Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (1996)

women, SA-I-GU/April 29 (1993), and AIDS/HIV in the Asian community, Out of Silence and Not a Simple Story (1994). Homes Apart: The Two Koreas (1991) tells of a family separated by war; To Love, Honor and Obey (1980), concerns domestic violence; and Mississippi Triangle (1983), explores black, white and Chinese American relations in the Mississippi Delta region. The Academy Award-nominated Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1989), examines a case in which an auto worker beat a Chinese-American engineer to death with a baseball bat and never spent a day in jail. The filmmakers — Choy and Renee Tajima—raise complex questions concerning the racial motivation of the killing. The Best Hotel on Skid Row(1990), also made with Tajima, humanizes the lives of the urban poor in Los Angeles, where they find despair, anger, humanity and hope. Choy’s list of credentials are impressive. She’s a board member of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association and founder of the Film News Now Foundation. But it’s her life’s experience as a woman, minority and a mother that establishes a common ground with the people who appear in her films, especially Asian Americans. “T feel it’s my responsibility almost like a political responsibility, to do films on Asian Americans as long as I am able to get funding." ANGLES: How do you bring diverse viewpoints in filmmaking to students? CHRISTINE CHOY: The curriculum and the people teaching are equally important. In the past I don’t think the graduate department had a person of color teaching directing. How we tell stories, how we work with actors and actresses, and the thematic perspectives have pretty much concentrated on an European approach. I don’t think that’s bad. Europe had a long history of producing great films from Pasolini to Rossellini to Truffaut to Godard. But the diversity within the independent community was not addressed. Incorporating the women’s point of view and people of color — how they translate a subject into filmic expression — gives students more choices. In this department we never had a woman teach directing. I will make my best effort to recruit more women. I’m teaching directing the documentary. The department has had an auteur approach, more or less dealing with feature films. But today, with the increased combination of film and television language, I believe it’s not genre that is going to be a primary issue. It’s more how you tell a story, or how you combine many possibilities — from experimental film, to animation, to narrative and documentary to mockumentary. I want to expand the imagination as far as possible and create a group of people familiar with all different genres. My fear is basically, if a person has a set ideology, religiously, politically and culturally, it’s difficult to expand. You begin to restrict your imagination. If we are able to train our students to have a global mind, once the philosophy is instilled, they will be able to open their brains to accept differences from others. At the same 8 @ ANGLES time you can’t go completely in one direction such as showing only work by women or people of color. ANGLES: Overall, what does NYU prepare students for after they graduate. CHOY: We prepare students to be directors, but really, one in a million actually become directors. So the film school also equips them with technical know-how and a business savvy. It’s dealing with financing, packaging, legal aspects, proposal writing. It’s as simple as how to make a phone call or write a cover letter and it’s as complicated as budgeting. I tell them they should not view themselves only in terms of writing and directing. The only reason I see myself continuing to be able to make films is that I’m one of the very few women who direct, shoot, light and sound record. These are all technical areas that I was equipped to do because I didn’t have the money to hire people. Pm trying to encourage them to not only be good at the theatrical aspects but also an expert in at least one of the craft areas — editing, sound, lighting. That’s always going to be there. ANGLES: What’s your approach in teaching documentary filmmaking? CHOY: People think you don’t need to direct documentaries because you are working with real people. That’s a myth. Directing documentaries is more difficult than dealing with actors and actresses since you don’t spoon feed the information. You don’t have a readymade script. How you structure it aesthetically, structurally and thematically requires a tremendous amount of imagination. ANGLES: In your documentaries one of your techniques has been to establish an intimate atmosphere and rapport with the people interviewed. In Best Hotel, for example, the residents of the Madison Hotel were disarmingly honest and open about their lives. How do you establish that kind of trust? CHOY: We hung out for months before shooting at the Madison, not knowing what the outcome would be. Our work space was the laundry room. The crew was very small and not very intimidating. You make people comfortable if you respect them rather than coming in to exploit their lives. Everyone feels that exploitation. We aren’t pointing fingers. Instead we are looking at people as human beings with love, greed, jealousy, fears —like all human beings. When I do an interview, I talk about myself a lot. It’s easy for me as a woman and an immigrant. I speak quite a few Asian languages so I talk with immigrants rather well. And I can talk to scholars. My experience is pretty wideranging. I try to put myself in other people’s shoes. I went through a lot, too. I came here when I was 14, was kicked out of high school. I could easily be like Becky or any of those residents (of the Madison). I was pregnant when I was 20, on food stamps, unemployment. I really understand what it’s like to be poor. I was in the Ivy League. I went through both gamuts of class experience from the bottom to the top.