Before I Knew You


Thursday, Nov. 6th 7PM
CAM Lab Harvard University
Lower Level, 485 Broadway,
Cambridge, MA

Familial relationships birth the stories we tell about ourselves. Moving across historical periods, geographies, and domestic spaces, the five short films in this program turn toward the people we call family. They trace the ways emotional landscapes, generational legacies, and social changes become entangled with family histories.

This process of remembering also takes shape through the films’ formal approaches. The filmmakers play with transformation across media, animate family archives, and attune to theshifting proximity between storyteller and spectator. At times, they dwell quietly within the silences that remain in the family.
Curated by Yifei Yao.

Dance Film - Kelly Gallagher
| 2025 | 1:08 min. | Color | Sound

This animated film playfully upends the traditional focus of most avant-garde choreography films by turning its attention on the spectator of a dance instead of the dancer herself. This film is about the act of watching, and what it means to look at someone with love, tenderness and openness. This film is a small and mighty affirmation of life. "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." - Nelson Mandela

Kelly Gallagher is an experimental filmmaker, animator, and educator. She makes colorful cut-out animations, experimental films, documentaries, and found footage essays that explore political histories of resistance and personal stories of resilience. Additionally, Kelly enthusiastically facilitates fun, inclusive film workshops for communities of all ages.

refrigerator hums - Jade Wong
| 2025 | 15:00 min. | Color | Sound

An artist collects and processes images of their mother’s restaurant kitchen and their grandmother’s daily life. Memory and embodied knowledge is reanimated through various image formats: 35mm portraits on oscillating lenticular prints, laserjet prints of 35mm film transferred onto 16mm loops, and photographic prints on polystyrene. An intergenerational critique unfolds.

jade wong 黃品蓉 is an artist-filmmaker born and based in Seattle, WA. They experiment with non-fiction, analog film, video, performance, craft, food, and sound.

"transl. it's okay to be quiet” - Filip Jakubowski
| Poland | 2025 | 21:50 min. | Color | Sound

A filmmaker’s mother, losing her sight, visits her son and his girlfriend. They are looking for closure by the sea. Finding solace with untamed nature, they create a new, unspoken language. Turning their final moments into a farewell to light.

Filip Jakubowski studies film directing at the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Lodz, graduate of photography at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. His works have been presented at Kurtzfilmtage Oberhausen, REAL Locarno Film Festival, Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, VIDEOFORMES Clermont Ferrand, among others.