Colgate University’s Alternative Cinema Film Series hosted experimental filmmaker Wenhua Shi for a screening and discussion of Shi’s “On Time.” The Tuesday, April 1 event in Golden Auditorium featured a collection of moving image works exploring space, memory and the passage of time.
Shi, associate professor of art at the University of Massachusetts Boston, works in film, video, interactive installation and sound sculpture. Shi’s work has been shown at museums, galleries and film festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the European Media Art Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is the founder and a curator of RPM Fest, a Boston-based event for experimental media, and a recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival.
Known for his poetic, meditative style, Shi’s “On Time” features seven works created between 2012 and 2023, including “Descending a Staircase” (2013-2016), “Die Nacht” (2017-2019), “Senses of Time” (2018), “The Rose” (2019), “Mother,” “Because the Sky is Blue” (2020), “Concrete” (2021) and “Monosabishii” (2023). Each is unified by their exploration of how time and space interact. Shi employs a range of techniques — from layered digital editing to cyanotype printing and light refraction — to amplify the subtle details that define a single moment in time.
In “Descending a Staircase” (2013-2016), one of the program’s most structurally experimental works, Shi presents multiple versions of a single brief sequence: a woman walking down the stairs of her apartment building. The first version plays in real-time, with the camera following her from behind. Later iterations are slowed, layered with 20-30 overlapping frames, and eventually reversed. The result is disorienting — each moment folding into the one before it, compressing the past, present and future into a single, fragmented instance.
Shi explained that the inspiration for the piece arose in post-production after a friend mentioned how often she repeated that motion of walking down the staircase.
“At first, I just thought it was a tracking shot,” Shi said. “Later, I realized I want to emphasize the redundancy of that moment.”
This approach reflects Shi’s broader creative process. When asked during the Q&A what inspires his films, he explained that many of his projects begin without a clear concept — meaning, for him, often emerges through editing, where relationships between time and space can be more clearly identified and reshaped.
“Sometimes the idea comes later,” Shi said. “One of the best ways to start a project is to just get your hands on something.”
Sophomore Adele Johnson found the repetition and editing techniques in “Descending a Staircase” particularly impactful.
“The same video clips took on different meanings based on the way he manipulated them,” Johnson said. “It really made me think about the value that can be found in everyday routines — things we don’t usually pay much attention to.”
Shi also spoke about his use of sound, which, like his editing, is designed to leave space for interpretation.
“When the sound and images sync, the film sinks,” Shi said. “They cut off access to the image, or understanding the image or interpretation of the image. I want to leave them a little bit open.”
In “Concrete” (2021), filmed inside Boston City Hall during the COVID-19 pandemic, Shi explored the atmosphere of a civic building emptied of its usual activity. Shot while the building was closed to the general public, the work pairs on-site audio with long, slow tracking shots through both public areas and behind-the-scenes spaces, such as maintenance corridors and mechanical rooms.
“Most people go to Boston City Hall for weddings, divorces, death certificates and parking issues,” Shi said. “They encounter that space probably within 20 minutes. How they encounter that experience is what our team wanted to convey.”
First-year Zach Willsie found this in-depth exploration of the space especially memorable. He highlighted one multi-minute tracking shot in particular.
“The shot of the pipes in the mechanical room was really cool,” Willsie said. “It went on for so long that the sound of the machines started to make the space feel weirdly alive.”
Throughout the evening, Shi returned to a central idea: time and space are the raw materials of cinema — and our perception of them is constantly shifting.
“They are so intertwined, and you can present them in many different ways,” Shi said.
Shi hoped this event offered students a chance to see how abstract ideas can take form on screen, and to consider how time and space shape not only film, but everyday experience.