Sleepwalker

In Sleepwalker (1971), Laura Ho crafts a dreamlike portrait of solitude and dislocation through the silent drift of an Asian woman across the urban landscape of Los Angeles. Shot in evocative black-and-white 16mm while Ho was a student in UCLA’s Ethno-Communications program, the film gradually shifts from documentary realism to surreal expression, blending environmental soundscapes and visual abstraction to explore themes of identity, invisibility, and diasporic longing.

Credits
Writer: Laura Ho Fineman
Producer: UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Executive Producer: UCLA Asian American Studies Center

Plays in

LA Rebellion: Toward a More Perfect Rebellion — Conversations with Josslyn Luckett

Spanning generations of filmmakers shaped by the LA Rebellion and UCLA’s Ethno-Communications program, this program revisits the urgency, experimentation, and community-rooted vision that defined a movement