2022 and 2024: Changing Room Era

We spent all of 2023 and 2024 obsessed with producing and screening Changing Room, a movement-based docufiction that asked, "What does criticizing our bodies have to do with climate change?"

Changing rooms, where many scrutinize their own bodies and spend time considering how they'll fix or hide imperfections, are also often where fantasies of solutions rooted in "the next purchase" begin. Each woman to her own, where she believes nobody else can see her, she opens up to herself in ways marketers only dream of knowing. The slightest poke, jiggle, disapproving facial expression, or even a raw, harsh word whispered to her own reflection instructs that woman what to buy next: Is it a new skirt to cover up the bulging thighs? Spanx to tuck belly fat in? Or even the same shirt, but in a different, more flattering color? How does the journey from a lonesome dressing cubicle connect to the rest of the world, an earth itself crying in pain as its own inhabitants trample over it without care, all seeing themselves as individuals worthy of perfection, with a right to embark on the quest for a better, i.e. better-looking self—"my money, my right"? Or have we all been fools in front of the mirror after all?

These were the kinds of questions we asked as we made the dance film, which we got a grant from the National Geographic Society to make and a grant from Singapore's Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment to screen at The Projector in Singapore. With a lot of hard work, we sold over 300 tickets, packed The Projector over one weekend, and then went on to screen in Bangkok and Tokyo.

Photo credit: Maria Marinay

The biggest lesson learned: The joy of story-telling for creative non-fiction is found in the way throughlines can extend, finding connections in themes most people think are separated.