3 Comments

Thank you for showing Invisible Nation in Brookline! I learned a lot from the film, and even found the translation in the subtitles to be very well done ("At the same token for "tongshi" was a particularly inspired choice). I found the Q&A afterwards to be very stimulating, and I meant to ask during the Q&A whether the film has been shown in public libraries. I noticed some notable published Taiwanese authors were interviewed, including Shawna Yang Ryan and Michelle Kuo.

Expand full comment

(7) "A Crackdown on Unearned Film Credits"

I wish this were true. It started with Associate Producer Credits for the wife or husband of the Star cast member on a big budget film to Producing Credits for Crowdfunding Contributors on a micro budget. Nowadays, almost every sales agent wants an Executive Producer Credit on your film before they will help you sell it. I respect the title of Producer and will not accept it unless I have actually done something important in the making of the film.

Expand full comment

(2) Give me something new, please! I hope you really mean it. Looking for new genres to energize the audiences that are getting the same-old, same-old, over and over again. I have been writing in a new genre for quite a long time. A genre that other writers, much more talented than I, should be writing in.

It's the solution genre, films that uplift, inspire and make one feel that anything is possible. I was told by someone with years of experience in the industry, that films are to entertain, to make us forget about our problems, not to help us solve them.

In my opinion, the best docs have been trying to do that for years. Narrative films, as a meld of the doc and fiction, can do that as well. Making a solution film is not impossible. We shot one in 12 days during the pandemic.

Someone told me, well you can offer possible solutions in a fiction film and inspire the viewers to take action on the problem, but you can't solve a problem with narrative feature. In the sequel to our first solution film, we want to institute a possible solution to a problem, while making the film. If we can do that, hopefully it will inspire other aspiring filmmakers to do the same.

Expand full comment