Ginkgo

Ginkgo resides in a hutong in Beijing with her daughter. She lives with dementia, causing her to frequently drift back to the childhood memories that are more strongly established in her mind.

One morning, after her daughter steps out of the house to collect a package, Ginkgo sets off to look for her mother. As ginkgo leaves fall around her, they trigger memories of her childhood. Transformed into her five-year-old self, she follows a golden carpet formed by the fallen leaves before falling into a puddle, where she is transported to a subconscious sea in which dream lanterns light up with various memories, just out of her reach. Suddenly, she is pulled back to the surface by the hand of a passer-by – and, in the arms of this apparent stranger, Gingko falls into the embrace she has been searching for.

Director bio:

Jiayun (June) Zhang is a Melbourne-based artist of Chinese ancestry. While completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation), she has enjoyed exploring various different media such as 2D hand-drawn, 2D paper puppet and needle-felt puppet stop-motion animation. Her second-year stop-motion film Melody of Seeds was featured at the Heart of Gold International Short Film Festival in 2025. She has created collaborative works for the Melbourne Planetarium and Science Gallery amongst various other projects across other disciplines at the VCA, collaborating with students from theatre and live-action filmmaking. She is inspired by heartwarming themes and aims to reflect the beauty of the human experience by cherishing precious moments in everyday life.

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation)