If you've lost the local feeling you were in the right place to get it back. Colorado Springs 93.9 f.m. . Welcome to Radio Curious I'm very vocal. An artifact of Chinese American history in the form of a long lost film and the Asian American woman responsible for this film's creation is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious Our guest is documentary filmmaker Robin Weiner who made the film finding Kuko on finding cook on tells the story of leading by a Chinese American woman who hired Ray Scott an American photojournalist to travel to China and capture the life of the people in that work torn country including the massive bombing of the war time capital their film. Which is different than finding coupon received one of the 1st Academy Awards for a feature documentary in 1942. Loans film finding kook on questions why we never heard of leading I and why all of the copies of her film crew caught on disappeared Robin long answers some of these questions in her film finding Kukai welcome long and I visited by phone I'm a 627 teen when she was in Southern California right after finding kook on the sci fi audience award at the 2017 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival we began when I asked her about the meaning of the word coup cars and how that word weaves itself through her documentary finding kook on. The work on is really a play any word that in Mandarin is a noun or like. And it's. Made up of 2 different Chinese characters the 1st character means bitter like as in bitter tasting and the character of God and means go forward so together at the word is almost an can't label in English but the closest translation is to bitterly curse or veer. To Perth or bere against all odds and leaving i herself used very poetic translations he said that it always meant to her heroic courage under bitter suffering and she also said that kook on was. A theme of her own life and in fact she did have to face many many different obstacles to become a woman artist and to get her voice heard so I really like that word talk about the original film but also about leaving I've life so putting this into perspective leaving is the woman who made the film or was the force behind making the film because which was subsequently lost and you're more the finding Kukai is about finding the movie that she made and exploring who is this person leaving Ah I leaving I is an exceptional female character and I actually wanted to find an exceptional female character for my next documentary project I've always been really interested in women especially strong women to beat her and so I wasn't really initially searching for a last film I was really searching for. Chinese heroine that could fill this big void in my life because they're not a lot of her row or tiny women in fiction or in film. And so I spent a long time researching women in the thirty's and forty's and I had come across a memoir that leaving I wrote and the memoir is really all about her parents but I discovered through that memoir that she had worked on this documentary film called coup con and so the fact that this woman who was both an author and a filmmaker lived in Hawaii and I didn't know about her made me very curious and set all these questions in motion for me that I had to follow up and figure out the answers to so that started my research which is really the story of finding through kind of my search for the Lange I and then finding the film and trying to figure out what her role was in the making of this film and I am covered this amazing dynamic ahead of her time just really balls be fun woman and so that's who you get to meet when you watch fighting because you could meet this amazing character and women and men like everybody in the audience just gravitate to her one of the sad things is that I never got to meet leaving eye in person I only apprehended her story after he died. Robin long you describe living on a fantastic person who did things far from the ordinary and China in her taught him. Leading I was really a pioneer media maker so she had wished to tell. Her story her Tiny's American story and the story of her ancestors in China from her own perspective in the 19th thirty's and forty's you had movies like The Good Earth and that they portrayed Chinese main characters using white actors actually Louise Rayner got the Oscar for playing a Chinese woman in the good earth so leading I was very frustrated by those depictions of Chinese and she wanted to tell her story from her perspective when she was quite innovative she was telling her story through play writing and then she tried to make her she did make a movie about China during the war called coup con that one in the cabinet Award in 2 went on to do lectures all across the country to lecture about Chinese culture to universities and women's clubs all over America and he also appeared on Robert Ripley's Believe It Or Not radio show and television show also promoting Chinese culture and Chinese history he told her story in many different ways and that was to me very admirable and ahead of her times so the main thing that I take from her is that although she was glamorous and she was fun and to have some buoyant he was an activist at the bottom line she was an activist and to use her larger than life personality to keep telling the story about her own people and her own story which wasn't being told at the time there's one section in your movie where she says she wants to bring the real story of China to the American people and improve the image of China in America I think leading I was successful in her goal. To a small you know to a limited extent so she. Taints people's perceptions of who a Chinese woman was just by being herself and then all of the things that he produced so her movie kook on whoever thought in America got an image of time that that wasn't in the newspapers that wasn't it Hollywood movies and then he also banded her reach by being on Robert Ripley's television show which is a national n.b.c. Television show and again keep presenting herself as a Chinese woman that very elegant speaking perfect English and being very knowledgeable about history and other cultural things so it was fatter in stereotypes of Chinese as coolies or as only laundry workers are very ignorant and backwards her goal to set was always to change people's minds one by one so I take inspiration from that because that's really what I'm doing now with my film is trying to change people's mind one by one to the fact that there was this really forward thinking media maker who was Asian woman back in the thirty's forty's another scene in