Ji Strangeway: Creative Background

I’m a film director, I’m an author and a poet. I specialize in the LGBTQ young adult and anything, female centric. I’m Vietnamese by descent. I grew up in Colorado and I lived in New York most of my adult life. I’ve always been a visual artist. I started drawing and sketching when I was probably seven years old.

I started writing poetry when I was 15 years old. I come from an experimental film background. I was schooled in the avant-garde. We did both avant-garde and also a conventional filmmaking. So I have a nice balance between the two. I was really fortunate to been mentored by pioneers of the avant-garde scene.

My mentor was actually probably the very last thread connected to Maya Deren, if you don’t know who Maya Deren is, she’s actually considered to be the mother of avant-garde. And she brought experimental film to the forefront when nobody even really knew about it. My work eventually got screened alongside Stan Brakhage. And if you don’t know who Stan Brakhage is, you need to look him up.

When I lived in New York I was really involved in the art scene. It’s really stimulating cuz you’re around super creative people all the time, but it also becomes something very exclusive because you’re speaking to only an art audience and I felt like the stories inside of me were too big. The people who need to see my work are people outside of that scene.