PART OF THE FURNITURE

2022, digital, 16 mins.
DIR. Jaina Liu

When an office worker discovers the ability to turn into a chair, he falls for a woman who turns into a lamp and must decide if he would like to be a chair or a human being.

directed and produced by Jaina Liu

written by Jaina Liu and Matthew McHaffie

produced by Carolina Ratcliff and Spandana Patanaik

co-production of London Film School, RagingMuse Production, and Studio E

A MAN WHO CAN TURN INTO A CHAIR...

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

I saw a woman holding a table lamp on the Tube once, and when that typical short blackout happened, for some reason, I thought the lamp came alive. At that moment, I felt its loneliness and can’t help but wonder: what if the lamp was a person?

Part of the Furniture is a magic realism story about the Modern Society and Culture and their habitants – us, our loneliness, anxiety, to be something else than our ordinary selves. In becoming furniture, these characters escape, dream, and actually lived and found love. They found their purpose in life.

Not all of us pursue a life of chairs and lamps, but all of us want to know why we exist. 7-year-old me seemed to decided that telling stories is why I exist; it is only fair then that I try to tell a story of Existence in a world that is often unkind and cold to those who wish to live wide awake.