I got lucky to have Jeong-won and the other child actors. They were very authentic and sincere on set. We built trust [between us] even before shooting began. In every scene, I would ask them questions. There’s a scene where [Eun-hee] asks her mom whether she’s pretty. It’s a pivotal scene. So I would ask Jeong-won, “How would you feel if your mom leaves tomorrow?” [Laughs] I know it sounds mean but I would ask that [to bring out] that mood.

“As a Feminist and a filmmaker, I believe in the code that the “Personal is Political.”

Hummingbird is also notably darker in tone than Recorder Exam

her films transcend cultural boundaries

Kim’s storytelling style is emotive and empathetic.

essentially a prequel to Kim’s later film House of Hummingbird, which features the same familial structure and its resultant struggles, and an older Eun-Hee (Park Ji-Hu), now about 14, an adolescent still trying to find herself.

revolve around the themes of family, coming of age and friendship. Her films are about finding yourself and, despite the many challenges her heroines face, are nevertheless quietly encouraging to audiences watching.

The whole film is very autobiographical. As an artist, I collected my memories along the way and reconstructed reality, choosing which memories to retell and which to remove. You kind of turn certain recollections into big stories, and some into smaller. It's a process of revision, but at the end, “House of Hummingbird” is a fictional film based on very personal experiences.

It’s this Taiwanese director Edward Yang. He made Yi Yi which one big award in Cannes in 2000. A lot of people who are interested in Taiwanese cinema they know Yi Yi. It’s a great film. It’s actually three hours long but you don’t feel like it’s that long because it’s the universe. It’s actually about one Taiwanese family who lives in Taipei and you feel not many things are happening in the film but it is everything.

I got maybe like seven or six funding from all different institutions like Korean Film Council, Busan International Film Festival, Sundance Institute – so many different organizations. But I didn’t get a big chunk of money, so collecting all these small funds took many years. Actually I finished the first draft within two months, but then since this process took a while . . . I was actually lucky enough to work on the script in a detailed manner and I got lucky that I didn’t get any commercial money. So this film exists as it is.

I was working as a lecturer and working on this project. I am the producer too and I had to get all the funding from the government because none of the investors were interested in this film because people like big budget, commercial films. They also think having the main character as a middle school girl, it’s not going to make money so I didn’t get any money from commercial investors.  I got maybe like seven or six funding from all different institutions like Korean Film Council, Busan International Film Festival, Sundance Institute – so many different organizations. But I didn’t get a big chunk of money, so collecting all these small funds took many years.

Genre: Drama / Indie / Coming of Age

<Guest> Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (2012) - International Competition <Guest> Aspen Shortsfest (2012) - International Competition <Guest> Ozu Film Festival (2012) - Focus School section <Guest> Asian Film Festival of Dallas (2012) - Dramatic Shorts <Guest> Lviv International Short Film Festival Wiz-Art (2012) - Competition Program <Guest> Great Short Film Festival (2012) - Non-competition Invitation <Guest> Concorto Film Festival (2012) - Focus Korea <Guest> Great Short Film Festival (2011) - Shorts Competition - Great Director Award <Guest> Great Short Film Festival (2011) - Shorts Competition - Great Actress Award <Guest> Great Short Film Festival (2011) - Shorts Competition - Great Audience Award <Guest> Seoul International Youth Film Festival : SIYFF (2011) - Competition - Vision Award

Producers: Linda Barry, Eleanor Nakama-Mitsunaga, Kayo Hatta

About the Documentary

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of majority of positive reviews especially since almost all the reviewers had no knowledge Japanese picture brides. The few criticisms were confined to production value that comes with the territory of being a low budget independent film, to whether a certain actor was the best choice for a part or only touching superficially on the complexity of the side plots, like worker conditions in the fields. It’s a shame that Picture Bride couldn’t have been made into a 2-3 part miniseries and delve in greater depth into these side plots like the complicated and intricate matchmaking process, the worker conditions and pay hierarchy based on ethnicity, to the widespread drinking and gambling that inflicted many of the husbands, or the injustice of having all their personal reminders, letters, pictures, wedding dresses and etc. of their families and ties to Japan confiscated by the FBI after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the indignity of not being allowed to become US citizens until the mid 1950’s when Federal law was changed allowing

but this time it was like the entire film, and some scenes in particular, needed extra rhythm and vitality. T

Ever since I started making short films, I have always been work-ing with Yonrimog as music director. She is a great musician and a dear friend of mine.

I wanted the colour pal-ette of this film to convey a cinematic reality, which is somewhat different from the actual reality. That is why we picked pastel colours with a sum-mery tone. Up to the post-production phase, my DoP Kim Ji-Hyun kept on working on colour details. Creating this special universe was the result of a true collaboration with the entire crew.

I never ran away from home impulsively, nor have I ever been on a trip with friends. I craved it many times, but probably wasn’t as brave as Hana. I wrote those scenes, sending Hana on a trip on my behalf, doing the things I desperately wished to do back then.

