Untitled KQT Project is a documentary about two queer and trans public figures in Seoul, Korea, who nurture a chosen family of nightlife performers as they confront societal surveillance, biological relatives, and their own internalized fears.

This is a very special project to me. I met the director through queer Asian creative community here in NYC, at a time when I was juggling several gigs – at the Asian American Writers Workshop, as a film composer, and as a solo artist. As I’ve gained some experience in the industry, I’ve come to realize how rare it is to find projects that resonate on personal, political, and creative levels, let alone working with friends. This is one of those projects.

The footage we’ve gathered is so intimate and raw – and it mostly spans between the nightclub space where the protagonists work, and their home lives. In watching through the footage, I’ve started picking up on the striking contrast between the raucous nightclub soundscape, and the relative quiet of the characters’ home lives, which are punctuated by the mundane sounds of daily life – an elevator dinging, a cigarette burning, a car honking on the street. I want the film’s sound design to play off these natural contrasts.

I’m envisioning a film score that at times is more naturalistic, minimalist and ambient – and aligns with the observational nature of the film’s verite footage. I also want to layer in extended sequences of a more stylized, stranger, electronic sound, that underscores the tense emotional dynamics of the protagonists’ daily lived experiences and that foreshadows key events within the narrative structure. Also as a solo musician who regularly plays in spaces similar to the ones in this film, I’ll be pulling from my personal music practices which is something I don’t get to do often as a film composer. Specifically I’ll be pulling more electronic sounds as well as experimental practices with distortion and feedback. I’m also interested in working in contemporary influences from the cross-cultural DJ and electronic music scenes in NYC and throughout Asia that I’m actively part of as an artist, musician, and nightlife dweller.

I’m going to use the funds to upgrade my home studio which is sorely in need of improvements, as well as paying musicians, mixing and studio fees, and supporting myself while I turn down more commercial jobs to work on KQT. These funds will also give me the space to experiment and play on this score, which I think is an essential part of composition and something that’s difficult to obtain in this industry.

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Lia Ouyang Rusli (She/they) is a film composer & artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the composer of the films Problemista (A24), Fantasmas (HBO), Bruiser (Hulu), as well as upcoming films Sorry Baby (A24) and Happyend (Metrograph Pictures). Her films have been featured at global film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Sundance, BIFF, TIFF, Berlinale, and SXSW.

Under her solo moniker OHYUNG, she produces genre-shifting music that moves between ambient, experimental pop, and distorted noise. In March 2025 she released You Are Always On My Mind, a hazy, trip-hop laced experimental pop record described by Paste as “an unpredictable masterpiece” and Pitchfork as an “extraordinary burst of pop.” Their previous album imagine naked! is a collection of ambient soundscapes and was described by The Quietus as a “masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions” and hailed by NPR as one of the best 50 albums of 2022.