The Problem of Distribution for Asian American Films

Even among the best independent films in America which get into Sundance each year, only about 5% receive distribution. The film distribution game is a difficult one, one that is particularly difficult for Asian American films, which are perceived to have a narrower audience than a white film in English. It is not at all surprising that there are not that many Asian American films that make in the mainstream. It's not encouraging for most Asian American filmmakers who often have to make great sacrifices to get their film made then have to struggle to find a distributor that will adequately promote and release it to the public.

The story has been that we are not bankable, we are not a viable market with only 4% of the viewership population. I recall watching "The Grace Lee Project" with only 2 other people at the Film Forum on a Friday night when it played there for a few weekends several years ago. It was an excellently edited documentary that it kept me riveted until the very end though I had had no initial interest in the subject matter. Most good documentaries never see the light of a theatrical release. The only public play that they receive is at film festivals.

Documentaries, in general, are even less likely than indy features to make a profit so my little documentary with an Asian American lead is highly unlikely to pick up a distributor. So I often wonder what will happen to my little documentary when it hits the market. Will I find an educational market niche and change the world? Or will it become another indy film to never see the light of the day and find its way off the shelves? Luckily we live in the digital age and self-distribution is a more than plausible option.

The distribution problems for Asian American films are myriad. Once you subtitle a film, the market is reduced by 20% so say the film distributors in America. Many English-speaking Americans do not want to read subtitles or hear dubbed English while watching a film. It is no wonder that very few if any Asian American films have made it in the American marketplace. Though many of them are in English, there are many that have portions of it in an Asian language. There are layers of difficulties even producing a film in a language other than English in the U.S. because most skilled editors and production crew even in New York City are mostly English only speaking. Others are inclined to label “foreign language” films as foreign when they are made by and about Americans who speak languages other than English. Is a language foreign when a million or more Americans speak it? Such as Mandarin Chinese? Or Spanish? What constitutes foreign vs. domestic in the linguistics? Distributors are essentially business people with a concern for the bottom line, who are concerned with selling their product and attempting to reach as large of a consumer base as possible. A film with characters who speak English with an accent makes it less marketable, however good its artistic merits and human interest value may be. Good film distributors also have a concern for artistic merits in a film, but often commercial interests outweigh quality. You could have a badly written script, an implausible plot, lots of special effects, and a mediocre director, but if you find a celebrity to star it, it is a guarantee of a certain level of visibility and viewership. The film world ain’t no meritocracy.

As many of you may already know, Can Truong is a Vietnamese boat person, one of the millions who fled Vietnam in boats in search of freedom after the fall of Saigon. That fact led me to study the history of the Vietnamese boat people. Journey from the Fall, directed and written by Ham Tran, was one of the best indy films I have experienced in the past few years. I say “experienced” instead of “seen” because the film like many great works of art was an emotional experience for me. I was deeply moved, perhaps because I, too, am an immigrant and could relate to the experiences of the protagonists in certain ways that the average American could not. Though there are many white renditions of the Vietnam war and its aftermath in film, this is the first to authentically portray the experience of millions of Vietnamese who fled in overcrowded unwieldy boats, some enduring untenable levels of deprivation and suffering. It was an important untold story that needed to told by Vietnamese Americans for Vietnamese Americans. The film seemed to have catalyzed a mass catharsis in the Vietnamese community based on the few people I have spoken with. For many years, many Vietnamese boat people didn't want to speak about the horrors of the re-education camps, the pirates who raped women on the boats, and perilous journey across rough seas. Breaking the silence is the first step to healing. It was for this reason Ham was motivated to make this extraordinary film, he told me. They are my motivations for making "Can." Artistry and healing are delicately intertwined. The expression of truths facilitates healing.

