Dorothy Cheung





Dorothy Cheung is an artist from Hong Kong. She works with moving-image and poetry to examine identity and home from both personal and political angles, focusing on memory and forgetting.

Her moving-image works have been screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, EYE Filmmuseum, Objectifs, and M+, and internationally at festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, the London Short Film Festival, the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, and Queer Lisboa.

She has received commissions from M+, Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival, Visual AIDS, and private individuals.

Her latest moving-image work, as a bird that briefly perches, won the Grand Prize for Documentary by Women Directors at the What The Doc! International Documentary Film Festival 2025.  

When she is not making films, she writes poetry in Chinese and English. Her poems have appeared in Fleurs des Lettres, 別字, and other zines. She has performed spoken word pieces at Unwanted Words (NL), Queer Circle (UK), and REITIR (IS).

She has also been editing and translating for art institutions, museums, artists, and writers for over a decade. In 2025, she co-edited Images: Perspectives for WMA, which was launched at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.




Education
Master of Arts in Fine Art & Design: Lens-Based Media, 
Piet Zwart Institute, the Netherlands
2019

Master of Arts in Gender Studies,
Hong Kong Chinese University, Hong Kong
2011

Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Humanities (Creative and Professional Writing), 
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
2010



Selected Filmography
2025, as a bird that briefly perches, Hong Kong / UK [Direction, Camera, Editing.]
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Scotland, May 2025
Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival at M+, Hong Kong, May 2025
What the Doc! Film Festival, Bangkok, Thailand, Aug 2025
Hong Kong Asian Film Festival 2025, Hong Kong, Oct 2025
9th Beijing International Short Film Festival, Beijing, China, Nov 2025
20th Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia, Dec 2025
Visions in the Nunnery 2025, London, UK, Dec 2025

2023, Heart Murmurs, Hong Kong [Direction, Camera, Editing.]
Whitney Museum of American Art, US, Nov 2023
Queens Museum, US, Dec 2023
MuseumsQuartier Wien, Vienna, Austria, Dec 2023
PUBLICS, Helsinki, Finland, Dec 2023
Eaton HK [hosted by Videotage], Hong Kong, Dec 2023
Mushaira 4.0, Cafe OTO, London, United Kingdom, Mar 2024
Queer East Film Festival 2024, London, United Kingdom, Apr 2024
18th XPOSED Queer Film Festival, Berlin, Germany, May 2024
Queer Amsterdam - IQMF: Short Film Program, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Jul 2024
14th Bangalore Queer Film Festival, India, Aug 2024
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest 2024, London, UK, Sept 2024
Scottish Queer International Film Festival 2024, Glasgow, Oct 2024
Beijing Queer Film Festival, Beijing, China, Nov 2024
Day With(out) Art: Asia Focus, MMCA Residency Goyang, Goyang, South Korea, Nov 2024
Silence Will Not Protect You with Queer East, esea contemporary, UK, Nov 2024
Rotterdams Open Doek Film Festival, the Netherlands, Jun 2025
Queer Vision, Bristol, UK, Jul 2025
Queersicht LGBTIAQ+ Film Festival, Bern, Switzerland, Nov 2025
Queer Shorts Vienna, Vienna, Austria, Mar 2026

2023, Reverberation / Lost and Found, Hong Kong [Direction, Screenplay, Editing.]
Hong Kong as Mise-en-scène, M+, Hong Kong, May 2023
Hong Kong - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, M+, Hong Kong, June 2024

2022, If I Can’t Dance, Hong Kong [Direction, Screenplay, Editing.]
Jumping Frames - Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival 2022, Hong Kong, Sept 2022
Bodies in Motion, Women in Film and Photography, Objectifs, Singapore, Sept 2023
15th Inshodow Lisbon Screendance Festival, Portugal, Nov 2023
2024 Chiayi International Art Doc Film Festival, Chiayi, Taiwan, Mar 2024
Cinedans FEST '24 (Online Program), the Netherlands, Mar 2024
Taiwan Dance Platform 2024, Kaohsiung, Nov 2024
9th Busan Inter-City Film Festival, Busan, South Korea, Aug 2025

2020, Home, and a Distant Archive, the Netherlands/Hong Kong [Production, Direction, Screenplay, Camera, Editing.]
49th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Jan 2020
Documentary Competition on Human Rights, 8th Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug 2020
Singapore International Film Festival New Wave Programme, Singapore, Oct 2020
34th Leeds International Film Festival, UK, Nov 2020
23rd Montreal International Documentary Festival, Canada, Nov 2020
10th Balneário Camboriú International Film Festival, Brazil, Nov 2020
15th Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia, Nov 2020
26th ifva Awards Short Film Open Category finalist, Hong Kong, Mar 2021
Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, UK, Mar 2021
International Competition, 9th Liberation DocFest 2021, Bangladesh, Apr 2021
12th Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan, Apr 2021
Psarokokalo International Short Film Festival 2021, Greece, Jun 2021
Voices of the Ground Short Film Festival, Germany, Sept 2021

