Entering the spotlight

UCLA may be a new producer of foreign language filmmakers. Of
the seven films honored in this year’s Spotlight Awards for
directing, two are in foreign languages and were shot in foreign
countries.

Chris Eska’s “Doki Doki” is set in Tokyo and
deals with mass transit passengers who finally connect after
sitting next to each other for years. Ham Tran’s “The
Anniversary” is about the memories of a Vietnamese Buddhist
monk. Both films will screen June 10 at the Director’s Guild
of America.

The event is part of this year’s UCLA Festival, which
showcases UCLA talent through screenings of almost 100 student
films. While graduate filmmaker Eska was inspired by his travels to
Asia as well as by Asian filmmaking, fellow graduate filmmaker Tran
based his film on a deeply ingrained part of his identity.

“When I went back to Vietnam, there was a feeling of,
“˜Wow, this is my homeland,'” Tran said.
“This is where I was born. There’s a longing for it,
but I know that it’s not my place anymore.”

Indeed, Tran’s place is now the high-stakes world of
independent filmmaking. “The Anniversary” won Grand
Prize at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, making it eligible for
next year’s Academy Awards. As a UCLA undergraduate, Tran was
inspired by the early work of his friend, Justin Lin, director of
“Better Luck Tomorrow.” As a UCLA film student, Tran
saw Lin’s graduate work. Now, Tran hopes to shadow Lin again
with an independent feature.

Tran has retained most of his crew from “The
Anniversary” for his next project, “Fire in the
Lake,” a script that was a finalist in a Sundance
screenwriting program. It’s about the aftermath of the
Vietnam War, when thousands of people were interned in prison
camps.

“It’s such a political story,” Tran said.
“Even if we wanted to (film in Vietnam), there was no way the
Vietnamese government would let us. The political prison camps were
Vietnam’s unpublicized internment experience.”

Despite Tran’s epic scope from the prison camp to refugee
camps to American immigration, “Fire in the Lake” is a
continuation of Tran’s rediscovery of his Vietnamese
identity.

Though he and his parents were born and raised in Vietnam, Tran
is ethnically Chinese and grew up in Saigon’s Chinatown. When
he immigrated to the United States with his family, his parents
converted from Buddhism to Christianity and spoke only Chinese and
English, not Vietnamese. Tran found his Vietnamese side after
seeing and joining the Vietnamese acting group Club of Noodles.
Soon his writing changed from Chinese stories to Vietnamese
ones.

“My parents think it’s interesting that I’m
being recognized as a Vietnamese filmmaker,” Tran said.
“It’s part of my identity. It’s something they
can’t erase.”

But even after the small-scale success of Lin’s
“Better Luck Tomorrow,” Asian storytelling is still a
liability in Hollywood. Even though the freedom UCLA provided in
realizing Tran’s ideas gives it an independent edge, it also
keeps commercially minded Hollywood at bay.

“What “˜The Anniversary’ shows is I’m
able to handle a feature,” Tran said. “The only thing
they would have issues with is “˜Does this kid want to make
Asian films or does he want to make commercial films? If he
doesn’t want to make commercials films, then we have no use
for him.'”

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