Ep 301 | Documentary Films on the Pandemic, Immigration, and Human Rights Issues: Our Talk with Taiwanese American Filmmaker Hsuan Yu Pan

Talking Taiwan

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6d ago 53:24

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In this episode of Talking Taiwan, I started off speaking with Taiwanese American documentary filmmaker Hsuan Yu Pan about how she got interested in documentary filmmaking. As we talked about her films, we covered a broad range of topics from the COVID-19 pandemic to parallels between the 2017 travel bans that barred people from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the U.S. and internment of Japanese Americans in the1940s. Time and time again entire groups of people have been targeted and blamed groups.

This led us back to the pandemic and recalling the high incidence of Asian hate that happened at that time. Her current film project Hear, Eat, Home touches on many of these topics including the Syrian Revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After speaking to Hsuan Yu I get the sense that through her documentary filmmaking she wishes to create understanding so that history doesn’t repeat itself and to foster more empathy in the world.

Below in the Related Links section is a link where you can support and watch a work in progress version of Hsuan Yu’s film Hear, Eat, Home.

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

Hsuan Yu’s upbringing and how she initially had aspirations to be a visual artist
How Hsuan Yu got interested in documentary filmmaking
How Hsuan Yu’s early experiences editing wedding videos taught her how to use video footage to tell a story
How her work at Bric TV taught her how to find stories
How she came up with the concept for her documentary film Alone Together that was shot during the pandemic
How footage for Alone Together was gathered and planned
How Alone Together featured footage from 11 different countries
What Hsuan Yu learned from making the film Alone Together
Hsuan Yu views her filmmaking as being about telling people’s stories
How she met the Taiwanese puppeteer, Mr. Tsai who is the subject of her documentary film project I, Puppet
How Hsuan Yu was able to encourage Mr. Tsai to do some impromptu puppetry in New York’s Washington Square Park
How Mr. Tsai attended a Puppet Slam event in Coney Island, NY and brought the puppet slam concept back to his puppet museum in Taipei, Taiwan
The relationship between Mr. Tsai and his father who is also a puppeteer
How and why Mr. Tsai’s parents didn’t want him to become a puppeteer
What Hsuan Yu loves about making documentaries
Her documentary film project Hear, Eat, Home
How two of the subjects of the film Hear, Eat, Home, Kinan Azmeh and Kevork Mourad are members of Yo-yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble
How the internment of Japanese Americans and the travel bans of 2017 (aka Muslim bans) are examples of how the U.S. government has labeled certain groups of people as a threat and discriminated against them
How Kinan Azmeh was affected by the travel bans of 2017 (aka Muslim bans)
How different groups have been blamed such as the Japanese Americans, Muslim Americans and Asian American
How as a documentary filmmaker Hsuan Yu feels that sne should document history so that people can learn from history
Kevork Mourad’s background and family story
What the film Hear, Eat, Home is about
Hear Eat Home tells the story of Syrians, Japanese Americans and Ukrainians
What Hsuan Yu believes makes a good documentary
How Hsuan Yu was trying to finish working on Hear, Eat, Home in 2020, but she wasn’t satified with it
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened in 2022 Hsuan Yu felt that she should include stories of her Ukrainian friends in to the film Hear, Eat, Home
Hsuan Yu plans to complete Hear, Eat, Home me next year
Hear Eat Home is available for view as a work in progress until January 5th
Anyone wishing to support the completion of Hsuan Yu’s film Hear, Eat, Home can make a donation on the link provided on TalkingTaiwan.com for this episode

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