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LADA Screens: Lucy Sheen – Online Screening

LADA is delighted to present the online screening of the short film Abandoned Adopted Here by Lucy Sheen.

This online screening follows a live event at LADA on Friday 28 June 2024 featuring a screening of the film, a performative reading of the poem I Know This Face by the writer and director of the film, and a panel on the complexities of post-pandemic working in cultural and performative spaces for British East and Southeast Asians.

This film will be available to watch online until Friday 26 July.

About Abandoned Adopted Here

Lucy Sheen, who wrote, directed and produced the film, was one of the 106 Hong Kong foundlings that were transracially adopted by predominantly white families in the UK in the 50s and 60s, as part of the Hong Kong Project. Abandoned Adopted Here explores the nature of belonging in the British society and the unheard, silenced, and often erased voices of British East and Southeast Asians with mixed heritages and complex identities.

Identity is something that the majority of us take for granted. We see ourselves reflected back to us as we gaze into the eyes of our parents, watch TV, or go to the cinema or the theatre. But what if your image does not appear in society, or isn’t the same as your parents? What then? This in an independent documentary looking at identity, adoption, transracial adoption, being both British and of East Asian heritage. Is there such a thing? Where do we fit in in the UK?

About LADA Screens

LADA Screens is a series of free, online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage. It is part of Live Online, LADA’s dedicated space where you can watch short videos and films drawn from LADA’s Study Room or generated through our programmes and initiatives.

Each screening is available to view for a limited time only, and is launched with a live event at our space in Bethnal Green, London.

This film was selected through an open call for short videos and films around the themes of voice, care and healing.

LADA Screens is curated by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). LADA is a ‘Centre for Live Art’: a knowledge centre, a production centre for programmes and publications, a research centre setting artists and ideas in motion, and an online centre for digital experimentation, representation and dissemination.

More about LADA Screens

Film credit:
Directed, produced and written by Lucy Sheen

Banner image credit:

Picture of the Hong Kong foundlings at the Fanling Babies Home circa 1962/1963. Lucy Sheen is probably the baby circled in red

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