Sci-Fi New Queer Cinema: Shu Lea Cheang (1994—2023)

A new restoration of Shu Lea Cheang’s avant-anarcho eco-satire, in which a lesbian couple living on Staten Island find themselves ensnared in a vast corporate conspiracy.

Shu Lea Cheang merges live action with animation generated with gaming software in UKI, a parable of resilience demonstrating the continued vitality of the director’s forward-thinking, boundary-pushing vision.

An android assigned to arrest mutated humans who spread a narcotic through skin contact loses immunity, revealing a tangled plot involving underground drug lords, a scheming corporation, and a corrupt government.

Shu Lea Cheang probes the commodification of pleasure in the tale of a robot programmed to accumulate sexual experience for a corporation, in an explicit cyberpunk fantasy set to techno grooves.