CineVue speaks with Victoria Linchong about her feature directorial debut – ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN. Blending personal narrative with political sensibilities, she discusses her motivation in producing the documentary and her discovery along the way. She also reveals her journey as an actor, entrepreneur, and filmmaker.
CINEVUE: How did ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN evolve from a personal journey back to Taiwan, into a politically driven narrative?
Victoria Linchong: I first began shooting this film in the summer of 2008 when I returned to Taiwan with my family. It was my father’s first visit to Taiwan since 1986, when the island wasstill under martial law. I had been back myself in 2001 and I was amazed by how much had changed – just hearing people speaking Taiwanese openly was mind-blowing since all languages except Mandarin were banned during my childhood. So my first thought was to just record the trip and compare the repressed Taiwan of 1986 to the all-new semi-democratic Taiwan of 2008. But I quickly realized that no one, not even most Taiwanese-Americans, would understand why my father spent most of the trip alternating between weeping and staring in amazement. So I developed a second storyline with interviews and animation illustrating the history of Taiwan to contextualize our trip. And then I added a third storyline to underscore the main thesis in the film, which is that Taiwan’s history has been deliberately confused for political purposes – first because of the Cold War and now because of pressure from China. With three overlapping storylines, the documentary is sort of like a collage. Or like one of those Russian nesting dolls – inside the family road-trip is a history of Taiwan and inside that, is a quest for identity.
CV: Can you elaborate on what you mean by Taiwan’s struggle for democracy? Isn’t Taiwan “Free China?” What is the current status of relationship between Taiwan and China? Does your film speak upon this relationship?
VL: Taiwan has no political relationship with China. Is that a really radical thing to say? It’s
true. Taiwan has its own president, its own parliament. It makes its own decisions and has never been part of Communist China. What’s confusing is that Taiwan has been thoroughly conflated with the Republic of China (ROC), which is the same as the Kuomintang (KMT). This is the Nationalist Party of China, which split from China in 1949. But the Taiwanese people had already been on the island for over three hundred years – and the indigenous people on the island had been there for thousands of years. A lot of people I talk to are surprised that the Chinese who came to Taiwan after World War II are only approximately 10% of the population of 23 million. The KMT just happen to control everything – the media, the legislature – so the only story the rest of the world gets to hear is theirs. The Taiwanese are never included in the One China debate. It’s as if we don’t exist. And okay, I’m being a little coy. The relationship that most Taiwanese have with China – if they have one at all – is economic. Like many businesses in America, manufacturing has been outsourced to China, where labor is ridiculously cheap and plentiful. But I’d like to suggest that China needs Taiwan more than Taiwan needs China. Gasp, shut my mouth, did I just say that?
CV: There is a lot of clarification of history within the documentary, what is your goal in creating this film? And who is your audience?
VL: Well, I hope that the history is presented in an entertaining and artistic way. The film has a lot of images of things being obscured – clouds over a mountain, smoke from incense, rain on windowpanes. And a lot of images of a road being traveled – get it? Well, just to spell it out, I’m hoping to send a message, subliminal or not, that Taiwan’s history has been deliberately repressed and misrepresented. Hopefully, the film will get people to ask questions about Taiwan and marvel at its strange quandary. A country that is not really considered a country. A homegrown democracy that should be valued by the Western world, but is instead considered a nuisance and a threat to global peace. I mean, what kind of weird situation is that? The film does offer an introduction to Taiwan through the road-trip element, so I do hope for a wider international audience. But I also hope the Taiwanese will appreciate a second-generation American take on their issues. And as to my goals, well, I think that democracy has to be fought for and preserved. It isn’t inevitable, like trees lose their leaves in the winter. Countries don’t just naturally democratize. Authoritarian regimes don’t just decide to give up their powers. I’d like to make people aware that Taiwan suffered under a fifty-year martial law during which over 140,000 people died or disappeared. And I’d like to get more people on the side of Taiwan democracy. I think that international support and pressure is key for Taiwan to preserve the democratic rights that it fought so hard for. And the first step to that is for people to know the full story and empathize.
CV: Where are you in the project now, and how can we find out more about the film?
