Power or Performance? is a practice-based short film exploring femininity, identity, and self-performance within digital culture. The film follows Ella, a young woman shaped by online performances of confidence and desirability, seeing how these images relate to the idea of empowerment. As she becomes increasingly consumed by visibility and validation culture, the boundaries between authentic self-expression and performance begin to blur.
Power or Performance? explores the emotional tension between empowerment and surveillance, asking how much of contemporary femininity is performed for ourselves, and how much is shaped by the expectation of being watched and adored. By recontextualising familiar sexualised imagery within moments of discomfort, the film challenges audiences to reconsider how feminine bodies are consumed, aestheticised, and interpreted online. Soft glamour aesthetics are contrasted with unsettling undertones, creating a visual world that feels both seductive and emotionally fractured.
Rather than criticising femininity or self-expression, Power or Performance? invites audiences to reflect on the pressures of visibility, the performance of confidence, and the contradictions of empowerment within contemporary visual culture.