Japanese American National Museum (JANM)
100 N Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
6:30PM Check in begins, seating opens
7:00PM Screening begins
9:00 PM Q&A begins
9:30 PM Event ends
Join us for a Screening of EDHI ALICE followed by conversation with Edhi and Alice, and Director Ilrhan Kim, Producer Sona Jo, and Assistant Director/Associate Producer Ohyeon Kwon
Presented by GYOPO x IDA (International Documentary Association) x PINKS
Supported by Japanese American National Museum (JANM), UCLA Center for Korean Studies, USC Korean Studies Institute, Koreatown Youth + Community Center (KYCCLA), LA County Arts & Culture, andVisual Communications
About the Film:
Edhi Alice is a film project consisting of two feature-length documentaries that are both the same and yet different: Edhi Alice: Take and Edhi Alice: Reverse. Conceived under the proposition “Transgender is Cinematic,” the project aims to offer audiences a distinctive cinematic experience while fostering dialogue across the community.
Edhi Alice: Take begins from the perspective of lighting director Alice, who has been pushed away from the film set, as she confronts her own body, and transitions to the journey of another protagonist, Edhi, as she encounters new sensations within hers. The film establishes the relationship between the two characters through its cinematic structure, continually drawing the audience’s attention to the act of filmmaking itself. Here, transition extends beyond an individual’s life story, unfolding into a cinematic experience that encompasses relationships, the body, and the perception of space.
Director’s Note:
Edhi and Alice are friends I met through human rights activism. Working with them led me to cinematically re-encounter the concept of transition. For many, a transgender person’s transition is understood as a linear process involving hormone therapy, gender-affirming surgery, and legal gender recognition. But the transition they described was something more. In their experiences, transition was a fleeting yet recurring sensation—like layers continually forming an identity. Identity, they showed me, is not a fixed or completed state, but something fluid, endlessly constructed.
I came to see this transition as a time and space of potentiality, and I sought to explore it through a cinematic sensibility. Edhi Alice is a film about the transformations that occur when two different worlds meet. In Edhi Alice: Reverse, the narrative flows from Edhi to Alice, while in Edhi Alice: Take it moves from Alice to Edhi. Through these mirrored structures, the project seeks to sense and illuminate the transition of a transgender person within the transition of a film itself.
When the end credits roll, is the film truly over? I imagine the edited-out shots, the deleted data, and the unchosen scenes continuing to drift around the film long after it ends. Edhi Alice places its trust in the boundless imagination and expanded possibilities of these floating fragments. My hope is that this film is not an ending, but a beginning—for imagination, for dialogue, and for contemplation.
Ilrhan Kim (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of PINKS, an influential feminist activist collective. Her debut, Mamasang: Remember Me This Way (2005), portrays sex workers in a U.S. military camptown and won the Women's News Award at the Seoul International Women's Film Festival. Her third film, Two Doors (2010), investigates the Yongsan tragedy, in which five evictees and a police officer were killed during a violent police action. A landmark of Korean cinema well beyond the political documentary genre, Two Doors won the Special Jury Prize at the 2012 DMZ International Documentary Film Festival and earned a place in the Korean Film Archive's 100 Great Korean Films. Kim received the 2018 Woman in Film of the Year award. In her most recent film, Edhi Alice (2024), Kim profiles two trans women in South Korea while interrogating the ethics of documentary filmmaking.
Ohyeon Kwon (she/her) is a Seoul-based documentary filmmaker and member of PINKS. She served as assistant director and associate producer on Edhi Alice and co-directed the short Teleporting (2022), a documentary on East Asian feminist solidarity that screened at Hot Docs, the DMZ Documentary Film Festival, and the Seoul International Women's Film Festival. She also directed The Stars Know (2023), a documentary about the struggle for truth and justice following the 10.29 Itaewon crowd crush.
Edhi (she/her) is a trans woman, queer entertainer, and human rights activist dedicated to transgender visibility. She founded Jogakbo, a transgender rights organization, and co-founded Youth LGBTQ Support Center Dingdong, which supports LGBTQ youth in need. She has hosted PINKS TV, a queer media channel on YouTube, and in 2023 published a book of essays titled If All Goes Well, I Will Become a Delightful Grandmother. Edhi was selected as a Kakao Impact Fellow in recognition of her work as a social innovator and served as a board member for the Byun Huisu Foundation. She is a central figure in Edhi Alice.
Alice (she/her) is a veteran lighting director with 20 years of experience. Captivated by a black-and-white film she encountered in university, she has built a career on the belief that lighting allows us to imagine the world beyond the frame. She is known among colleagues for her meticulous, nuanced approach to lighting design. Her notable credits include Rough Play (2013, dir. Shin Yeon-sik), Dongju: Portrait of a Poet (2015, dir. Lee Joon-ik), and The World of Us (2016, dir. Yoon Ga-eun). Since her transition, Alice has been exploring new directions beyond the film industry, currently working at a distribution platform company while thoughtfully charting her next chapter. She is a central figure in Edhi Alice.
Sona Jo (she/her) produces feature documentaries about conflict, war, trauma, and women. Her recent credits include 206: Unearthed, winner of Best Documentary at the 2021 Busan International Film Festival; Coming to You, winner of Best Documentary at the 2021 Jeonju International Film Festival; Xixi, which premiered at Hot Docs 2024; and Free Chol Soo Lee, a U.S.-Korean co-production that premiered at Sundance, aired on PBS's Independent Lens, and won the 2024 Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. In 2024 she became the first documentary producer to receive the MPA Best Producer award at the Wildflower Film Awards, which recognizes Korean independent cinema.