May 16 – 19:00
King’s College London, Strand Campus
UK, 2026
Directed by
Victor Fan
Running time
10 minutes
The sun rays reflect off of a golden chair that sits by the window. The perfect place to relax, Scotty thinks. Soft and warm.
As he sits there, the camera patiently observes him. His tail flicks up and down, his belly expands with each breath, he looks back at the lens. Does he know he is being filmed?
Victor Fan’s intimate portrait of a cat immerses us in a lulling soundscape made of purrs and birdsong. The noises coming through the window hardly bother Scotty, as he rolls on the chair, stretches, and smiles with his eyes. As so too do we drift away, taken in by his gentle gaze.
– Francesco Quario
Director’s Statement
Desire/Sleep was shot during the Covid lockdown. It is simply a long take of my late companion Scotty, who lounged on his favourite armchair in a lazy afternoon. When Peter Restrick and I watched the raw footage, we were both mesmerised by the meditative quality of watching Scotty sleep. As a Buddhist practitioner, I am always fascinated with how the image can invite us home: to the here and now as the way it is.
The title Desire/Sleep comes from the Chinese-language term yushui (wanting to sleep), which is composed of the words yu (desire) and shui (sleep). As the Gautama Buddha teaches Subhūti in the Diamond Sutra, mindfulness is not about putting desire to a halt but rather to be mindful of how each moment at which desire, anger and frustration, delusion, fear, lamentation, and regret arise and/or perish. The moment at which we become mindful of the arising and perishing of desire and other mental formations, we are no longer simply following them blindly or being controlled by them. Rather, we can embrace them, care for them, and know why we are sometimes being controlled by them.
Desire/Sleep comes with a soundtrack that is entirely composed in postproduction. It was my fantasy of how a post-lockdown world would sound like outside my flat.
Meet the director
Victor Fan is Professor of Film and Media Philosophy at the Department of Film Studies, King’s College London and a film festival consultant. Before he became a scholar, he studied composition at the Eastman School of Music and film production at the University of Southern California. He was sound editor, film composer, and sometimes re-recording mixer for many short films, arthouse features, as well as television commercials from 1996–2004. He also worked for many years as a house sound engineer and sound editor at Solar Film/Video Productions, NYC.
He has also made many short films. His film The Well was an official selection of the São Paolo International Film Festival; it was also screened at the Anthology Film Archives, the Japan Society and the George Eastman House. And his film, Mother, which consists of super-8 footage of the evening before the British handover of Hong Kong to China, was broadcasted on PBS in Los Angeles. Fan still composes music and is a closeted concert pianist and zhongruan player.
Meet the ca(s)t and crew
Starring
Scotty Pupazzi
Camera Operator
Pete Restrick
Sound design
Victor Fan
