I directed my first short film after graduating high school in 2015, and that experience completely changed me. I still remember the film getting over 2,000 views within the first two hours on Tudou (a now-defunct Chinese video platform)—a number that felt surreal at the time. A family friend even told me that watching my film used up her entire internet data for the month. It was the first time I realized that a story living in my head could resonate so powerfully in others’. Filmmaking has been my greatest passion ever since. Every ~2 years, I create a new short film to explore philosophical questions I wrestle with—from how technology reshapes human connection to whether robotics can embody romance. If Lord Voldemort split his soul into horcruxes, I like to think I’ve poured a part of mine into every film I’ve made.

Founder, President @ MIT Film Makers Association

In 2022, I founded the MIT Filmmakers Association and served as its first president. A little bit of my motivation: I’ve always believed that everyone has a story worth telling—storytelling is how we pass down experiences, wisdom, and emotion across people and generations. Yet when I looked around, I noticed that the internet was dominated by two groups: widely successful individuals whose stories naturally attract attention, and full-time content creators whose primary goal is to generate profit. The latter often tailor their content to entertainment trends, sometimes diluting deeper or more meaningful messages in the process. But there’s a vast group in between—people who have valuable life experience, insight, and hard-earned knowledge, but who aren’t widely known. These are people who know how to get into a good school, navigate the complexities of a Ph.D., or find balance between material success and spiritual fulfillment. Their stories matter too—but most of them don’t have the time, resources, or production support to turn those stories into shareable content.

Videography, as it stands, can be expensive and time-consuming. The gear, the planning, the crew—it all adds up. My goal is to help lower the barrier to entry, so that more people can share meaningful stories and lived experience. MIT is a school with a strong engineering, I firmly believe we could leverage our engineerring strength into the power of speech.

Founder @ MIT AI Film Hack

When DALL·E 2 first launched, even when it only supports simple images, I knew an exciting time arrives! I am curious to see how it would transform video making in a few years. So I initiated MIT AI Film Hackathon in 2023—a compeititon where people use AI tools to make 3 min long films. In the first iteration, most films were produced like PPT slides one frame after another. Even this I saw some people could already tell perfect stories with this. Since then, hundreds of people have joined us across three editions between 2023 to 2025, sharing incredible short films with ever growing quality that amazed me every year.

I still remember the wave of fear when Sora was first announced. I, too, questioned whether our hackathon which was scheduled to be held a few days later would soon feel obsolete—like people who proudly walked miles before the invention of the car. But as I watched the evolution of the hackathon films over time, I realized something important: while the technical quality has improved dramatically and the time required to produce a video has shortened, what truly sets any video apart would be the content.

Here are the video playlists of the MIT AI Film Hacks:

MIT AI Film Hack 2023: Tell me your dream I chose “Tell Me Your Dream” as the theme for this hackathon because AI-generated images often contain imperfections and surreal hallucinations that resemble dreamlike scenes. Additionally, a tool called Deforum enables smooth transitions between frames, adding a disorienting, dreamlike quality to the visuals. We received 8 films during this hackathon. Among them, my favorite is DOG: Dream of Galaxy

MIT AI Film Hack 2024: Space I call home This hackathon we have sponsorship from almost all the major genAI startups like Pika, Pixverse, Eleven Labs etc. We had 300 participants for this hackathon. At that time, the character consistency and spatial consistency of generated videos was very poor. I also thought if 3D generation could be the solution and also invited three major 3D gen startups like Luma AI, VAST AI and Meshy. I was very impressed by the film Fish Tank which showcases how 3D gen might help filmmaking. During this hackathon, one film impressed me with its creativity called The Tale of Lipu Village. You can learn more about this year’s hackathon at this news blog from Media Lab

MIT AI Film Hack 2025: Dance in Life I picked this “dance” topic because I was hoping to challenge the motion consistency of existing tools and see how people can push the frontier. This year my favorite film is THE CLOWN which blends real footage with AI generated footages.

Organizer @ AI empowered storytellers community

In addition to organizing the film hackathons, I also co-organized the CVEU workshops at CVPR for two consecutive years. Alongside Anyi Rao, our goal was to build a vibrant community of AI-empowered storytellers. We envisioned a space where researchers, artists, students, and engineers could exchange ideas, share experiences, and even explore career opportunities. If you’re interested in joining this community, feel free to reach out via email!

My films

Here is a full lists of films I made through out the years.

重生之我在硅谷相亲 My dating life in Sillicon Valley This is a short film series that makes fun of the dating life in sillion valley, we picked four represented men stereotypes. You can also search 湾区导演张emo on Rednote if you want to learn more about me.

敢杀我的马 学术版 This short, funny film was created by a group of graduate students using generative AI (text-to-image, image-to-video). In the film, we mock various phenomena in academia, such as publishing pressure, paper review process.

养狗千日，帮我追到了小姐姐 Robotic Dog Finding me a Girlfriend This is the most humorous film I’ve ever produced, featuring a comical tale of a robotic dog that assists its owner in finding a girlfriend. Remarkably, we managed to shoot the entire film in just 1.5 days, achieving a record for the quickest production of a short film. On the surface, the film appears to be about an AI-powered dog encouraging its owner to pursue a relationship. However, it’s important to clarify that we do not endorse such behavior. We believe that intelligent individuals should focus on their own growth and decisions, rather than influencing others in their personal matters. Great thanks to Boyuan Chen for his tele operate the robotics dog.

遇见MIT Decode MIT This film talks about graduate student’s experience at MIT. I was the director of this film. This film has 171,000 views on Bilibili by Jan 2024.

交通诗人 My Poetic AlphaFriend This film, crafted in the last year of my college education, was inspired by a real-life story. It involved a significant investment of my time and effort. The story revolves around two boys who create an AI that becomes their best friend and confidant. By chance, the AI enrolls one of the boys in a class where he ultimately finds love. This film was very funny. While today we are familiar with LLM and ChatGPT, it’s worth noting that this film was shot in 2019, making its concept quite futuristic at the time.

Memory Cut Pro This film was created during my college years, a time when I was immersed in neuroscience. I was particularly astounded by optogenetics, a field developed by my PhD advisor, which has the capacity to alter animal emotions and thoughts by integrating devices into their brains. Convinced that brain-machine interfaces in humans are an impending reality, I crafted this film about a boy who uncovers this technology but ultimately decides to dismantle it, fearing it could enslave humanity if misused by malevolent individuals. Such personal heroism may seem unrealistic in real life, as advancement of technology is usually nonstoppable.

青春未名 Undefined Youth This is the first film I ever directed, inspired by my personal journey. After narrowly missing admission to Peking University by just three points on the Chinese College Entrance Exam, I spent 20 days in a state of deep reflection at home. During the final year of high school, I grappled with the concept of apriorism, which suggests that all events are predetermined by past actions. This viewpoint led me to believe that my fate was sealed from birth, a notion that deeply influenced my mindset prior to the exam. My film explores this period of my life, showcasing how apriorism and pessimism profoundly shaped my experiences. I was fortunate to work with three exceptionally talented actors and the entire dedicated film crew. The film resonated with viewers, garnering 2000 views on its release day on the now-defunct video platform Tudou. This project was a transformative experience for me, shifting me from an introvert to an extrovert as it compelled me to reach out and collaborate with others.