Li Anne Liew: glide and the calm of being unseen

Credits: Director of Photography: Dajiana Huang; Art Director: uncredited; Stylist: uncredited; Designer: uncredited; Director: Li Anne Liew; Composer: Yoki Ng. Li Anne Liew’s glide (all the people i’ll never be) is shot on Kodak 500T in available light and extends her preoccupation with being present yet unseen.

Where previous shorts threaded stillness through urban moments, glide fleshes that minimalism into atmosphere: the wind is choreographed as a consistent presence, funeral inserts (white chrysanthemums, oranges, joss paper) recur as ritual punctuation, and post‑rain blues spill across grey concrete. The slow, economical cutting and the decision to favour long, rehearsed takes make every missed glance register as deliberate restraint rather than omission.

The film’s compositions — often layered, observing strangers from a small remove — amplify Liew’s interest in surveillance and sympathy. Shooting on Kodak 500T in available light gives interiors and exteriors the same tactile grain, so the world reads as a single melancholic plane where music (Yoki Ng’s score) becomes the vocal trace Ophelia cannot place. The result feels like street photography translated into cinema: intimate, distant and quietly exacting.

Glide consolidates Liew’s motifs — wind, ritual inserts, 500T, and formal restraint — into a recognisable visual signature that refines rather than reinvents her concerns. "natural observation with a supernatural funk" (Li Anne Liew, the director speaking).