Biography[]
Loo Zihan (罗子涵; Luō Zihán), born 11 November 1983, is an openly gay Singaporean actor, film director and dancer.
He is a performance and moving-image artist and educator based in Singapore. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had exhibitions and showings at NEXT / Art Chicago, Macau International Performance Art Festival, Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago) and the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. His moving-image works have been screened in various film festivals including AFI Fest (Los Angeles), Pusan International Film Festival, Newfest (New York City) and Frameline (San Francisco). He is a part-time instructor at Nanyang Techonological University, School of the Arts and the National Institute of Education.
He has been open about both his own homosexuality and depicting gay themes in his films, despite the subject being particularly taboo in Southeast Asian society. His first film, Solos, was withdrawn from its début screening at the 20th Singapore International Film Festival due to its explicit depiction of homosexual sexAbout Zihan, on his official websiteSilencing Singapore.
Instead it premièred at the 12th Pusan International Film Festival in the city of Pusan in South Korea and became the first Singaporean film to be selected for the American Film Institute Festival in Los Angeles, going on to win the Nuovo Sguardi Award in the 23rd Turin Gay and Lesbian Festival, in the city of Turin in Italy. It was awarded by the jury to the film which "reflects the evolution of queer cinema".
Filmography and theatrical works[]
- "Chancre" (2011 short film) - director
- "Aemaer" (2010 short film) - director
- Threshold (2009 film) - writer and director
- Past Carin’ (2009 play) — multimedia design
- Frozen Angels (2009 play) — multimedia design
- Gemuk Girls (2008 play) — multimedia design
- Pleasure Factory (2007 film) — actor
- Solos (2007 film) — writer, director and actor
- Autopsy (2007 documentary short) — writer, director and actor
- Embryo (2006 short film) — writer, director
- Untitled (2006 short film) — writer, director and actor
References[]
External links[]
- Loo Zihan's official website:[1]
- Template:IMDb name
- Silencing Singapore, interview with The Advocate, 4 June 2009
- Nude portraits of Loo Zihan in the album "Gallery 29 – Zihan | The Parking Lot [NSFW]", Norm Yip, The Asian Male Project:[2].