, HEAVEN RAIN FLOWS SWEETLY, blends personal narrative, multi-cultural commentary, and meditative aesthetic in an ode to nature and home. It premiered at DOC NYC in 2023. Shasha studied film at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

HEAVEN RAIN FLOWS SWEETLY (2023) - Shasha, a nomad who has moved frequently, arrives in Cascadian, Oregon. Somehow, the smell of rain here reminds her of the Himalayan foothills she originally comes from. She grows an abundant garden, yet the sky suddenly rains ashes in autumn. Wildfires have erupted all around the state, and the smog keeps seeping into her house, forcing her to evacuate. Driving through the Mad Max-esque haze, her thoughts drift back to Lijiang, her ancestral hometown in China, where her maternal Nakhi tribe celebrates Fire as a divine natural force every summer. A journey of tracing dream-like currents of memories unfolds.