When My Mother Laughs

Please be aware that MayDay Rooms is NOT wheelchair accessible as there are stairs on entry.

Join us for an evening centred on the 2013 book My Mother Laughs (Silver Press), written by filmmaker Chantal Akerman during the final years of her mother’s life. Through a collective reading and the screening of four artists’ films, the event considers the complexities of mother–daughter relationships, memory, and the shifting sense of home under conditions of global and personal upheaval.

Organised in collaboration with Sine Screen, ‘When My Mother Laughs’ reflects on the intimate and often fraught bonds passed between women across generations, where silence, care, resentment, and tenderness can exist side by side. Through text, reading, and the documentary lens, personal memory becomes an archive – one that resists forgetting, and gestures toward forms of connection that evade easy articulation.

Reading

The evening opens with a reading of Akerman’s book, inviting a shared and reflective engagement with its sparse yet emotionally charged prose. No prior preparation is necessary as excerpts will be provided and we will read out loud together.

Screenings

Four short films, by Fransisca Angela, Ahu Aydın, Yanqi Liang, & Fanfan Zhou, take up concerns of family archives, grief, absence, and intergenerational attachment, rendered through personal documentary and experimental animation.

Schedule

6.30pm-8pm My Mother Laughs, out loud reading

*no prior reading is necessary

8pm-8.20pm Drinks & Refreshments

8.20pm-9.10pm Sine Screen Screenings

9:10pm–9:40pm Q&A:

Booking: numbers will be strictly limited and advance booking is recommended

‘NOT JUST’

This programme is part of ‘NOT JUST’, a curatorial project by Emma Wang supported by Arts Council England. Beginning with a personal investigation into the mother-daughter relationship, ‘NOT JUST’ has unfolded into a series of events, including a group exhibition (March 2025) exploring feminist, intergenerational, and maternal practices; and the screening ‘Something About Her’ (May 2025) with Sine Screen, reflecting on women’s lives shaped by migration, memory, and the weight of history in East Asia. 

Screenings

‘Vantuz (Suker)’, 2021, 11 minutes, Ahu Aydın (Turkey)

‘Sucker’ is a documentary film about a young woman opening up to her mother about a traumatic experience. It deals with themes of motherhood, sexual assault and the emotional weight of being far from loved ones.

Ahu Aydın is a writer currently based in London, originally from Istanbul. She writes short stories and screenplays, often drawing inspiration from landscapes. She occasionally makes films too. IG: @ahuaydin_

‘Bergamot’, 2023, 6:37 minutes, Yanqi Liang (China)

‘Bergamot,’ also translated as ‘Buddha's hand,’ explores the binary mother–daughter relationship as it shifts and grows. Buddha's hand and hand are similar but different, opposites but compatible — referring to the mother-daughter relationship, resembling but refusing to resemble, contradicting but adhering to each other, separating but connecting. 

Yanqi Liang is an animation director, illustrator and educator. Her works have been screened and exhibited at several international film festivals and exhibitions. Her practice mainly focuses on the sensory experience in intercultural female relationships through painting, video and other media. IG: @yanqi_liang

‘Unreachable Object’, 2024, 19 minutes, Fanfan Zhou (China)

Focusing on a possibly false memory, this is a discussion about the nature of memory, as well as an exploration of obsession and fantasies about a distant mother figure.

Fanfan Zhou is a Los Angeles-based director and producer originally from China, holding an MFA in Film Directing from CalArts. Her work focuses on the complexities of intergenerational relationships, identity crises, and representation. Her directorial short documentary, ‘Unreachable Object’, screened at the 2025 Open City Documentary Festival in London. Open City Texts commented on its “formal immediacy and intimacy” achieved through handheld camerawork and performative elements, describing the film as “an effort to push through the brambles of time towards some kind of clearing.”

Fanfan served as a jury member for the Young Mezcal Award at the 38th Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG). Her producing credits further demonstrate her versatile filmmaking capabilities, including the Venice Immersive official selection ‘Echos of Ash Valley’ (Associate Producer, 81st Venice International Film Festival), the LGBTQ short ‘Mean Goals’ (Producer, LALIFF 2025 premiere), and the short documentary ‘Memoir’ (Producer, Atlanta Film Festival 2025 premiere). IG: @partial.fanfan

‘Have you called mom?’, 2024, 8:40 minutes, Fransisca Angela (Indonesia)

‘Have you called mom?’ looks at the loneliness faced by elderly Chinese women in Lasem. In a place where the small Chinese community is at risk of being lost due to mass migration, the video brings together the image of the house as a main character in the 700-year history of Chinese settlement in Java. Using candid conversation as the sound, the work weaves the present moment with the everyday memories of these elderly women's spouses, mothers, children, and families who are no longer with them.

Fransisca Angela is a photographer and visual artist from Jakarta. She works from within everyday lived experiences. Her work mainly touches upon human stories in relation to place, the in-between, and collective memory. In her practice, she utilises various mediums, from image, text, film, and installation. Through personal narratives, she invites people to experience life's fragments, allowing them to reimagine a new reality that stands in for what has been lost amidst adversity. Central to her practice is creating space for collective consciousness through storytelling and conversation. Fransisca is currently a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. IG: @fransiscangela

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman (born June 6, 1950, died October 5, 2015) was a Belgian filmmaker who explored the mundane details of ordinary life with a clear eye and a strong feminist sensibility. She directed over 40 films, including the iconic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commercie, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), starring the feminist actor and activist Delphine Seyrig. Other celebrated films include Je Tu Il Elle (1974) and News from Home (1977), and her film installation From the East (1993). She wrote My Mother Laughs during the last year of mother’s life, when she returned from New York to care for her.

Sine Screen

Sine Screen is a collective showing moving image and independent cinema from across East and Southeast Asia, and more. IG: @sine_screen

Image: Chantal Akerman, ‘No Home Movie’ (still), 2015