Remotely Intimate (3CR, Melbourne)

By Thanh Hằng Phạm

It began in 2014 on OK Cupid, and it was an 88% match. 

This person lived in Seattle and I never thought we would cross paths in real life. This wasn’t your typical relationship on a dating website. It was a friendship and it was a connection that brought me home. 

I could not look away. 

Yearning is inherently queer and my yearning felt incomplete without community. That’s when I turned to five queer people of color (qpoc) friends to help me understand the fractured and woven nature of home and love in the diaspora.

Remotely Intimate began in my hometown, Melbourne, but four months later I travelled to where my heart yearned for the most — Southern California and Seattle Washington. This documentary was finished and submitted on September 12th at 23:51 PDT in Seattle where I first met my 88% match.

To expand my experience of love and home in the diaspora is never been easy. Often the feeling of arriving is always followed immediately by the feeling of leaving. 

How can we land our hearts in places we call home?

For those who have yearned for home and loved across distance, and for those who have left home to arrive in their hearts — this is for you. 

Thank you to my friends, family and qpoc community in the diaspora. Thank you to the following for sharing your voices, talent, love for Remotely Intimate: 

• Alexis Padriga Lim for being my 88% match and for being the person to take me home; anytime, anywhere. 
• Gabi Briggs for sharing with me her love for Anaiwan & Gumbangier Country and for teaching me the transient nature of love. 
• Maddee Clarke for making me laugh and feel at ease when we talk about technology and long-distance relationships. 
• Dawn Iris Dangkomen for inserting faith into my heart that long distance love is possible. 
• Genesis Lauu for showing me the exits and entries of love and home along the U.S. highways. 
• Nat Newton for being my first listener and sparking the ‘extra’ in the ordinary. 
• Wahe Kavara and Laykn Tarai for your beautiful melodic compositions. 
• Lee Lai for producing a dreamy poster.

_{This piece was made for the CBAA's National Features & Documentary Series 2016, a showcase of work by new and emerging Australian community radio producers, with training and mentoring provided by the Community and Media Training Organisation. The opinions expressed in National Features & Documentary Series content are those of the individual producers or their interviewees, and not necessarily shared by the CBAA or CMTO.}