WHAT MAKES ME FEEL COLD IS NOT WINTER OR NIGHT

Author

Yushan Liu, Syracuse UniversityFollow

Date of Award

5-11-2025

Date Published

6-18-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Film and Media Arts

Advisor(s)

Boryana Rossa

Keywords

Any-Space-Whatever;Cinematic Form;Counter-Archive;Displacement;Liquid Time;Transnational Experience

Abstract

This thesis examines how cinematic form can render visible the lived experiences of displacement, temporal disjunction, and marginalization among transnational subjects, particularly international students navigating between legal regimes, emotional landscapes, and cultural systems. Through a practice-led methodology anchored in film theory, phenomenology, and spatial analysis, the project explores how space and time function not as narrative backdrops but as agents of affective rupture. The film WHAT MAKES ME FEEL COLD IS NOT WINTER OR NIGHT employs disjunctive spaces—such as parking garages, mini-golf courses, and restaurant interiors—as sites of perceptual tension, drawing from Deleuze’s concept of the “any-space-whatever.” These locations, stripped of dramatic action, expose the affective folds and atmospheric pressures that shape diasporic life. Temporally, the film resists linearity, adopting extended long takes, visual stillness, and asynchronous soundscapes to evoke the “liquid time” of transnational existence—a temporal structure fragmented by visas, time zones, and unresolvable grief. The thesis argues that such formal strategies offer a cinematic language capable of expressing what escapes conventional narrative: the silent emotional labor and epistemic gaps faced by those suspended between cultures. Ultimately, the work positions cinema as a counter-archive—one that preserves fleeting affective states and offers critical interventions into how displacement is both lived and represented.

Access

Open Access

Recommended Citation

Liu, Yushan, "WHAT MAKES ME FEEL COLD IS NOT WINTER OR NIGHT" (2025). Theses - ALL. 941.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/941