BEST DOCUMENTARY - Dance Camera West 2022
Street Art • Dance • Creativity • Collaboration • Immigration • Vietnamese Americans • Aging • FamilyDate of Completion: 2021 | Run Time: 70 minutes | Language: English with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Stuart C. Paul | Producers: Stuart C. Paul & Heather Matthews
INK & LINDA is a feature-length documentary chronicling the unexpected friendship and collaboration between Inksap, a Vietnamese American urban artist in his 20s, and Linda, an elder stateswoman of the modern dance scene in her 70s–as they team up to form LA’s most unlikely street art duo. Crossing the boundaries between generations and cultures, their story defies the conventions of art and society, exploring what it means to be an artist in today’s world. It is the story of a young man finding his identity; a woman in the last chapter of her life starting a new one; and of finding family where you least expect it.
Film Threat | Alan Ng
"Incredibly fascinating."
LA Dance Chronicle | Alice Alyse
"This picture is a positive influence of encouragement in life, motivation, and freedom. A performance street graffiti experience that makes a distinctive statement for all of us to see, understand, learn, and enjoy."
KPFK Film Club
"The kind of film that both delights and inspires."
Orcasound
"A celebration of diversity and differences."
LA Weekly | Shana Nys Dambrot
"The unconventional duo of Inksap and Linda Lack, PhD hail from radically divergent backgrounds, cross-pollinating to create art that neither one would have created alone."
AWARDS
Best Documentary | Dance Camera West 2022
FESTIVALS
Richmond International Film Festival
Chagrin Falls Documentary Film Festival
Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival
Featured Artist of INK & LINDA
The Artist known as INKSAP creates works of art that can be found on the streets and in galleries. His signature style is known as ARTIFACT: collections of discarded materials layered in repetition with organic movement and folding, completed with painted images of face masked Vietnamese refugees.In 2015 he began incorporating environmental issues and initiatives into his artwork. His debut work – titled Xuanha – features a young girl wearing a face mask carrying a tree in her backpack. This image, burned into a silkscreen then printed onto paper, has been installed in numerous urban settings. With his work well-received in personal interactions and on social media, INKSAP has gone on to create more paintings of face masked children through this process. Discovering the streets serve as a more vital canvas than studio walls, INKSAP shifted his focus towards public artwork.
Based in Los Angeles, California, INKSAP has an expansive presence through his installations in Tokyo, New York City, Ho Chi Minh City, Budapest, Xi’an, Shanghai, Beijing, and Nantong. Over time, INKSAP’s work has evolved into exploring his Vietnamese heritage and the complexities of his upbringing. Brought up in a community lacking Vietnamese influence, INKSAP lost his cultural identity. It is through integrating moments of INKSAP’s family history into his street installations that he renews himself, visceral and emotionally bonding with the art.
The Art of INKSAP is internationally recognized as well as followed by East Coast critics, West Coast creatives, and global art lovers alike. The ease of access to public art he provides is a testament to the talent and impact of the artist known as INKSAP.
Featured Artist of INK & LINDA
Linda Lack Ph.D. is a widely-respected dancer, choreographer, educator, innovator and influencer in the field of Movement/Yoga Therapy. She has performed all over the world, from dances on stage to movement rituals in desert stream beds. While dancing in New York in the 1960s, Linda saw her fellow dancers suffering from injuries and began creating her own exercises to help the body survive the rigors of life and art.In 1970, she returned to Los Angeles and created The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®, a comprehensive movement technique useful in supporting injured bodies on their way to healing as well as sustaining demanding and accomplished movers. The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®has been recognized alongside Pilates, Feldenkrais, Bartenieff and Alexander Technique as a contemporary movement training/healing method. Linda describes TBFM as the owner’s manual for the body that was never issued to us at birth. She credits the technique she created with sustaining her well into her 70s as she continues to teach, train and heal both at her studio in Los Angeles and across the globe.
Director & Producer of INK & LINDA
Stuart C. Paul is a screenwriter and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, he is known for his ability to elevate whatever genre he is working in, bringing his unique blend of intelligence, point-of-view and character depth to each project he undertakes.INK AND LINDA is his first documentary feature. Previously, he wrote and directed the award-winning comedy short The Lord Of Catan. Starring Amy Acker and Fran Kranz, the film tells the cautionary tale of a married couple whose game night plunges them into a vortex of madness and destruction.
He is currently in pre-production on A Boy Called Lee, which explores the issues of juvenile justice, truancy and gun violence through the lens of Lee Harvey Oswald’s time spent in a New York juvenile psychiatric facility. He is also at work on Infernal, a feature-length horror film that examines the concept of the devil through the lens of self-actualization and mental health.
As a screenwriter, he has worked with acclaimed directors across many different genres, including Takashi Miike, Anton Corbijn and Roland Emmerich. He has sold projects to companies all across Hollywood including MGM, Universal, NBC, STX and more. His original screenplay Yasuke was included on the 2021 Black List, the film industry’s annual honor roll of the most acclaimed unproduced film scripts of the year.
Also an acclaimed comic creator, his graphic novel Ides Of Blood, which reimagines the assassination of Julius Caesar by vampires, was published by DC Comics. The series was nominated for three CBG Fan Awards, including Best Writer.
In his spare time, he practices Japanese swordsmanship and takes his cat on hikes. He is represented by Paradigm and Circle of Confusion.