2019, A Room of Oblivion, the Netherlands/Hong Kong [Production, Screenplay, Direction, Camera, Editing.]
EYE Filmmuseum Researchlab, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Feb 2019
The Soft Screening, Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art), Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Apr 2019
23rd Queer Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, Sept 2019
35th Ljubljana LGBT Film Festival, Slovenia, Nov 2019
International Queer & Migrant Film Festival, Amsterdam, Dec 2019
Spain Moving Images Festival 2020, Spain, Oct 2020
Interface Video Art Festival 2020, Croatia, Dec 2020
Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival 2021, Greece, Jun 2021
17th Queer Women of Color Film Festival, United States, Jun 2021
Memory as Border/less, ge.stell, Taiwan, Nov 2021
Remnants and Reflections, Women in Film and Photography, Objectifs, Singapore, Dec 2021
Queer East Film Festival 2022, UK, May 2022
non-syntax Experimental Image Festival, Taiwan, Jun 2022
Bangalore Queer Film Festival, India, Jul 2022
Imaginable Future - Hong Kong Short Film Programs, Yale, New Haven, US, Apr 2023
Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, US, Apr 2023

2018, Letter to the Outsider, The Netherlands/Hong Kong [Production, Screenplay, Direction, Camera, Editing.]
EYE Filmmuseum Researchlab, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Feb 2018
Asian Short Competition, 20th Seoul International Women's Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea, May 2018
Reflex Action, KINO Rotterdam, Jul 2018
11th FilmAid Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya, Sept 2018
18th South Taiwan Film Festival, Tainan, Taiwan, Nov 2018
14th Early Bird Film Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria, Nov 2018
International Queer and Migrant Film Festival, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Dec 2018
15th San Francisco International Queer Women of Color Film Festival, San Francisco, United States, Jun 2019
Hong Kong Independent Film Festival 2020, Hong Kong, Jan 2020
6th SF Urban Film Fest, San Francisco, United States, Feb 2020



Selected Moving Image
2024, dreaming in another language, UK
Disidentification Screening, Atlas Cinema, London, UK, Sept 2024
39 Footnotes Screening Programme, Accent Sisters, New York, US, Mar 2025
Floating Images, Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre, Taipei, Taiwan, Oct 2025
2023, Be Careful (of what you wish), Hong Kong/ UK
London/Londra, Queer Circle, London, UK, Jan 2023
2022, an ode to transgression, Hong Kong
Happiness Programme, SEA Foundation, Tilburg, the Netherlands, Mar 2022
2021, Memory Palace, UK
SPARK Festival, Hong Kong, Oct 2021
Stories from the Periphery, bi’bak, Berlin, Germany, Mar 2022
International Queer & Migrant Film Festival 2022, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Mar 2022
Hong Kong Film Festival UK, London, UK, Mar 2023
Longing for Something…, HK.kino.berlin, Brotfabrik Berlin, Berlin, Germany, Apr 2023
London Short Film Festival 2024, London, UK, Jan 2024



Selected Group Exhibition
  • 2025, 2570 Revolutions Around the Earth, CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo Venice, Italy
  • 2024, Gone with the Wind, Canton-sardine, Vancouver, Canada
  • 2024, Nature: A Perception, HART Haus, Hong Kong
  • 2023, (Homing, or) Adverse Possession, Keepsake Project, London, UK
  • 2022, LOVE+ Awakenings, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
  • 2019, The Second Umbrella, Chisenhale Art Place, London, UK
  • 2019, Home is Wherever I’m with U, Enclave Lab, London, UK
  • 2018, Howling Pancakes, MAMA Rotterdam, the Netherlands
  • 2018, Excavating Empathy, TENT, the Netherlands  
  • 2017, Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs [Via The HK Farmers' Almanac], Para Site, Hong Kong
  • 2017, Emerging from the Rubble - Art/Activism against the Gentrification in East Asia [Via The HK Farmers' Almanac], Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica, United States
  • 2016, Photography as Method, Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong
  • 2016, Urban Orchard [Via The HK Farmers' Almanac], XXI Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
  • 2015, LAND VISIONS: In Search of Land Art in Hong Kong [Via The HK Farmers' Almanac], Comix Home Base, Hong Kong
  • 2014, Grow in Yaumatei, Woofer Ten, Hong Kong




Commissions
2023, Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS, US
2023, M+, Hong Kong
2022, Jumping Frames - Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival, Hong Kong



Residences and Labs
  • 2020, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK [supported by British Council Hong Kong, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, and Phillips Auctioneers]
  • 2019, Aktuelle Architektur Der Kultur, Blanca, Spain
  • 2018, International Queer and Migrant Film Festival Academy, the Netherlands
  • 2016, Reitir, Siglufjörður, Iceland




Awards and Fellowships
  • 2025, Grand Prize of Documentary by Women Directors, What the Doc! Film Festival, Thailand
  • 2021, Special Mention, International Competition, Liberation DocFest, Bangladesh
  • 2017, HKADC Overseas Arts Administration Scholarship, Hong Kong




Misc
  • 2026, Speaker, Political Dumplings (hosted by In Between Zones), The Advocacy Academy,     London, UK
  • 2025, Speaker, Bow Skill Workshop, Bow Arts, London, UK
  • 2025, Conversation on Lolita, O-Square 2025 Spring Issue, Hong Kong
  • 2024, Co-editor, Images: Perspectives, Hong Kong
  • 2023, Jury for the documentary competition, Psarokokalo International Short Film Festival, Greece




Selected Publications and Zines