From Cookies to Politics
By Jordan Ikeda
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, May 3, 2008

Two documentarians speak about their projects that are on display at the 42nd Visual Communications Film Festival.

From comedy and drama to documentaries and shorts, the 24th edition of Visual Communications Asian Pacific Film Festival began yesterday and will continue through Thursday, May 8. Participants from all over the world have come to display their films and share the stories of Asian Pacifics in America and abroad.

The Rafu had the privilege of speaking with two directors who will be featured at the festival.

Director Anne Kaneko takes a look at the Peruvian art scene and how it has and continues to help shape and at times influence the political mindset of the country in her documentary.

Director Derek Shimoda takes a smart and playful examination of the origins of a North American Chinese cuisine staple—the fortune cookie.

Against The Grain: An Artist’s Survival Guide to Peru
Director: Anne Kaneko
Sunday, May 4 at 4:30 p.m.
Laemmele’s Sunset Theaters in West Hollywood

 
MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
Kaneko

RAFU: First off, what do you think about the VC film festival?

Anne Kaneko: They’ve been really loyal to me. I know everyone at VC. I’m the mentor for the ‘Armed with a Camera’ program. They have these scholarship/fellowship for up-and-coming filmmakers. In terms of the festival, it is really important in terms of fostering and supporting this community. I can’t imagine not having this festival, especially with the large Asian community here.

And there are so many festivals but in terms of distribution, my film should definitely be shown in a Latino context as well, but I’m not Latina. It’s harder for me to get in there. The Asian American film festivals have been really loyal to me, so I see what that means to have that kind of support. I mean, otherwise where would I screen my film?

And that’s the reality of filmmakers. It is so competitive out there.  

R: How did the idea for the movie come up?

AK: You know it’s funny because originally, my impetus for going to Peru was because I got this Fulbright. When I was applying for the Fulbright, I basically proposed a project involving Fujimori. I was supposed to go in August of 2000, but I was finishing up this other film so I couldn’t go. I pushed my Fulbright as late as I possibly could to March of the following year. But of course August, is basically when Fujimori left. All the corruption was coming out, everything was disintegrating for him in Peru. Even before that, his election was very dodgy and all the fraud.

By the time I got there he was gone. I didn’t really want to make a historical film. I could go chase him in Japan, but I was in Peru for a year, so I thought about what I could do in its place.

What peaked my interest were the “art actions”—the Lava Lavendera, which I didn’t actually see myself, but had heard a lot about it. What was still going on which was the “Wall of Shame.” There was another project called “Vaso de leche” (vase of milk) it was this other thing that mothers would do with milk. It was this idea that milk was pure and sort of cleaning corruption. They were doing this all over plazas all throughout the country. I was very intrigued by that. How interesting how these projects that these artists were doing seemed to have some impact and was on people’s consciousness.

I certainly can’t remember here, where something that artists did—it’s always very marginal in some way. But there, it really seemed to mobilize people. I don’t know if it really got people to do anything, but it was very symbolic for a lot of people.

I think that is what started me off.

It was also just my own personal question for what it would mean to be an artist somewhere different like Peru. I just imagined that it was different because clearly things are dysfunctional. I mean things are dysfunctional here as well, but it is degrees of dysfunction. So does that actually impact what you do? And what happens when there is more of this threat that perhaps if you did something wrong or something somebody didn’t like, something might happen to you.

R: How did you come across the artists?

AK: I think the art circle in Lima is very small despite the city being so big. It’s a big city. Like a third of the population of the country lives in or around Lima. It’s really the center of the country. Eduardo, Alfredo, and Natalia all know each other. It’s a very small community in that way.

R: Did you ever face much prejudice or racism due to your Japanese ethnicity?

AK: The good thing about living in somewhere like Lima is that people who are Asian can pass there. No one is going to really blink an eye because they will either assume you are Japanese or Chinese. Actually, the Chinese community is much bigger than the Japanese Peruvian community. The Chinese community is actually the biggest in Lima in all of South America.

Everyone is accustomed to seeing Asians there. It’s not unusual. So that’s a good thing. You don’t have to deal with the constant, ‘Who are you? What are you? What are you doing here?’ I mean once I opened my mouth they figured I was from somewhere else—a gringa (foreigner).

I think that the encounter I had in the plaza (that can be seen during the film) was more a symbol of the frustration going on in Lima. There is certainly ignorant people as there are everywhere who will make sweeping generalizations. But, well, I remember I was an election observer because Toledo came to office and then needed neutral people and since I’m a foreigner I volunteered. I remember, it was really funny, because I heard someone ask if who the “representative of Fujimori” was.

R: Perhaps talk about the parallels that might be present between here (the United States) and Lima

AK: I think Fujimori’s penchant for being very controlling, well, a lot of people like him because on the one hand, he brought order. In that sense there are fond memories of him. But it was at a price. He had this coo and he basically shut down congress. I mean, things that were much more extreme. You can’t imagine those things happening here. The press was very much controlled by him.

I don’t see that happening here to that extent, but I think especially after 9/11 this fear that came from that experience, I think that there is this kind of self-censorship that happens. Because there is this threat now, I think there are people who feel they can’t do certain things. People have more rights here and there is a certain level of protection, but I feel there are those parallels. This government is about Homeland Security, all these things that are infringing on what we have assumed were our freedoms, democratic rights.

The irony is that our president always talks about democracy and spreading this ideal throughout the world. And yet, it is such a relative term. And what does it really mean? Democracy here has changed and is problematic.

I will never say that things here are the same as they are in Lima, but my hope is that the movie will get people to think about how these things function, what they mean.
 