Ham is an inspiration to me. He's a rock star. I am enamored with his work and artistic integrity. Despite a low budget and other numerous obstacles, he crafted an emotionally powerful story that remained true to the heart of the Vietnamese-American experience. In order to understand what I mean, you would have to see his beautiful film (www.journeyfromthefall.com) and check out some of his interviews on youtube.com:
>Ham Tran Interview by Asia Pacific Arts, Part 1 of 2
>Ham Tran Interview by Asia Pacific Arts, Part 2 of 2


And now Ham and a few other Vietnamese American filmmakers have started their own film distribution company, Wave Releasing, to promote and release their own works after realizing that most American distributors will overlook or undermarket their amazing films. Though Journey from the Fall was an extraordinary landmark achievement by any measure, it took nearly a year from the time that it premiered at Sundance to get a distributor. That is shocking to me considering the numerous other films of far lower quality which get distribution deals immediately upon its film festival premiere. Like I said, the film world is no meritocracy.

Changing "Can" to a Short Film

I met with consultant today regarding fundraising for my film after getting a slew of rejection letters from foundations. It is daunting to keep writing grant applications, but this is the plight of many indy filmmakers. The consultant told me that he didn't think that my film would make it into film festivals in its current state because the film has too many expert interviews, which make it too educational instead of character-driven. The idea was to make it character-driven, but that idea also competed with the idea that the film had to educate about Asian American mental health to a certain extent because of the California Endowment grant.

I think I had it in my mind that I'd fix the problems once I began to edit and since I had been delayed so many times due to Can's relentless delays in getting home, I also had to delay making the fixes that I needed to to my most recent rough cut. So I guess I will be making a short. It may be more compelling and terser as a short.

I am sulking, but not as crazy as I expected to be. As long as there are lessons learned, nothing has been lost. This project was difficult from all angles and I knew that it was all a huge risk from the get go. I have to put my ego aside and put my social objectives first. I did succeed in raising a lot of awareness among key opinion leaders in mainstream mental health and that was an important feat to me. The model minority myth has always worked against Asian Americans with mental illnesses. The secondary myth is that you can't have a mental illness and be a model minority at the same time, but the truth is is that many successful, intelligent, productive people (e.g., Iris Chang, John Nash, Kay Redfield Jamison) do have mental illnesses. Success and mental illness are not mutually exclusive.

The hope is that these key opinion leaders will use the knowledge that they learned from our workshops and presentation in executing their jobs and gain the understanding that they need to specially train their therapists and staff to work with Asian Americans. Some of them do walk away with the understanding that they do not understand Asian American cultures and that acknowledgement of ignorance is equally as important as knowledge. Some therapists complete their clinical training without any knowledge of Asian Americans and do not understand that they may have the skills set to help counsel Asian Americans.

Embracing Dissent

I have posted below an essay I wrote about dissent and how the policy of absolute tolerance can serve humanity. How is this relevant to my work as an activist and filmmaker? It can provide insights into how history consistently shows us an ever evolving truth. History can be rewritten. Science is fallible and what conventions activists may challenge today become relics tomorrow. What is radical today is considerable acceptable tomorrow.

It is based on the writings of classical utilitarian John Stuart Mill, one of my favorite dead white male philosophers.

Just a bit of history on the rights of people with mental illness, it was not until the late 1800's that people with mental illness were treated medically and that the etiology of mental illness was considered biological. Prior to that, people with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders were often locked up and beaten. The prevailing explanatory model for mental illness during that historical period when religious beliefs dominated the culture was that these people were possessed with evil spirits and needed beatings and exorcisms, not medications or talk therapies. Just to give you some perspective on the history of the science and culture of mental illness, many psychiatric therapies such as insulin-induced comas and lobotomies which were endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association in the 1960's are today considered dangerous and barbaric. Psychiatry is less than 100 years old, one of the youngest branches of medicine. Psychiatrists don't really understand how Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors work, though they are widely prescribed to Americans daily. I raise these issues because many of today's practices may be perceived as dangerous tomorrow. Philosophically, I don't believe we can know the exact nature of truth today nor tomorrow.
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How Does Absolute Tolerance Serve the Permanent Progress Interests of Man?

