Loosely translates to "Now You See Me", the original title means "It's as if I'm waking up from a dream". It is an art-house experimental film documenting the birth of awareness as one’s presence evolves in this fleeting life. An exploration of loneliness, connectivity and belonging within the intersectional space of race, gender and sexuality. Based on journal 1-9, a vision by migrant multidisciplinary artist Zed Xu 榛子瞬. 

Proudly made in Aotearoa New Zealand in collaboration with photographer Karen Ishiguro and filmmaker Jackson Doudney. Original score by GOODSPACE.

Zed Xu 榛子瞬 (they/any) is a migrant multidisciplinary artist of Chinese descent living in New Zealand, Zed’s hybrid identity and unique perspective inform their film-making, painting and performance art within a multidisciplinary practice. Drawing on the experience of existing outside of ordinary trajectories and questioning normative categories of identification, expectation and objectification, Zed's artistic practice serves to bring the unseen into the myriads forms of the now.

Zed Xu  榛子瞬 says: “Now You See Me 如梦初醒 was made without a script, it was my first film which began as a 9 part series of journals accumulated since 2020. The film was completed in 2024 with an original score featuring the instrument I’ve been playing since I was a child (Guzheng). The art I make exists across a multidisciplinary approach, through painting, performance art and film-making. Each project serves as a contemplation of time and space, observed through my existence as an afab non binary person of colour. Now You See Me 如梦初醒 pioneered everything I make now. I want the audience to feel held by the present moment and receive the gift of stillness and presence in both visual and audio forms of art, this right here is all we ever have.”

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