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

Talking Taiwan

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.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/documentary-films-on-the-pandemic-immigration-and-human-rights-issues-our-talk-with-taiwanese-american-filmmaker-hsuan-yu-pan-ep-301/

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

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/documentary-films-on-the-pandemic-immigration-and-human-rights-issues-our-talk-with-taiwanese-american-filmmaker-hsuan-yu-pan-ep-301/