"If mankind minus one were all of the same opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
-- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

The atom is indivisible and all the moons and planets revolve around the earth; so man once believed, deceived by the wisest and most erudite of scholars of previous eras. Knowledge, or whatever man conceives to be true, is subject to change. The atom turned out to be so powerfully divisible that it demolished a couple of cities and killed more than a quarter million people. To the astonishment of the Catholic Church, the earth actually orbited the sun. Upon inquiry of the even most well-established and widely accepted beliefs, a new perspective can emerge. To be questioning every proven truth is to take the chance of living in the anxiety of uncertainty, or worse, losing faith in man's ego to attain knowledge. But in order to converge closer to the nature of reality, one must take this risk of contesting every belief or fact that man claims as truth.

In "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill asserts that we must allow for the absolute tolerance of all thought and discussion within the bounds of fair discussion in order to attain utility. By allowing the free exchange and expression of ideas, opinions, beliefs and perceptions, no matter what the content, society will benefit from this cultivation of diversity. Through dialectical debate, ideas, opinions, beliefs and perceptions will become refined and logically sound. Arguments which do not stand to reason will be discarded; partial truths elucidated, new compound ideas formulated. The policy of absolute tolerance will set the stage for a forum of ideas, competing to be deemed as the most sound claim. In the same way that competition in the marketplace for commodities provides the best quality goods and services for the most people possible, the most refined and logically sound ideas will become integrated into society by fierce rational competition under the policy of absolute tolerance.

Mill presents four very clear and convincing arguments for allowing the expression of every man's opinion in a given society. If the opinion is true, then a new concept is learned. If the opinion is false, the expression of that opinion can serve to test the soundness and rationale upon which a conflicting opinion rests. Only after withstanding the contests of a contrasting view, can an opinion attain a greater degree of certainty about its true nature and action based upon it able to be justified.

More often, than not is the case that a statement is neither wholly true or false, but contains a portion of truth which only stands a chance of elicitation by the dialectical examination of an opposing view. Thus the collision of such adverse forces, if guided by reason, will serve to elucidate a concealed truth or innovate a new eclectic concept.
Intellectual growth is fostered by the challenge of having to substantiate one's beliefs against another's; and impeded by ignoring the arguments of the devil's advocate. The beliefs most inherent to our society which are the least likely to be questioned are, perhaps, the most vitally in need of substantiation since the ways of our life are based upon them. Mill states that beliefs must be held in an appropriate way (i.e., one must be able to substantiate exactly why one's beliefs is true in spite of all the possible rational objections.). Individual members of society should not merely inherit the beliefs of their ancestors for the sake of practicality. One should have greater grounds upon which to hold a belief than the mere fact that the belief is held by everyone else in their society or that it was taught to him.

Only through the dialogue with another human being whose contrary perspective forces you to reasonably scrutinize those beliefs you take for granted, can the authenticity and logical soundness of that belief be appreciated. Until a christian encounters a muslim, he is never forced to realize the weaknesses of his claim. If the muslim vigorously attacks the various premises of christianity dialectically and the christian is able to refute reasonably but, yet, with emotional conviction, then his belief is being held in an appropriate way. On the other hand, if he retorts with the use of verbatim scriptural verse which have been engrained in him since birth and no genuine conviction, he is only a product of his environment, merely parroting what has been taught to him. His teachers may have truly believed in the words they taught him; however, the words ring semantically hollow in the ears of the his students and are memorized for the sake of approval. This stagnating mental state is the very condition which, Mill believes, is treacherous to the human mind and soul; and it is to reduce the unlimited human potential down to that of an automaton. Man cannot serve his permanent interests as a progressive being if he enslaved to the beliefs of society. He must exercise independent thinking and be able to make the distinction between what he genuinely believes and what has been fed to him intellectually. He must question until he has exhausted his resources in order for an answer with the greatest probability of being true to emerge. This is the necessity of the policy of absolute tolerance; man must be given the complete liberty to endeavor to discover the true nature of his convictions.

