Emory Chao Johnson (they/them) is an artist settled on the land of the Tongva (Los Angeles Basin) whose work centers on the real and abstract forces that charge visions of new lifeworlds. Chao Johnson’s current short film 默 (To Write from Memory) had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. Previously, Chao Johnson workshopped the project as an invited panelist at UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Thinking Gender 2022: Transgender Studies at the Intersections Graduate Student Conference.
Their 2020 short F1-100 has screened at over a dozen film festivals and received awards, including the Loni Ding Award for Social Issue Documentary from CAAMFest and the Linda Mabalot New Directors/New Visions Award from the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. F1-100 was also recognized with special mentions at the 2021 Palm Springs International ShortFest and Outfest LA 2021.
Chao Johnson was a production fellow on the Netflix Original Documentary Disclosure (dir. Sam Feder). They received an MFA in Film and Television from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT).