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About the Filmmaker

Crystal Kwok holds a PhD in Performance Studies and an advanced Graduate Certificate in  Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is an award  winning filmmaker who established her career in Hong Kong as an actress, writer, director, and  controversial talk show host. Her debut feature film, The Mistress (1999) , won the Audience  Choice Awards at the Deauville Asiatic Film Festival. Her feature documentary Blurring the  Color Line (2022) streamed nationally on PBS under America ReFramed in 2023. It won  multiple awards including Best Documentary at the Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival,  Courage Award at DisOrient Film Festival, and the Mira Nair Rising Female Filmmaker Award  at the Harlem International Film Festival. Kwok straddles the line between creative production  and academic work. She was a visiting scholar at Duke Kunshan University this past semester  and currently is also a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in the Comparative Literature and  History Department. Her work is committed to amplifying voices of women and marginal  communities.

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Synopsis

This Duke Kunshan University student led project addresses the patriarchal stain of cultural stigmas around the menstruating body. By normalizing conversation and confronting deeply rooted belief systems, this film celebrates bodily experiences in order to unshame ideas around the period.