A documentary dressed up in rhinestones with teased hair. A convo with New Wave director Elizabeth Ai
On pushing a project forward against all obstacles including having the self-confidence to direct, financing indie style and bringing it to audiences without a distributor (so far!)
Welcome to my third column on Substack! Thanks to all of you who have subscribed- I am honestly floored by the massive reaction so far. I appreciate the feedback and support that has been pouring in over the last week. Please share any thoughts with me, and be sure to check out some news and musings at the end of this column.
Now, let me introduce a wonderful new doc…
The arc of the documentary New Wave is grand. It starts as a look at a musical subculture within the Vietnamese diaspora, but the film transforms into an epic personal journey. It even ends with a complex yet heart-melting scene. But when director Elizabeth Ai started making this doc, she only intended it to be a love letter to a musical genre she grew up with called New Wave. “I stumbled upon photos of my uncles and aunts from the 1980s when their young lives were just taking root here in America. That was where the music they listened to as teenagers started to come back to me. Coupled with the memories of their rebellious spirit—it stirred something inside of me. So much that it fueled my determination to go back to the past and recount our family's history in a documentary in hopes that their stories would not be lost to time.”
Along the way, Elizabeth started to unpack the meaning of New Wave with her subjects.
“The participants, first-generation Vietnamese Americans, openly shared their traumatic experiences with me. They spoke of the heavy burdens they had carried for years—stories of displacement, loss, and resilience.” Elizabeth continued, “I had this noble quest. … I wanted to make a movie for my community, for my daughter, for future generations, but I never thought it was going to be something for me.”
THE HEALING POWER OF ART
The film takes an emotional turn away from chronicling the music and culture to become about Elizabeth’s own relationship with her estranged mother. “ My [young] daughter forced me to reflect, and when somebody so innocent asks you, ‘Where's your mom?... Do you have a mom?’ And my mom isn't in my life… it started to make me really question what I was doing. That changed the entire film.” Once the film leans into her personal narrative, it reveals the power of art to heal both the artist in the making of it, and the audience by hearing her relatable story. Who doesn’t have a complicated family backstory? I know I do!
Elizabeth’s perspective on both her film and where it sits in this cultural moment is revealing. “At a time when mainstream media often prioritizes true crime, celebrity profiles, and headline news, this film introduces a counter narrative emphasizing resilience, joy, and personal growth. It not only preserves the essence of a pivotal musical era, but also explores the intricacies of familial relationships and immigrant experiences.”
Her approach to her subjects speaks to the magical intimacy that exists when a director and her subjects share common life experiences and backgrounds.
“During the filming journey of this documentary, I encountered a profound transformation in my relationship with the participants, which became one of the most intriguing and moving aspects of the process. Initially, I saw myself strictly as the filmmaker and viewed them as subjects, maintaining a professional distance. However, as we progressed, this distance gradually diminished.”
The film’s journey began in 2018 when Elizabeth was pregnant with her daughter. In the spring of 2019 she began filming, and Elizabeth’s first grant came through in April 2020. As she sat alone at home, unable to film, she started to look to social media to find photos and crowdsource images of New Wave culture. “This crowdsourced content not only enriched our documentary with diverse perspectives but also motivated my team and me to persist despite the challenges. … The support from social media users did more than just provide material, it fostered a sense of connection and solidarity. This mirrored, in some small ways, the experiences of refugees finding community again, making it particularly resonant during such a disruptive time.”
Don’t miss checking out the film’s Instagram page, which includes many highlights. Elizabeth also ended up publishing a book from the archival materials she collected. “ The book was born from seeing these archives and the original intention for the film was like to save a piece of history. And grant applications will always ask ‘What's your impact campaign?’ And I started to write about the book [in grant applications] as this lofty goal.” Then Angel City Press published the book in 2023.
IF IT WERE NOT FOR DOC FILMMAKERS….
Honestly, this film and book are why documentary filmmakers are such important members of society. They take stories that no one else cares about, that feel small and not relevant, and they do the work to bring those stories into the world to find the audience. Elizabeth is a hero because she took the bull by the horns and made a movie and then a book about something that the world is going to say no one's going to care about except her and her community until she makes us care about it. The story of this film and the story of the book are such a testament to Elizabeth’s hard work and creative bravery.
Yes, some personal projects can feel overindulgent or too specific. But when they are good, they illuminate the world, break your heart then put it back together in a way that feels universal and healing. One of my favorite films of all time in this vein is Stories We Tell, a film Elizabeth also cites as inspiration for her film.
SORRY, THIS IS NOT BROADLY RELEVANT
I would argue a personal documentary can be the most widely relatable type of documentary. Not to sound all high-minded, but what makes art great, what makes it cut through barriers, is its ability to feel universally relevant. Great art transcends time, place, culture, and history to connect people through the commonality of the human experience. One of the criticisms people often have of documentaries in general is that they pound audiences with information and arguments. Not New Wave. While this film did teach me about the Vietnamese immigrant experience, it also had me in tears thinking about my own complicated family. When Elizabeth was pitching it, she said execs were in tears too.
