NEWS | MAGAZINE | VOLUME 26-2 JULY 2001

*Filmmakers network at the Visual Communications Film Festival during a luncheon at Pinot Hollywood.*

Pride spilled forth in abundance at the recent Visual Communications (VC) Film Festival (May 17-24) at the DGA. "Gushing with pride," in fact, was how VC Executive Director Linda Mabalot described the sentiments of festival co-directors Abraham Ferrer and David Magdael, as the trio proudly presented more than 100 short films, features and videos from Asian Pacific, Asian-American and Asian international artists from across the globe.

Although 2001 was the "Sweet 16" edition of the VC Film Festival-Visual Communications was founded in 1970 by Asian-American film school students, educators, artists and community activists and has evolved from a loose collective into one of the most essential Asian-American media arts centers in the country -- the event continues to fly under Hollywood's radar. That may all change, of course, with the Oscar success of Ang Lee's subtitled martial arts epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the powerhouse marketing of Hong Kong stars Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan and director John Woo, in America. But for the many young Asian-American filmmakers screening at the DGA this year, distribution was not uppermost in their minds.

"This festival is one of the few that supports filmmakers as artists, and continues to foster a sense of community," noted Fatimah Tobing Rony, whose short film Everything in Between marks her fourth return trip to the VC Fest. "I'm just so grateful that they keep accepting my films," Rony laughed. Her digital glimpse into the evolving identities of gay Asians in Los Angeles won the DGA Student Film Award last year.

DGA Asian-American Committee Co-chairs, Henry Chan and Wenda Fong, were among the filmmakers present for VC's opening-night festivities. Partying before a screening of Timothy Linh Bui's absorbing and emotional Vietnam-era feature, Green Dragon, Chan and Fong both expressed strong feelings on the current state of Asian-American independents. The story of Vietnam war refugees caught between their war-torn pasts and their ill-defined futures at a Camp Pendleton marine base, Green Dragon was filled with ironic parallels to the struggles of many Asian-American directors caught between two worlds in Hollywood.

"We are still banging our heads at the doors and a lot of us are bleeding," Henry Chan noted. "I have friends who have made excellent independent films -- usually with their own money by maxing out their credit cards or borrowing from their families -- and they cannot find any distribution. A recent example was the Filipino-themed opening film at last year's VC Festival, Debut. Despite a great response, they had to self-distribute in the Bay Area, and they are doing very well. Ang Lee's success has helped open things up. But this festival is geared to helping young directors and those who are not as commercially minded. The solution is just to continue banging our heads against the doors, and hopefully more of them will open."

Fong, an executive with Fox Television, has been a DGA member for 21 years. She noted that, at the time she joined the Guild, there were only a handful of Asian-American members. "We have now identified more than 180 Asian-American filmmakers within the DGA," Fong observed, "and this festival helps bring in a brand-new generation for us to nurture, mentor and recruit. In terms of my area, television, all of the networks are making major efforts to encourage producers to hire a diversity of directors, so things are improving. But we obviously have a long way to go."

Fortunately, VC 2001 filmmakers didn't have a long way to go for the DGA-sponsored luncheon at Pinot Hollywood, the afternoon after Green Dragon's rousing opening-night premiere. DGA President Jack Shea opened up the luncheon with remarks aimed straight at the creative hearts of the many first-time directors present. "The Directors Guild takes the issue of creative rights very seriously," Shea announced. "No matter where you are in the world as a filmmaker, there are always people who want to change, and even censor, your work. That's why we would urge you to consider making the Directors Guild your home. Above all else, we will protect those creative rights essential to what you all do as filmmakers."

"I'm extremely gratified to see so many Asian-American filmmakers who are so much younger than me," Uno laughed, "because it means reinforcements are on the way." Uno recounted a timely story illustrating the importance of continuity among each successive generation of film artists. "I was reading this great book at Starbucks the other day about the behind-the-scenes scoop of Pearl Harbor. This guy near me started a dialogue and asked, 'How do you bring all the revelations in that book up to the present?' I told him that more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans had their rights taken away simply because of their racial heritage. When I see a room full of young Asian-American directors, I'm filled with so much pride because I know you will tell the truth about us, and about the lessons of the past. There's a whole lot left to do and I'm confident you all will find the courage and strength to carry it through."

Courage and strength were apt terms to describe the incredible career of Hong Kong–born director John Woo. The action master, best known in America for Hard Target, Face-off and Mission Impossible 2, spoke to an audience of mostly young filmmakers at a Saturday-morning DGA seminar. Woo talked for nearly two hours with moderator Walt Louie about his poverty-ridden upbringing in a Hong Kong slum and how the twin paragons of art and Christianity proved to be his only salvation. His soft-spoken tales ironically resembled a John Woo movie -- filled with violence, action and a fierce sense of right and wrong.

"There were a lot of bad people around," Woo said about his Hong Kong neighborhood. "Drug dealers, gamblers, prostitutes, all of that happened. I had to work very hard to survive. Every morning when I woke up the first thing I did was just grab something, like a bat or a brick, and use it as a weapon. Every day I ran out of the alley, there was some kind of ambush or attack, and I had to fight back with something."

Woo noted that the church and the theater were his only places of refuge. "Especially while I was watching a musical," Woo said, "which gave me so much of a dream, so much of a fantasy. I was amazed that the people in those musicals were so beautiful. Everybody loves each other and cares about each other and the songs were so beautiful and wardrobe and the sets. It was the first time I learned about romance on-screen, from the French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I was so poor I had to steal books to learn about art, philosophy and music, so I could make my own films."

