1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

My background was in English literature, and I went to grad school to study video art. Seeing what it took to make a film in grad school, I wasn't sure I wanted to do this. But after graduation, as I watched more art house films in New York City, I started to find my passion telling stories through characters and moving images. I think filmmaking is still a powerful medium to connect with audiences.

2) What’s the backstory here - what was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?

The backstory is very similar to what was shown in the film. My Korean painter friend has a studio space close to Brooklyn Chinatown. When we were hanging out in this neighborhood, we saw this wall posted with a lot of hand written rental ads by a grocery store. He was struck by that and wanted to give it a shot looking for a room through these ads. As the ads were in Chinese, I was being his translator through the whole process. You basically called the number on the ads and went straight ahead to see the rooms, which was actually more efficient than we expected. The whole experience was full of unexpected events and it gave us an interesting perspective to observe the lesser-known neighborhood. 

But I didn't turn this into a filmmaking idea until my other artist friend, who is actually the male lead in this film decided to leave New York after almost 8 years. As an immigrant artist, I fully feel for him and that's when I started writing a personal narrative into the backstory, which led to the making of this film. 

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most, and the least?

The film was shot in one day with only natural light and practical lights on location. The crew members were DP, Sound and a Swing who is also the supporting male actor, Hai. The biggest challenge was to finish it by the end of that day. Being my own AD at the same time, I only gave myself enough time for no more than three takes for each shot. 

My favorite part of the filmmaking process is the phase of turning written ideas into images, which includes location scouting, casting, rehearsing and of course directing. And for indie filmmaking, I love to revise the script to include what we have on the spot, whether it's feeding a new line to the character or letting the location become part of the story, such as the name of the noodle shop. While my least favorite part of the process is dealing with the logistics and technical problems. In this case, our audio equipment malfunctioned from the very beginning, it wouldn't record more than 5 minutes for exterior scenes. The pacing was severely interrupted, but luckily we still got it done.

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

The film I saw recently that I really loved is Tale of Autumn by Éric Rohmer. His films always start out in a very slow pacing, but as the characters are played out so naturalistic and subtle narratives find their ways to come together, I'm always deeply engaged and connected with the characters. In Tale of Autumn, what seemed to center around a middle-age woman looking for a man quickly unveiled the complexity in several relationships. My favorite character is the woman who is already married but decided to publish an ad to help her friend. She went on the dates herself, which revealed so much about her subtle feelings about being a woman at her age. I guess for Éric Rohmer's films, I never walk away with drama, but with men's and women's deep inner feelings about life and relationships.

5) What’s next for you?

This covid 19 has totally changed my plan for this year. Right now I'm working on a few short stories in Chinese. I won't think about visualizing them as this point, I'll just embrace fiction writing as the primary medium to see how far my ideas go. When things are back to normal, I will probably develop one of them into a features script.  

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