UKI
Film - CineRebels Competition Filmfest 2023

UKI

Directed by Shu Lea Cheang

Info

Director: Shu Lea Cheang
Section: CineRebels Competition
Country: Germany, USA
Year: 2023
BT: UKI / SEX FISH
Language: English
Version: Original version with German subtitles
Cast: Tyra Wigg, Bernard J.Butler, Joey, Asia-James Ryan Ryyves Thomas, Alan Chen
18+ (no age rating)

Also in this program

Logline

Shu Lea Cheang’s latest feature film, UKI, is celebrating its world premiere at the Filmfest. This sci-fi viral alt-reality movie is a sequel to I.K.U. (2000).

Reiko is robbed of their body data and dumped on Etrashville, a giant landfill for electronic waste. There they resurrect as “UKI the virus” in order to sabotage a biosystem developed by the GENOM Corporation to manipulate sexual pleasure through pills. Defective humanoids, transmutants, techno-data bodies and an infected city join forces with the UKI virus. UKI is a suspenseful digital collage of game software-generated animation combined with live-action film and visual effects.

Meet the director

UKI

Shu Lea Cheang

Shu Lea Cheang is a leading multimedia artist. With her approach at the intersection of film, video, Internet-based installation, software interaction, and durational performance, she is considered a pioneer in Internet-based art. Born in Taiwan in 1954, Cheang earned her bachelor’s degree in history in Taipei in the mid-1970s and subsequently moved to New York City to study Cinema Studiesfilm. Shortly thereafter, she joined Paper Tiger TV, a collective that broadcast live weekly programs on public-access television. Grassroots in nature, the collective sought to revolutionize television by playfully challenging its underlying ideologies in a do-it-yourself approach. Her operating radius has simply adapted to the technological developments and media available at a given time, such as by expanding into the networks of cyberspace in the late 1990s. Her works have been shown at international festivals such as Sundance and the Berlinale, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the ICC in Tokyo, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and presented at biennials and art shows such as the Documenta in Kassel and the Gwangju Biennale.

Credits

Screenplay: Shu Lea Cheang
Director of Photography: Franzy Fabritz
Film Editor: Jörn Hartmann
Composer: Aérea Negrot
Production Designer: Karin Betzler
Costume Design: Alexis Mersmann
Sound: Marina Funck
Sound design: Jochen Voerste, Concept AV
Animation: Roland Lauth
Make-up artist: Nuria de lario
Casting director: Paulita Pappel
Producer: Shu Lea Cheang, Jürgen Brüning
Production Company: Jürgen Brüning Filmproduktion
Executive producer: Alex Demetriou