VL: I am currently in post-production on the film. We have a fifty-minute rough cut, which I screened for an invited audience at Anthology Film Archives last year. Well, most of it was screened. I was working on sound issues until the last minute and I dashed to the theater the moment the DVD popped out of the machine. During the screening, we had technical difficulty, so no one has seen the ending yet. But I got a pretty good idea of what needed clarification from what did screen. Last summer, I returned to Taiwan to film the last bit of footage. I’m hoping to finish editing by the beginning of next year and to pay for the skills of an editor and animator, I’m offering pre-sales of the film until December 8th. Just a few more days!
If you’d like to help out, the final funding campaign is at http://www.indiegogo.com/almosthometaiwan2/x/155838 and more about the film is at http://almosthometaiwan.wordpress.com
CV: How did you shift from being a theatre artist to a filmmaker?
VL: I started working in theater when I was 14 as an actor and I produced my first play when I was 17. I also acted in some independent films. So, one day, I was in a falafel shop in the East Village and I ran into the producer of a film I’d been in. We got to talking and I ended up working with his film company for the next three years as a writer and dramaturge. I wrote analyses for the scripts that were submitted, polished a few scripts that were optioned, and eventually I was commissioned to write a few screenplays. So that’s how I got started in film. And then I wrote a feature film with a producer who said he was putting up most of the funding. I had never directed a film before, so to get my feet wet, I signed up for Asian CineVision’s 72 Hour Film Shootout and made DOUBLE DEALING, which placed in the finals. The feature project didn’t happen but I’ve since made another short documentary, A WALK AROUND THE BLOCK, where I basically find a hundred years history simply by walking around my East Village block. ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN will be my first feature-length documentary.
CV: What do you think is the biggest difference between working in theater and film?
VL: I always say you have to be slightly masochistic to be an artist of any sort. It’s hard to get anything done and there is so much rejection. Theater and film are probably two of the more masochistic art forms since you can’t do anything by yourself and you’re only as good as your team. So just to get to the point when you can begin creating, you have to either be able to pay people or you have to figure out how to wheedle them into working with you. Basically, you’re constantly begging and constantly getting rejected. Of course, the big difference with theater is that it’s a live medium, which I think is so important, especially now with the way recent technology is so isolating. There’s a beautiful interaction between audience and actors in great theater that doesn’t occur so much with film. But with film, you have a more contemporary medium, one that maybe doesn’t reach so deeply but it does reach much more broadly. A lot of people have never been to theater, but nearly everyone has seen a film. And just to clarify so I’m not stoned to death by film buffs, what I mean by film not reaching as deeply as theater is that I’ve never heard of a film inciting people to protest in the street like opening night of WAITING FOR LEFTY. Though of course a film can be affecting and eye opening. I think maybe film is 3/4 art and 1/4 social rally, while theater is maybe half and half.
CV: Do you consider yourself an Asian American filmmaker and artist? Why or why not?
VL: I’m Nuyorasian. It’s a subset of Asian-American but it’s the poorer cousin. Or maybe it’s the loud immigrant cousin. I identify with the Asians that work in sweatshops, laundries and kitchens – the urban underbelly, the illegal immigrants – more than I identify with the model minority. I think because of this, I’ve never felt much a part of the Asian-American arts community. Maybe I’m just weirdly sensitive, but it always seems to me that the stories I’m interested in are a little bit of an embarrassment to the Asian-American community. No one wants to hear about working class immigrants, not even working class immigrants. I mean, Asians aren’t really encouraged to pursue the arts so most Asian-Americans who are in theater and film usually stumble onto it in college. This is not my experience – though I attended Oxford University for a summer, I never graduated high school. So while I can’t help but explore the Nuyorasian world that I’m familiar with, I’m not your typical Asian-American theater and film artist. Can you tell I’m conflicted by all this? Yeah, I’m just an alien from outer space. Or a visitor from a hundred years ago.
CV: If you can leave one piece of advice for aspiring artists and filmmakers, what would it be?
VL: I think the most important thing about being an artist is that you need to know where you are in the continuum of things and pass the torch along. The more you know about the medium and it’s history, the more you have to draw from. And you have to have a LOT of determination and confidence. It’s a hard way to make an easy living. Even if you have a rich uncle.
Victoria Linchong (林鍾維春) is an award-winning Taiwanese-American actress, writer, producer and director working in both theater and film. She is currently in post-production for ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN, a documentary about Taiwan’s identity and independence and workshopping BIG FLOWER EATER, an experimental play that examines the history of women in Asia through shamanism. She is the founder and Artistic Director of the intercultural theater and film company Direct Arts. See more about her work at http://almosthometaiwan.