Chinese American film director Wayne Wang does not
mind if people say that he is “screwed up”.
 “And
screwed up as some would say, I love making both
Hollywood blockbusters and also low budget independent
films,” the 59-year-old filmmaker tells
movieXclusive.com in an email interview. Having
directed studio productions like Maid in Mahanttan
(2002) starring Jennifer Lopez, the godfather
of Asian American cinema is also well-known for
his independent films like Smoke (1995) starring
Harvey Keitel. He continues:” They are both
difficult and challenging in different ways. I
prefer indies more because I have more freedom
to follow my own vision and make films that are
more personal.”
Wang
thinks the reason why he enjoys making these two
very different types of movies is because of how
he grew up: “I was born in Hong Kong with
traditional Chinese parents, educated by Irish
Catholics under a British colonial culture. I
grew up watching Chinese soap operas, British
TV comedies, Hollywood romantic comedies, John
Ford westerns. I got caught up in the 60's sex,
drugs and free love revolution, so I hate to be
boxed in as making one kind of film!”
Incidentally,
two of Wang’s latest independent works,
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Princess
of Nebraska, are about freedom. These films are
featured at the 21st Singapore International Film
Festival, with the latter is chosen as the opening
film. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is a collection
of stories about life in modern China and the
United States. The Princess of Nebraska is a story
of a pregnant Chinese girl's life in the United
States.
 “What
is true freedom?” he asks with these two
films. “Can there be too much freedom and
what should we do with our freedom?”
Being
an American in the American filmmaking scene,
Wang feels that there is an increasing number
of works which look at Asian American communities
and in very innovative ways too.
Excitedly,
he says: “I have just come from the Asian
American Film Festival in San Francisco and there
were many different kinds of films, large and
small budgeted ones, commercial and personal ones,
narrative, experimental, documentaries.”
However,
there is still the plaguing problem of stereotyping
in such films. 
Using
his work The Joy Luck Club (1993), which is about
the life histories of Asian women and their daughters
as an example, Wang states his point: “Today
I don't know if such a film would get made. There
are more Asians at every level, from executives
and directors to actors and crew members. But
they still turn a great book like Memoirs of a
Geisha into an old stereotyped film.”
The
California's College of Arts and Sciences alum
is very interested in making films about an environment
which he finds unfamiliar and interesting, and
in the process, learn more about the community.
“Take
Singapore for example. We can do a film about
how different ethnic groups in Singapore co-exist
or not co-exist together?” -
By John Li
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