Silent River Speaks: Getting into the Present with Chris Chan Lee

Guest Post by Jacqueline (Jae) Kim



It's September 2021, year two of the Coronavirus pandemic -- and the world premiere of Silent River at Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (otherwise known as 'VC'). Among many of my friends, I haven't seen the director, Chris Chan Lee, in quite a while. After the film, I avoid the crowd and slip out but send Chris an email asking if he'd like to talk about his latest work via Zoom? I feel pretty sure the conversation will be something to document. Five months later, the film has been gaining critical momentum, earning its recent award at the Paris International Film Festival. Here's an excerpt:

Jae: Okay, so -- when I started getting involved with making my own films and eventually my own art projects, I started to see the processes and the results as self-diagnosis.

Chris Chan Lee: Mm.

Jae: How does that sit with you with regards to Silent River?

CCL: Well, you know, when I sit down to write, I never first think about the thematic content. I just think about, like telling the story, right? But I definitely notice a pattern with everything that I do that's not necessarily intentional: it's always about dealing with past and like regret and stuff like that. So that's always inherent in my work.

All The Asians On Star Trek 24: Jacqueline Kim

The Podcast In Which We Interview All The Asians On Star Trek.



All The Asians On Star Trek is the podcast in which we interview all the Asians on Star Trek. In Episode 24, we welcome actress Jacqueline Kim. She played the role of Ensign Demora Sulu -- daughter of Hikaru Sulu -- in the 1994 feature film Star Trek: Generations. Her other acting credits include Volcano, Disclosure, Xena: Warrior Princess, ER, The West Wing, Charlotte Sometimes and Advantageous, which she also co-wrote and produced. We discuss her brief stint at the helm of the Enterprise-B, her forays into domestic science fiction, and her evolution as a multi-disciplinary artist, including her recent work as a musician and composer.

Interview with Jacqueline Kim: Artist, Actress, Asian American Geek Girl Icon

Guest Post by Sarah Kuhn



In 2015, I wrote my very first piece for Angry Asian Man -- The Final Frontier: Captain Demora Sulu. The piece was all about how I've been obsessed with Demora, Starfleet ensign and daughter of Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), ever since she appeared in Star Trek: Generations, and how I felt like it was finally possible to dream of a future where an Asian lady captains her own starship. (And hey, that future came true! Big, beautiful shout-out to Michelle Yeoh's Philippa Georgiou!)

Four years later, thanks to LA's extremely interconnected Asian American creative community, Jacqueline Kim -- the actress who brought Demora to life so memorably -- read my piece. (Yes, I died.) And then we met in person. (Yes, I died all over again.)

It's hard to put into words what it means to sit across from the woman who played two of the most iconic Asian female characters in the geeky franchises of my youth. In addition to embodying Demora, Kim made a big impression in the epic Xena: Warrior Princess two-parter "The Debt" as Lao Ma -- the ruler, telekinetic, and general badass who becomes Xena's mentor. More recently, she delved into an indie brand of sci-fi with Advantageous, a Sundance hit about a woman contemplating transferring her consciousness into a younger body in order to give her daughter a better life.

But when I tell her I truly believe she inspired a generation of Asian American geek girls, she seems surprised.

"What an amazing thing," she muses. "I totally identify with being a geek girl."

Kim doesn't do much acting anymore -- these days, she's a multi-disciplinary artist with a wide range of passions that she speaks about with thoughtful eloquence. But next week, she'll be returning to her roots as a guest of the Official 2019 Star Trek Las Vegas Convention -- only her second Trek con ever.

In honor of this momentous occasion, she sat down with me to talk about Demora's legacy, Asian moms, and how she expresses her own geekiness.

The Final Frontier: Captain Demora Sulu

Guest Post by Sarah Kuhn



I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's Sarah Kuhn on her favorite Star Trek hero.

The announcement came down earlier this month: there's a new Star Trek series in the works. Geek Twitter lit up with an avalanche of conflicting thoughts and feelings, "Hooray!" mingling with "How dare they?!" and "Also, what the fuck is CBS All Access?"

I only had one thought and it was immediate, specific, and all-consuming: How can we get Demora Sulu to be captain of the Enterprise?

'Advantageous' will be available on Netflix starting June 23

Watch the trailer for writer/director Jennifer Phang's indie sci-fi drama.



Mark your calendars. The excellent indie sci-fi drama feature Advantageous, from writer/director Jennifer Phang, will be available for streaming exclusively on Netflix starting on June 23.

Starring and co-written by Jacqueline Kim, and set in the near future, it's an intelligent, evocative dystopian tale about a mother who must make increasingly desperate sacrifices to ensure a future for her daughter. There are no alien invaders or exploding spaceships. Advantageous is an ambitious, feminist, thinking-person's science fiction story, teeming with challenging ideas and brought to life with a unique vision. I really liked it.

The film, which premiered at Sundance and won the festival's Special Jury Prize for Collaborative Vision, also stars James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Kim.

Here's the trailer:

Fund This: Advantageous, a sci-fi feature by Jennifer Phang

Advantageous, directed by Jennifer Phang and co-written with actor Jacqueline Kim, is a new sci-fi feature about a mother and daughter struggling to survive together in 2041. Originally conceived as a short film for the ITVS mini-narrative series Futurestates, they're making it into a feature, and are currently in the home stretch of a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen. Can you help?

The story concerns Gwen, a spokeswoman for a cutting-edge biotech firm, who considers a dangerous, breakthrough technology that is the only hope for a better life for her daughter. The story takes place at a tipping point in artificial intelligence and neuroscience and speculates on the impact of a *singularity on the future of the lives of women and girls. Watch this video for more information on the project: