Status is about authenticity and finding one’s path. Sharing my experiences growing up gay as an Asian man in Canada has helped me develop my work.
The project is a five-minute animated self-documentary about my experiences growing up gay and Asian in Canada from 1983 to the present.
Using a process by which Japanese Canadian filmmaker Jeff Chiba Sterns interviews me, I will draft a script using my answers as the narrative thread for the film. Found imagery connected to my past illustrates context; we will cut in-between or superimpose. The drawings will be hand-rendered, somewhat rough and abstract, to capture a lost innocence and reflect a sense of loneliness / coming together.
Status empowers me to share and commiserate on experiences challenging to talk about openly. The film offers teachable moments by showing us possibilities in how to lead and sometimes fail; the short format allows me to explore without commercial pressure how we conduct ourselves and dares us to ask if we can do better. Feelings of shame have largely prevented diaspora communities of gay Asian men from finding themselves, and each other, desirable.
Status will show that if we embrace who we are, we would all be happier.