You are currently browsing all entries tagged with 'chris chan lee'

More of 97

  • December 5, 2009 2:00 am

Friend of the Offenders Angie Suh shares her experience as part of the Class of ’97.

before obama bogarted it, “hope” with our misty-eyed intensity, was what we, the 97′ gang, were about. we all loved film, enough to piss our parents off and go to film school instead of law school.

when our film finally hit the festival circuit in ’97 we met others like us, (we were not alone!). we were all around the same age, broke, and excited to what lay ahead. we traded war stories, bummed cigs, and downed copious amounts of alcohol. keep in mind these were the days of record sales at film fests. we didn’t expect a big payday but did pray to baby jesus for distribution. in our humble hearts seeing our effort play in a “real” theater would justify all the hard work, and if that got us better agents who could get us some paying gigs, that would be friggin’ awesome, dude!
SCN_0001
we did endless q & a’s, photo ops, had rock star moments signing autographs. i was even propositioned quite bluntly, ‘… so you wanna f***?”, and would’ve been offended had the would-be playa not been barely legal and sincere, bless his heart.

’97 Roundtable Roundup

  • October 4, 2009 7:24 pm

Classof19972009
One of the more enjoyable things about growing old is you get to talk about and revisit the past. And usually you get to pick and choose what you want to revisit. I had the opportunity to catch up with everyone from our ’97 experience this past weekend but it was way too short. Part of it is that we haven’t seen each other in years. And if it were 1997 we’d be hanging out til the sun came up. But it’s 2009 and I gots a baby at home so it was bye bye by 11. Thank you Quentin and Koji at ID Fest for setting this up. Thank you Martin for moderating. And thank you everyone for taking your Saturday night out to hang with us. If you’re interested, Eric posted the discussion on his Giant Robot podcast.  Good times…

Class of ’97

  • October 2, 2009 1:48 am

About a month ago I got a call from my good friend Quentin that our little indie film SHOPPING FOR FANGS from back in the days was going to be screening at a film festival as part of its retrospective series along with Rea Tajiri’s STRAWBERRY FIELDS, Michael Aki and Eric Nakamura’s SUNSETS, and Chris Chan Lee’s YELLOW.
6927_144934380894_608830894_3175785_5291456_n
The four films have since been dubbed by some as the “Asian American New Wave of 1997″.

To me it was a point of entrance into something I never thought I’d get a chance to be a part of and since then has played a huge role in shaping my perspective as not only as a filmmaker but as a person. So I thought it would be interesting to get in touch with the gang twelve years later and ask them what they took away from the experience.