your movie is of a Chinese coolies sitting on a curb eating his rice lean on he says that was a true story of China yeah there's a very famous image that great Scott took while he was working on the film kook on race was the cameramen that Lee Ling I partnered with to make the movie who come on and he takes this image of a coolie sitting on on the sidewalk wall cantata on Joe which is in the olden days called hands on was burning in the background. Right before the Japanese took over the city and I think that the image the image became a life photo of the week and I think the widely Ling I that that that image was the image that he wanted to communicate the Chinese spirit with is that her her take was that even though trying to was being invaded and there are so many reasons to give up on the country or that the Chinese people had to give up they persisted they kept on living their lives they kept on you know selling their their fish and they kept on doing their daily routines despite the fact that their lives were interrupted by war a lot of people I think when you're looking at a country at war you you look at the people the victims as non-human like not at your level when you're in peacetime you're looking at somebody at war and I think you really want to show that these Tiny's are at the same level as Americans they're still going to universities they're still studying chemistry despite the fact that their country's being invaded and they're just like you and I and America and we need to bond together and work together to fight off the fascist invaders. In this edition of Radio Curious We're visiting with Robin long the filmmaker of finding car a movie about a film called blue car that was filmed in China during World War 2 Robin what have you learned from making this movie. I've learned so much as a person by following reeling I've already I've learned to tell my story and to become more likely lying I am telling that story though as a filmmaker you have to learn to promote yourself in your film and leaving I would be the consummate self promoter and she could she took a lot of criticism for that from her friends and her family but if he didn't do that and she hadn't been a great self promoter I would never have found her and I would never have found the Doric Academy Award winning film so I took a big personal ads and probably lying I in my own career as a woman but I also learned so much about my Tiny's heritage and about Chinese history I wasn't taught in high school about China's role in World War 2 And over the years I'm 4th generation Chinese over the years I've lost a lot of knowledge about my own Chinese culture for instance I go to the Mandarin or Cantonese and I can't read Chinese so just losing the language is such a huge loss it really. Cuts you off from so much of that culture that rich culture that I might have had if I didn't know the language stand with language for a moment when you were in China and as revealed in finding the cause is it fair to presume that Chinese people would expect you to speak Chinese That's an interesting question I thought that they would recognize me right away as a Westerner because my parents had been to China. A couple of decades before and they stood out like sore thumbs it that but time to change a lot since then so. Time adopted a lot of what through clothes you know people are just wearing Western clothes all all the people I saw on the street look like Americans so when I was there a lot of peoples did approach me and start speaking in Mandarin and one of the things that I really regret it is not being able to speak back not being able to even communicate the basic niceties in Mandarin so I made a pledge that before the next time I went to China I would learn some basic Chinese so I did and when I returned to China at least I could say hello and I don't speak Mandarin Anyway that's that's also a personal goal getting up a level because I want to return to China and I do want to carry on a conversation and I don't just want to say hello I don't speak Mandarin Well Rob let's revisit the story about race Scott who filmed a lot of what is in both movies who is right what was his role particularly in relationship to lead a great thought was that freelance journalist who was originally from the Midwest and made his way to Hawaii in the late 1930 s. And you met Lee Ling I in Hawaii in 1937 and I I think that they were both. Rebel they were both these renegade spirit that latched on to each other and when the Japanese were invading the Shanghai International Settlement that was the night that they both met and then this newspaper office that Ray was working at and they both had this you know adventurous spirit and leaving I got Ray to go to China to tell the story and photograph what was going on in time yes and so they formed a partnership because he needed to tell the story and he had the means to do it he was a journalist and he had a camera he had camera skills and he had the desire to to try something new His daughter involved called him like the Indiana Jones guys so he was up for the task and he shot this amazing footage in China during the war with a handheld 60 millimeter camera in color so color was brand new shooting at the time on 60 millimeter in a war zone so it's very difficult you had to change your film Real every 2 minutes and he couldn't even look at the film footage until you got back to America because there was no processing of Kodachrome in China so he was under all these dresses and yet he made this 85 minute long color movie that won an Academy Award and he had never even had a movie camera in his hands before they started this project so you know the odds were stacked against them big time and so the fact that they got this job done both he and leaving I. It was really inspirational to me as a cell maker and I kept going back to them and their success whenever I had times of troubles and so I think when people see this film they'll still take away this really great inspirational story these 2 renegade spirits who you know joined together beat the odds and came away this great success story expound on what you would please Robin when you say you kept going back to their success in times of trouble finding Khan is my 1st feature documentary and one of the. Obstacles for me that I kept running up against was raising money and trying to convince people that this was an important story to tell and it took 8 years to make this film so there are many times that I faced self-doubt when I didn't get a grant for instance or when I just came up against not being able to find information and it took a lot to keep going I had a lot of mentors who gave me pep talk but it helped me that I had to inspirational characters who were filmmakers themselves to follow and I you know I kept going back to things that reeling I would say like kook on the you know. That means keep going and he also had a great saying which became the title of her memoir which is life is for a long time says was the title of her memoir and that was the theme of her parents' lives and whenever her parents came up against obstacles her mother would say well life is for a long time like this trouble will pass life will change and eventually the trouble will be gone so I kept saying things like that to myself when I was in the dumps license for a long time and. So it was kind of interesting to have these 2 characters to follow even though I had never met them they became characters in my life the phrase really not every piece twice I believe in minority is God gave me a mouth and it's not just for eating you know that was another saying that I discovered in her letters that she wrote and that was very moving to me because. It's all about creativity and the struggle you know that's how I read it struggles of a creative person is so easy to just sit back as a observer watch movies read books and see life go past you but it's much harder to tell a story document a story and get your vision of something out there creatively. So that little thing always meant to me you know you can't sit back and be comfortable you have to push forward and get your creative vision out there because it is about changing minds one person at a time and so that really was something that really kept me going is that one little phrase heard Robin one there's a statement that raises Scott who was involved in filming to cause made at some point and you brought it out in your movie finding Kukai and that is the real way to live is travel and let your camera pay your way and I'm curious to what if any extent was that the case for you in making Finding to come. To work just to become a filmmaker was the choice for me I actually had started off life in many different careers I was in book publishing and then in academic administration and in a university setting and I did make a conscious choice to give up a desk job to become a filmmaker and part of that choice came from that same desire I think that Great God has is that there's much more to the world than is behind this desk and I you know in order to find that and to be more. Fulfilled as a creative person I have to get out there and making films is happens to be my calling which I discovered late in life but it's been a fast fabulous fabulous time making films and I wouldn't change it for anything so even if being behind a desk. Made me more money or made me more successful quote unquote in the real world I feel that being a filmmaker is like one of the most rewarding careers that i Pad and I've had several over my lifetime well then that leads me to the question Are there other films in your horizon or in your dream I would love to tell more stories about women and I feel that there are so many stories out there very rich stories that feature women who have been forgotten are women who haven't been given their due and so that's really what I'd like to do and I have a couple of stories that are popped up that are in you know 3rd in the after but I haven't really chosen one to run with yet. Robin alone I want to thank you very much for being with us on radio theory yes and before we close could you tell us about a Eureka or an aha moment in your life that changed your point of view or your focus or your world Yeah I think that while talking to you of this and pops up in that vision is when I was in China I showed. Parts of kook on to that story and there and they reacted in such a surprising way to me they they really got emotional and they got emotional because kook on shows the history of their city their homes and a time period their parents and grandparents had told them about but that they had never been able to actually witness so they had read about these stories and they had heard about these stories but who conned brought them the story in a visual format in color and it was a profound experience to see them react to that because before that I was interested in coup Khan because it won an Academy Award I was interested in this historic film that was important to American film history because of that and then I realized those people in China they didn't care if that film won an award they saw an image of their past they were able to apprehend history that had been lost to them and that was so powerful and made me realize that what I'm trying to do in making films is that's what it's about it's not really about getting awards for getting alkaloids or a lot of money like in the future I hope that films that I make can touch someone in the way that those historians were touched by kook on 75 years after it won an Academy Award. And that Robin made answer my next question you may have already answered it and the question is What would you like to do with the remainder of your one precious life. Well I would love to continue to tell stories I'm not so sure that those stories will end up in a documentary film format you know our media landscape is changing so quickly but I do know that I want to continue to tell stories and I want to continue to tell stories that have not been told before and mostly I'm thinking that those stories will be about women and as I always have always been interested in that and I don't see it changing that suddenly it will have too many stories about women I think there always will be in my lifetime a shortage of stories about women and finally Robin long is there any lead or a book that you would recommend to our listeners yes I have seen many many movies and have been influenced by many many books but the thing that pops into my mind right now is hidden figures which is about a group of African-American women mathematicians who work at NASA helping with the space program in very vital ways but who didn't get credit for what they did and it's a really wonderful film great acting you learn about the role of women in a very important moment in our lives that was very male centered you know when we all we all watched the rockets lift off and in school as kids the whole class would watch that you saw the male astronaut use on the male engineers in the room you didn't see any women you didn't know about these women so hidden figures is like a wonderful movie that tells that story but it also is for me a real exciting thing becau