At the moment of 9/11 I was in Lima on a U.S. government grant. I didn’t want my government retaliating with violence because I saw the consequences of that in Lima. And I’ve traveled a lot and seen war in a lot of places. And If I’ve learned anything at all from all those travels—because I’ve been to Afghanistan, I’ve been to Vietnam, I’ve been to Cambodia—and I haven’t been there in the middle of a war, but it’s very clear to me that war is not a good thing, that it should be avoided at all costs. It cuts into people’s lives. Retaliating with violence seems so old school.

R: Do you think that is what you want to get across in the movie? Or is it more about the artistic side?

AK: No. I’m not up on any soapbox. I feel that it’s really just for people to think about. I’m not trying to persuade anyone of one thing or another. I think, if anything, art is essential. I think it is essential to any society. It has been part of all of civilization. Therefore, the issues about what one says, or how that dialogue occurs in a political or social sphere, is complicated. That’s all I’m really interested in is looking into what that entails.

R: What future projects are you looking into doing?

AK: Oh god, I am so exhausted from this film. I think want to do some little stuff, some fun stuff. I’m working with this Berlin-based artist. It’s interesting because the themes and subjects of her work are very similar to mine, but the forms are different.

R: There are a record number of women filmmakers at this year’s festival. What are your feelings on this?

AK: I feel that there are a lot of women filmmakers out there, but the Industry, and I don’t pretend to be heavily involved with it, but it is very much a boys game. You see a lot of women get to a certain point and then to just keep going it’s hard. Just to be a director and a woman, it’s hard. It is a big challenge.

It is hard to make films period. Especially if you’re trying to make films outside of the mainstream.”

R: What sort of advice would you give to people?

AK: Just do it. Have fun. And don’t expect to make money. But I don’t have any business sense, so it’s different for everyone. You kind of have to do this soul searching.”

Killing of a Chinese Cookie
Director: Derek Shimoda
Monday, May 5 at 7 p.m.
ImaginAsian Center in downtown Los Angeles

Shimoda

RAFU: How did you get started on this project?

Derek Shimoda: I had seen a newscast on the lottery and it involved the fortune cookie. That sort of sparked my interest. And then a few weeks later, my mother told me that she had always heard that fortune cookies had started right here in J-Town. So that really sparked my interest.

R: A fortune cookie though? Just seems…

DS: Well, I like to do things that are offbeat. I mean the fortune cookie is definitely something that will have people scratching their heads. People have told me that, at best, I would be able to maybe do a short film. And I agreed with them until I started doing the research on it.
 
R: The movie has a light-hearted, comedic tone, did you do that because of the subject matter?

DS: I don’t think you can do too serious a film on a [laughs] cookie. Especially one that is feature-length.

R: What can viewers gain from watching the movie?

DS: Well, absolutely entertainment. The humor aspect of it is what carries it. And you know, if you happen to learn something from it, then fantastic. What it is is that everyone in the United States has had a fortune cookie, whether they like it or not. That’s something the film expresses as well, that it is certainly in American culture—something that belongs to everybody.

R: Did you have the movie mapped out or did you just learn as you went through the process of making the movie?

DS: I pretty much did the research before hand, but I never stopped. Because it was such a long process, things kept coming up. Initially, doing the process, I didn’t know, well, this is my opinion, that they came from Japan. That was something that kind of developed while we were shooting. I never wanted to have a specific opinion about it because there were so many potential inventors. I didn’t want to put one person on a pedestal and make a determined, this is the inventor. Instead, I wanted to kind of leave it open-ended. But, when I went to Japan and had seen it for myself, it was pretty obvious where it had started.

R: So the definitive answer is…

I’ll just kind of leave it open, but in my opinion, it’s leading to Japan.

R: What other projects do you see yourself doing?

DS: Doing non-fiction comes more naturally to me. Actually, my writing partner and I were going to do our first fiction piece. I think I want to do another documentary.

R: Do you enjoy the process?

DS: Absolutely. I think what it is, simply not knowing what the end product is going to be. That’s what I enjoy most.

R: Do you see your work as informative or art?

DS: I think a bit of everything. I think initially, you try and go in there and inform people, educate them. But depending on what the topic is, like with a fortune cookie you can only do it with humor. Going into the project, I always had it in my mind that I didn’t want to do a feature length history lesson, because that is something that I certainly don’t want to see. That was always the goal to try and keep it light. If it was something a little more heavy, I would leave it to someone else.

R: You definitely have a knack for it…

DS: Thank you. I think I was fortunate because a lot of the people I interviewed had that personality that as a film director you sort of clinch your fist and say, ‘Yes! This is what I want.’

R: Aside from the humor, there is an art aspect to the film as well. Perhaps speak a little about that.

DS: In doing the film, I tried to make it one that I would like. In that sense, it takes a lot to keep me interested. In fact, one of the locations was Chop Suey. My parents have been going there for as long as I can remember, and that stuck with me. I always remembered the image of it. And that’s the thing too, I’ll come back to something that I’d seen a while ago. That’s what lends to it, that the things I film are interesting regardless of how I frame it.

R: For up-and-coming directors, what sort of advice would you have?

DS: Absolutely just to do it, because that’s the situation that I was in. I think short films are just calling cards. I just thought, hey I’ll do it. That’s why I funded it out of my own pocket because you’re going to have to jump through hoops in order to get funding. And that’s a long process. I just started it. One of the good things about documentaries, you can do one or two interviews and have those in the can and then maybe do another one a few months later. Whereas, with a feature length fiction piece, you have a time schedule, cast, etc.

R: What do you hope your film does from here on out?

DS: I think that any smart person, the goal is to get distribution. My intent certainly was not to just show it to family and friends. I’m hoping that it is going to be a jumping point for me to be afforded to do another project.