Mill's theory is logically sound and very well substantiated by his argumentations; however, in reality, complex political and sociological problems would obscure the objective of such a policy, utility, if it was actually put into effect. Mill believes that the free market economy model for commodities could be superimposed on ideas and thought as well. Unlike the principles of supply and demand in the free market for goods and services, political phenomenon in capitalistic countries inevitably allocates power and greater proclivity to a select few as a result of their inheritance, political ties, and/or financial status, not as a result of them being the most reasonably qualified. If man were as avaricious for reason as he is for money, then the analogous relationship between the free market economy for commodities and the free market economy for ideas and thoughts would be complete; however, as history clearly demonstrates that that is not the case. Reason is not the sole criterion for which a belief is translated into social policy or practice. In theoretical terms, Mill's argument is sound given that all things are equal; all political interest groups in a given state are equal; no man acquiesces to emotion and is solely rational and objective; the acquisition of knowledge is just as much a motivating force as money; all consumers of the ideas and thoughts on the market are competent and have no desire to impose their beliefs on other humans without reasonable grounds. These conditions can hardly ever be met in reality and therefore, the policy of absolute tolerance, if implemented, does not necessarily lead to utility however logically sound in theory. The policy of absolute tolerance is one many necessary conditions, but is not sufficient alone. The rights of African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans have been oppressed throughout the course of American history regardless of the belief, supposedly held by the founders of this country, that all men were created equal. The white, property-owning politicans of these previous times professed great faith in the Constitution of the United States and were determined to execute it as it was written; nonetheless, history clearly shows the oppression of various minority groups, obvious violations of those very premises in Constitution which our great fathers professed to uphold in order to maintain their level of power. Had upholding reason and integrity been a greater priority over their desire for economic power, African Americans would never have been enslaved in the first place. Mill neglects to consider the human element. The select few do not necessarily have to heed the rationale of their opposing views.

Mill relies upon the existence of two opposing views in interplay to refine man's conception of truth. Whether one extreme school of thought will benefit society for utility is actually contingent upon the existence of an equally formidable and radical interest group with an opposing view which is just as determined to defend its claim. In the absence of such opposition, a very harmful ideology or thought could enter the mainstream of society. For instance, Nazism in Germany rose to power by unscrupulous means, virtually unopposed, in part because the ideology benefitted the Aryan majority by the oppression and slaughter of a minority class. there would have had to have been a B'nai B'rith Anti-defamation League with armed forces, equally as aggressively and unscrupulously propagandizing their ideology. Should we tolerate the blatant evil of bigotry in hopes that it would collide with an anthetical force even when none such exists? How does that serve society? In other words, the existence of White Supremists should be tolerated and will eventually serve the greater good of society as long as African, Asian, Latino and Native American Supremists with as much power exist alongside them. The end result of such an ideological struggle will be human people respecting the creed and color of every human being which is man's natural right. Mill did not believe in natural rights. In order for the free market economy model to operate, there must always be competition; for every man who claims that something is green, there must be another who claims that it is blue in order for it to benefit society. In the commodity market, money is the incentive to produce higher and higher quality goods; in the thought market, reason and intellectual growth is the only appeal to conjuring up more and more reasonable ideas. In capitalistic society, it is in man's own self-interest to conjure up a belief system which will make him most adaptive to his environment regardless of how inhumane or rationally baseless it may be (i.e., a belief system that will enhance one's acquisition of money and power, not one which is solidly based on reason). Wealth and power can certainly increase the quality of one's life, but no one rewards the morally and intellectually sound person in a free market economy.

Certain dogmas and ideologies undermining man's natural rights and the intrinsic dignity of human life should be restrained from instituted as policy; and the consequences of its propagandization carefully weighed against the criteria for humane conduct. Such doctrines based on man's emotional hatred and biases, and not reason cannot await the uprising of an antipodal force to moderate its evil and ultimately, do not benefit society. Under the policy of absolute tolerance, such doctrines if unopposed, have the unbridled opportunities to breed and prosper only to hurt humanity. It is analogous to letting an heinous criminal run free on the account that he will meet up with a compellingly humane person who will show him a better way to live. The policy of absolute tolerance's greatest benefit to society may be in the fact, each and every person may be able to state his/her beliefs regardless of how deviant from the norm it may be and that such freedoms lead to self-determinism. The abstract right is an end in itself. Mill's argument is undoubtably superb; however, he fails to address the problem of human avarice in politics and consider all the factors in reality which are not readily accountable in theory.