Director: Karen Lin
Producer: Karin Chien
Spoken Word Poet: Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

Run Time: 6:20

Web site: www.zuzufilms.com

Awards: War & Peace Award sponsored by Netflix, Media That Matters Film Festival; Honorable Mention, Narrative Short, UrbanWorld Vibe Film Festival (NYC)

Official Film Festival Selections include: Chicago Asian American International Film Festival; VC Filmfest 2007/Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival; Black Lily Film & Music Festival; H20 Hip Hop Odyssey Film Festival (NYC); Asian Cinevision/Asian American International Film Festival (NYC); Asian Film Festival (Dallas TX) 2007; San Diego Asian American Film Festival; Vancouver Asian Film Festival; CineDulce, NY Latino Film Festival; Harlem Stage Festival 2008

A convergence of the music video style of in-camera performance and the spoken word poetry of acclaimed Kelly Tsai, “Bystanding” captures the powerful words of this anti-war poem against a backdrop of charged New York City images.

Karen Lin, Director
Award-winning director of the short film Perfection starring actress Ming-Na (ER, Joy Luck Club), Karen Lin has been working in Hollywood for over a decade. After graduating with a Masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley, she headed straight to Hollywood to pursue her dreams of directing. She began her career working as an assistant to such notables as actor Nicolas Cage (Face/Off, City of Angels)and director Roger Donaldson (Thirteen Days). Five years ago she made the leap into music videos and is currently a freelance music video producer for companies like Black Dog Films/RSA Films and Alchemy Pictures. Her feature film debut Love Tour is in development and slated to begin shooting Spring 2009. Chin's personal goal is to bring more Asian American Faces to the silver screen.

Karin Chien, Producer
Ms. Chien is an independent producer based in New York City and Los Angeles. She recently premiered the feature film Undoing at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival, and is currently in postproduction on Santa Mesa, which filmed in the Phillipines in Fall 2005. Chien also produced The Motel (winner of the Sundance/NHK Filmmakers Award, the Humanitas Prize, and 3 Best Narrative Feature Film Festival Awards),released by Palm Pictures. She has produced the feature-length films MVP, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and Robot Stories, winner of 35 film festival awards and self-distributed theatrically to over 50 cities nationwide. Ms. Chien has also served on the Project Involve and Narrative Rough Cut Lab advisory boards for IFP/New York.

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Spoken Word Poet
Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chinese/Taiwanese-American full-time spoken word artist who has been featured at over 180 performances across the country including venues like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the House of Blues, the Apollo Theater, and three seasons of HBO Def Poetry." Based in New York, she tours the country extensively as a solo artist as well as a performer for We Got Issues! a civic transformation and performance project. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and her first full-length play was excerpted at Chicago's first Hip Hop Theater Festival. She has collaborated with notable dance companies Urban Bush Women, InSpirit, VTDance, and Ase Dance Collective. She recently completed her debut spoken word album, Infinity Breaks."

What inspired you to make this piece?

“Bystanding” is a the collision of two worlds I know: my creative work as a writer/director and my experience as a music video producer. When I first saw Kelly Tsai live, her fierce performance inspired the idea to fuse the visual dynamics of the music video format with the explosive delivery style of spoken word poetry. The idea posed two interesting challenges – it hadn’t been done before, and poetry wasn’t typically a performance or visually driven art form. As I began to really sit with the poem I knew pretty quickly that the video needed a big city backdrop. There are direct references to 9/11, but the majority of the poem actually takes place in the artist’s hometown of Chicago. Her experiences as captured in her poetry, though, are universal, and I wanted to convey that through the quintessential American urban landscape – the crowds, the people young and old, the buildings, and the bustling street life and energy that, for me, could only be New York City.

In planning for the shoot on the streets of New York City, I was particularly interested in capturing portraits of people, as inspired by the gorgeous photography in Mark Romanek’s “99 Problems” video for Jaz-Z. Real people, real life. And I knew finishing in black & white would give the piece a timelessness and classic finish, while addressing the limitations of the miniDV format in daylight exteriors.

Briefly tell us about how you made your film or video: what camera and format did you use to shoot your piece and what system did you use to edit it? What is your working process? Did you use any special techniques to make this work?

By-standing was shot on two Panasonic DVX-100A. It is mini DV and we used Final Cut Pro to edit. From the start I knew I wanted to finish the short in black and white. It would give he piece a timelessness and a classic finish while also addressing the limitations of the mini DV format in daylight exteriors. I collaborated with an amazing crew to make this film possible.

Do you have any interesting behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this particular work?

2 days. 10 locations. No permits.

What is the relationship between your work as a video/filmmaker and life in the NY Metro area?

The spoken word artist Kelly Tsai is a Brooklyn based poet. Though her poem speaks on her experiences growing up in Chicago, the moment I heard the poem I knew I wanted it to have big city feel and there is no other city like NYC. For myself, I'm a freelance music video producer by day and I had been working bi-coastally the last few years. It gave me a chance to live and work in NYC and I absolutely fell in love with the city. It was a honor to get a chance to make the film in NYC and hope to do more films there in the future.

For more info on the film and the makers:

Karen Lin, ZUZu Films, 1857 Midvale Avenue, #101, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Karen@zuzufilms.com

Karin Chien, 2 East Broadway, 4th Fl., New York, NY 10038
karinc@gmail.com

For more info about Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai,
www.yellowgurl.com