Following a screened clip from Woo's kinetic masterpiece Hard Boiled, moderator Walt Louie was stunned to learn that the director began his five-plus minute scene of continuous action -- set in a real-life Hong Kong tea house -- without a script.

"We were still finishing it," Woo laughed. "When we heard they were going to tear down this historic tea house, we rushed over and they said we could only shoot at night. The first night everyone was there, crew, actors, etc. and I still had no idea how to shoot the scene. Then I saw this banister in the lobby, and I got the idea to have our hero slide down it shooting the bad guy with two guns. To me it was like dancing, the choreography and movement. I got very excited and built the entire scene back from that point. My secret is that I never use storyboards, and never let the crew know what we are going to shoot. I try to keep everyone excited with anticipation about the next shot."

"It was inspired by the Spy vs. Spy series in Mad magazine," Woo deadpanned. "Those two guys love each other and hate each other, and are always trying to kill each other. In all my movies I try to look for the friendship between two different kinds of people. I always believe we all have something in common no matter where we come from. One is a killer, one is a cop and that is the two extremes of people. You know how they get together and how they know each other and how they get into each other's world."

Getting into John Woo's world held the room of indie film lovers spellbound for the entire morning. But he was not the only director featured at the VC seminars. Later that same afternoon, Louie took to the video deck again to introduce clips and talk filmmaking with Tony Bui (Three Seasons), and DGA director members Reginald Hudlin (House Party) and Michael Uno (The Wash).

Reginald Hudlin talked about being exposed to independent films through his filmmaker brother, Warrington, in his native St. Louis. "That was back when they were still called underground films," Hudlin smiled. "I still wanted to come to Hollywood and feed the system that had weaned me. But I knew from watching those films that I could be totally free to make any type of movie I wanted if I was willing to pay the price."

Hudlin noted that the price in the movie industry always means "dependence" of one form or another, virtually stripping the term "independent film" of any real significance. "You're getting money from someone in most cases," Hudlin added. "Or you're not getting money from anyone. So what are you willing to trade?" Tony Bui, whose affecting feature debut Three Seasons, was a triple award winner at Sundance, talked about leaving Vietnam as a boat refugee at the age of 2, and settling in Silicon Valley. "My father was laid off from his job at Memorex and he started a chain of video stores," Bui said. "There were always thousands of movies in our garage, and my brother and I were always watching Hollywood movies. It wasn't until I went down to film school at Loyola-Marymount, and then went back to Vietnam that same year, that I was exposed to independent cinema. I was on parallel journeys that were bound to collide--watching all these personalized art films and returning to the country I was born in for the first time. Eventually, I made a film simply to show Vietnam on-screen as I had never seen it shown before."

Exploring ground few have covered before was the theme for the Sunday round of seminars at VC Fest 2001. Panels included "Voices From the Asian Front," featuring five of the festival's most daring and talented Asian-American filmmakers: Timothy Linh Bui (Green Dragon), Abraham Lim (Roads and Bridges), Rod Pulido (The Flip Side), Fatimah Tobing Rony (Everything in Between) and Anurag Mehta (American Chai); "Generation DV: The Digital Explosion" with DGA member Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck) and Quentin Lee; and "Asian Women in Film" featuring indie producers Lisa Ondera (Debut) and Janet Yang (The Joy Luck Club).

The morning panel, made up solely of VC Fest directors, provided the most sparks. Robert Altman protégé Abraham Lim challenged the panel and the audience to name one Asian-American male star who commands a dominating sexual presence on-screen. "I'm really pissed about this," Lim railed, "because until we have a threatening Asian-American male star, a Denzel Washington or a Wesley Snipes, who really kicks ass, the mainstream will not take notice."

Anurag Mehta, whose gleeful Indian-American comedy, American Chai, won the Audience Award at Slamdance, took a less strident tone than Lim but expressed similar feelings. "We are going through a similar thing to what Rod experienced with his Filipino themes on The Flip Side. We're criticized for being not Indian enough, then are passed over by distributors for being too Indian to market effectively. It's an interesting problem."

"What we need is to unify all these different Asian cultures at the box office -- Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc. -- into a power base that turns out for our movies," Lim added. "All Hollywood respects is green and that's why you've seen an explosion in African-American films -- because that community turns out in numbers to support those directors."

Lim's words echoed throughout the DGA atrium, and straight on through to the sold-out closing-night ceremonies at the Japan American Theater. Prior to the awards ceremony, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante had hosted a party celebrating Visual Communications. Bustamante worked tirelessly for many months to strike a restored print of DGA member John Korty's 1976 NBC movie for television, Farewell to Manzanar, to close out the festival. Adapted by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston from her book about being forced into a California internment camp after Pearl Harbor, Farewell to Manzanar, has never been screened theatrically and had been unavailable to TV audiences since its original broadcast. With its fluid and penetrating cinematography by Hiro Narita, and an outstanding Japanese-American cast, many of whom joined director Korty on-stage for a lengthy standing ovation, Farewell to Manzanar still held the power of honest storytelling 25 years later.

Beaming with pride as he accepted his award for The Flip Side, Filipino-American director Rod Pulido best summed up the spirit and integrity of the Visual Communications event. "Since this is my first and probably only award, I'd like to dedicate it to all the struggling filmmakers out there who are spending every dime, and literally starving for their craft," Pulido announced. "If I could make The Flip Side on a budget of $8,000 by substitute teaching, then you can find a way too. My film is living proof that it can be done. So just keep at it, keep working, and all your work will be rewarded.