The Electric Image Express Sean Niu

Ray, Alan, and Renee discuss Eddie Huang's coming-of-age, basketball drama and why it resonated differently among the team. They talk about the unique perspective of the Black/Asian cultural interactions, how the basketball scenes were shot, and where this fits in the ranking of popular basketball movies.

Hint: Space Jam is still the best.

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express

In episode 40, we sit down with Tik Tok creator Lily Lei as she shares her jourrney to obtaining Tik Tok fame over the last year. As we are all well aware, Tik Tok is an incredibly influential video platform. As a podcast interested in how Asian Americans portray ourselves across any creative medium, we were really fascinated by how Lily employed many elements of her Asian upbringing into her skits, and how those skits helped contribute to her rise. Lily also gives us insight into her versatile background as a design researcher and entrepreneur and how those experiences helped her gain over 700K followers on Tik Tok.

Before we get to Lily, we also have a 20 minute segment discussing the 2021 Oscars with Katie Quan from This Asian American Life. This year's awards marked many firsts for Asian Americans in Hollywood and Katie broke down her feelings about the necessity of the Oscars in 2021 and how she felt about the three movies that most prominently featured Asian Americans: Minari, Nomadland, and Sound of Metal.

Editors note: Sorry about the sound quality in some parts, some of these recordings were done while traveling!

Katie Quan's This Asian American Life
Lily's Tik Tok

Notes:

1) Start of Oscars segment: (1:52)
2) General reactions on the 2021 shows (5:00)
3) Deeper dive into Minari, Nomadland, and Sound of Metal (10:23)
4) Do we (as Asian Americans) need the Oscars in 2021? (20:47)
5) Lily's background and how she decided to become a full-time Tik Tok creator (27:51)
6) How she identified what worked for her audience (35:27)
7) How she outgrew her initial Asian American Auntie/parent skits (38:15)
8) Accents or no accents? (43:06)

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express

It's our ANNIVERSARY! THANK YOU to all of our listeners and fans for your continued support! THANK YOU to our guests for lending your time and sharing your stories, and THANK YOU to everyone else who has contributed to the show!

We've added a BONUS episode for our anniversary: Raymond Luu and Alan Duong from [The Reel Asian Podcast] (https://www.reelasianpodcast.com/) join us to revisit Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale.

Notes:

1) The Reel Asian guys explain the appeal of Battle Royale and Sean shares some background and the impact of the movie (3:50)
2) Which characters did our high school selves' identify the most with? (14:25)
3) What does BR say about Japanese society's generational divide? (16:02)
4) We work through our strategies for surviving Battle Royale (24:40)
5) How Battle Royale's ultra-violence heightened its deisrability. (Aka the Streisand Effect (28:44)
6) If it came down to it: would you kill your best friend in high school? (30:50)
7) We draft our ultimate BR team (1 weapon, 1 BR character, 1 Asian film character) (40:13)

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express

It's our ANNIVERSARY! THANK YOU to all of our listeners and fans for your continued support! THANK YOU to our guests for lending your time and sharing your stories, and THANK YOU to everyone else who has contributed to the show!

In this episode, Hon Hoang returns to talk about (what else) Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild and some Haruki Murakami. COULD there be a more appropriate topic for a Sean Niu-hosted podcast?

Watch Hon's films and appreciate his photography here: https://honhoang.com/

Notes:

1) An extended introduction discussing the Electric Image Express so far (0:00)
2) Background on Days of Being Wild (7:53)
3) We discuss why this movie could only be made by a young WKW and what it says about his past (13:25)
4) Leslie Cheung's character: a romantization of the fuck boy? (16:01)
5) More of Leslie's brilliance and how only he could play this role (18:13)
6) Andy Lau: the straight and narrow foil to Leslie (19:57)
7) Why Days of Being Wild hints at a Haruki Murakami influence on WKW (24:59)
8) Our one sentence description of the movie (29:45)

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express

Director, writer, and professor Valerie Soe joins Sean to share her creative journey and the making of her newest documentary: Love Boat: Taiwan

You can watch Love Boat here:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/loveboattaiwan

and you can watch more of Valerie's activist-oriented films here:

Picturing Oriental Girls

The Chinese Gardens

Notes:

1) Valerie gives her thoughts and action items in reaction to the recent violence on Asian Americans (3:27)
2) Valerie shares her career path as a multi-disciplinary artist and professor. (17:40)
3) As well as her activist history, and how she sees the new generation of activists (20:58)
4) Valerie's thoughts on the recent growth of Asian Americans on screen and how we should think about what we want to see next. (Hint: more creators behind the camera) (28:00)
5) Valerie's experience making Love Boat (32:17)
6) Sean asks Valerie about how making Love Boat helped inform her about Chinese diaspora identity (40:58)
7) Valerie shares what she learned about Love Boat as a strategy for the Taiwan gov to spread policy (52:52)
8) And finally, what surprised her the most while making the documentary. (57:03)

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express

Director Patrick Chen and Actor Perry Yung join Sean and Hon Hoang to talk about their upcoming film A Father’s Son: A 90’s Chinatown Noir Thriller based on the character’s from Henry Change’s Jack Yu crime novels. Kickstarter

Patrick and Perry are long time filmmaking veterans. You can find some of Patrick’s shorts here: (I personally like Love Express the most bc surprise surprise, it reminds me of Wong Kat Was)

Love Express
https://vimeo.com/181145058

Underneath The Grey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6eAKmUDHSI

Sonnet 48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZUEXWUTZrg

And you probably know Perry Yung as Father Jun in Warrior. He Also plays the protagonist’s dad in Eddie Huang’s new movie Boogie.

Notes:

1) Patrick’s history, how he got into filmmaking, and how that ties into A Father’s Son (7:24)
2) His opinion on East Coast/West Coast life as an Asian filmmaker. (14:54)
3) Western and Eastern movies that most inspired Patrick before we deep dive into a cult classic: Shanghai Kiss, (24:13) which is a surprisingly deep and thoughtful movie, and definitely underrated.
4) Thoughts on the recent growth in Asian American opportunities on screen and behind the camera, and how social media has helped Asian American creatives (33:37)
5) Perry joins at (41:48) and shares how he met Patrick and joined A Father’s Son
6) Perry gives insight into his new string of roles playing the “bad”/strict Asian Father in Warrior, Boogie, and A Father’s Son (46:43)
7) Perry answers Hon’s question on compartmentalizing similar roles with different experiences/lives and create new ones (52:46)
8) Patrick shares how he pitched A Father’s Son with a special shout out to the late Corky Lee (59:42)
9) Perry and Patrick share advice they’d give to their younger selves, or any young Asian American creatives out there. (1:02:52)

Links to donate/educate/organize to stop AAPI hate provided by Patrick:
https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate
https://www.welcometochinatown.com/

DONATE so we can improve the show at [https://ko-fi.com/electricimageexpress]
E-mail us at electricimageexpress@gmail.com
Follow us on IG/Twitter @electricimageexpress/@the_electric_image_express