The world is much more harsh for girls, there are so many things that we have learned to consider as risky or dangerous. I wanted to show that it is possible for girls to go on an expedition at their own conditions, it doesn’t have to be dangerous and they can finish the trip safely, with some ‘miraculous help’. This trip is my gift to all those girls trying hard – and succeeding – to take charge of their own lives

I simply described a scene and a context, and then the actresses spontaneously acted out and created the scene. Then we talked, revised... Time-consuming as they are, these sessions for me are the best part of the entire filmmaking process. I often regret that I can’t fully capture scenes

However, after meeting the actresses my focus shifted com-pletely towards them. They are the ones now going through these phas-es, they might understand the charac-ters far better than I do. I questioned them about situations and emotions, and through improvisations and dis-cussions we tried to find out how they would react. Through this process I could correct the mistakes in my adult perspective. It wasn’t easy to include the actresses visions while staying true to the intentional topics and storyline. Luckily their ideas mainly corresponded with mine, making the whole process much more fun. I felt so lucky!

Ga-eun: So many conditions in life are rapidly changing, making even adults feel confused. I hardly dare to im-agine how much fear and anxiety this might cause among children. What about children having to bear all fam-ily problems by themselves? It makes me feel terribly sad. If it was like now, Hana could not even have gone out-side, she would have felt even more lonesome.

Ga-eun: Children and adults are re-acting totally differently to the film. Children are excited about Hana’s adventures, while parents often feel Ga-eun Yoon about THE HOUSE OF US“My gift to all girls taking charge of their own lives”tortured or guilty. That surprises me, as throughout the making of the film I was only focussed on the children and how they are dealing with the situa-tion.

Though the film ended up as a fictional romance, it drew on documentary techniques and precedents.

Yoon places all her shots at the children’s eye-level, which results in the adults in their lives being cropped out of frame. The director only uses diegetic sound to populate neighbourhoods, with the exact sounds as the children would hear it. Plus, if the children get distracted, so does the audience.

I realized that in order to create a compelling narrative and move the story beyond docu-drama, it would have to dramatize the strongly spiritual aspect of Hawai'i.

Realities of time and a very limited budget also forced us to make other difficult decisions. Because this was the first film about the formative period of Hawai'i's multi-ethnic past, we naturally wanted to tell the stories of not only the Japanese, but the Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, Portuguese and Hawaiians as well. However, rather than sacrificing depth for breadth, we made the decision to focus on one ethnic group with the hope that PICTURE BRIDE would inspire more stories from other ethnic perspectives. And in order to tell the story well, we tried to focus in on how the historical and social forces of an era affect a specific group on a personal level - in this case, the marriage between Riyo and Matsuji, and the friendship between Riyo and her best friend, Kana. What we ultimately learned in trying to combine history and fiction was that as long as we stayed true the essential spirit of the stories, we could strike the delicate balance and still tell a good story. PICTURE BRIDE is historically based, but ultimately, it is an artistic interpretation of history. Hopefully, we have succeeded in creating a film that stirs the imagination and leaves some questions unanswered, encouraging viewers to find out more on their own.

However, the work we set out to create was not a documentary or docu-drama, but a dramatic film - a film that we hoped would reach broad audiences, and especially younger generations. Narrative film at its best has the power to transport the audience into another place and time, so that you forget you are watching a movie. The challenge for us as filmmakers was to make a film that was both historically accurate and narratively compelling. It took many drafts of the scripts to strike the right balance.

One of the most vital collaborations during the research and writing stage was with local historian and writer Barbara Kawakami. Barbara, who had been doing years of research for her book on Japanese immigrant clothing in Hawai'i, facilitated my own efforts to do the primary research of interviewing actual picture brides. She helped me locate the few surviving brides and often accompanied me on interviews. The oral history process is a long and arduous one, requiring time and patience to develop rapport with one's subjects. But Barbara had already gained the trust of her interviewees, and they felt comfortable in speaking openly and intimately with me about their experiences.

No, I know. And it's - you know, I started making this movie because it was a way for me to explore all of these complicated feelings that I had and explore these questions that I had about, what was the ethical thing to do? And when I started making the film, I told my family about it. I said, you know, is it OK that I'm going to make this film? It might be out in the world. And I don't think any of us thought how big the film would get, you know, the reach that it would have. And in some ways, this is a very Chinese thing, at least for my family. It feels very specific to my parents, which is that they always want to underplay things because they don't want to jinx it. And so when I told them I was, you know, hired by this company - we were going to write the script - and they said, well, you've written scripts before that have not gone anywhere, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. You know, if they're paying you, just write the script. Pay your rent. You know, good for you.

With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat:

Sprite’s Quest: The Lost Feathers, and Sprite’s Quest: Seedling Saga,

The identities of these makers matter, their proximity to the subject matter matters, the terms of their collaboration matter, and the leadership of the project matters.