Operating on the belief that everything under the sun is connected in robust and concrete ways, my work makes manifest the bridges between seemingly disparate ideas, beings, histories, and images. By synthesizing personal histories with interdisciplinary research and experimental, immersive modes of storytelling and image-making, my work deconstructs, deepens, expands, and challenges dominant understandings of justice, representation, and ethics of care.

Bio

May Wanhua Braaten is a filmmaker, media artist, and educator born in Zhuzhou, China and raised in the rolling green hills of small-town Upstate New York. Braaten’s work invokes assemblage, authoethnography, interdisciplinary research, and formal experimentation to challenge dominant modes of nonfiction storytelling; artist Angus McCullough describes her work as not high-, nor low-, but “no-brow.” Braaten’s films have been screened as a part of the SUSTAIN Film Series, the Mellon Foundation for the Arts Research Initiative, and the John B. Moore MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute, in addition to community screenings and exhibitions. She earned her B.A. in Philosophy from Skidmore College in 2024, and is a proud member of the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4), Asian American Documentary Network, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia collectives.

Braaten is currently a full-time educator, developing and instructing courses in French language and French and Francophone cinema at BASIS Independent Brooklyn. She is based in Brooklyn, NY on unceded Lenape land.