“I am interested in Film Time and Film Space,” Theresa Hak Kyung Cha wrote in her notes for Permutations—a film composed of six shots set at one-second intervals, developed using the classical Chinese divination manual known as the I Ching. The operations structuring the filmmaking process allowed Cha to isolate the basic components of film, so as to “allow more learning about Film process.” The video work Mouth to Mouth isolates Cha’s mouth silently sounding out the eight Korean vowels shown in the opening shots, the slow and labored articulation of each unit evoking the embodied search for one’s mother tongue. White Dust from Mongolia, Cha’s unfinished narrative film, comprises footage that Cha shot with her brother James in Korea between 1979 and 1980. Influenced by Structuralist film theory, these films demonstrate Cha’s methodical exploration of cinema as a medium.

—Tausif Noor