I asked Elizabeth if she pitched any mainstream distributors for this project. She did. “And people were like, ‘I was in tears. This is beautiful, but we don't think there's an audience for this.’ Some executive even said to me, ‘Oh, I have a hard relationship with my dad.’ And so people are just telling me things like, ‘It's not our mandate.’ [After I finished the film] I came back to some, and I won't name them, but people were like, ‘I'm sorry, I think you have a good film on your hands, but it (doesn’t have) enough reach.’”
Elizabeth is not the first filmmaker to relay a story to me about showing a film or pitch to buyers who personally love something and even cried during the screening/pitch. But then did not buy the project. As I said in my first substack, called “Confessions of a Documentary Producer,”
I understand the need for a major steamer to be in the mass entertainment business. But what about those of us makers who aren’t aiming for Wall Street to cosign on our content strategy to make money for investors?
So here we are.
We can’t expect a big company with a sack full of cash to pay for our movies, but we can still make and distribute the movies we want to make ourselves.
Just don’t expect to get rich ;)
Elizabeth is an experienced documentary producer who knew the headwinds she was facing when she started this project on the business side. She raised money from the Ford Foundation, Cinereach, Spark Features, Sundance, Firelight, CAAM, and numerous others.
“ My own personal investment is, I don't know, $50,000? I'll definitely make that back. I just have the confidence, but [getting paid for] all my time… I'll never make that back. Ever.”
FINDING THE MOXY TO DIRECT (or uhh being able to afford to?)
I was interested in talking to Elizabeth about the transition from producer to director. “I feel like there's a lot of stuff that I learned about myself in this process. … I love producing. I see myself as a lifelong producer; however, I evolve as an artist. But I realize I never had the confidence [to direct]. I was at an ad agency, and I was doing branded content and [sometimes] there was no money to hire directors. And brands would ask, ‘Can you just do this for us?’ And I was like, ‘okay.’ But it was never like a goal of mine [to direct] because I never even saw myself that way.… And I started to examine and interrogate myself more about this: Why didn't I have that confidence? I realized that lack of support as a child made me feel like I was always in support of somebody else's life. So I love being a producer now that I can understand these other dimensions of myself. [But before] I would have great ideas. … ‘Oh, look at this article. I should reach out to this person, I should do this thing, and then you're like, well, I'm not gonna to direct it.’... And then like three months later, there's a Deadline article. … And so it's happened many times actually around things. And I was just like, why didn't I have the confidence to even reach out? I'm always waiting for somebody else or working for a company and executing on other people's visions.”
A lot of people lack the confidence to direct. Oftentimes, women and others with low confidence are producers exactly for this reason. Before I worked at the New York Times, I often worked as a camera person to earn money. I owned a Sony EX-1 that made me serious cash for a few years. The lauded director of photography and director Kirsten Johnson helped me with advice and a few gigs during that time. Back then, she warned me that most women who want to be DP’s end up being producers because they lack confidence. When she told me this, I grimaced and wondered if that would happen to me. It did. I had the ambitions to be a DP and a director earlier in my career, but when producer jobs popped up those were easier than trying to gin up my own projects.
The other nugget of wisdom from Elizabeth’s story that I want to highlight is that often producers make more money than directors. It is much easier to get paid to work on someone else’s project than to get paid to work on your own. Well-known directors typically get paid 10 percent of the film’s budget. But the producer gets a weekly rate, and that can end up being more money in the end than a director gets paid. Also, some producers are not brought onto projects until there is money while a director spends years developing it. So the other real reason I and others take producer work is that it pays more often and easily. And when I got the job at the New York Times Op-Docs, it was the first time I had a job with benefits and healthcare, which meant I could have paid time off when I had my children. So here is my maxim: We can have it all, just not at the same time.
FROM A TRIBECA PREMIERE TO ???
Like the filmmakers in Zurawski v Texas, Elizabeth is distributing the film herself for now. She is hoping for a television broadcast or other opportunities to emerge. Until then, she has been taking the film to festivals and theaters around the country and finding success.
For example, the team planned to simply four wall the movie at the Roxie in San Francisco. (Four walling is what the film industry calls paying for a film to play at a theater for a minimum number of screenings to qualify for the Oscars. Usually no one goes to these.) But the screenings kept selling out it!
This film is where I see a gap in distribution. While I understand why Netflix or Hulu may not buy this film, that doesn't mean there isn't an audience for it.
Here is what is missing: we need a platform for films that can find a meaningful audience. But the platform needs to be right sized. In other words, if a platform can only call a film a success if it gets 10 million views to be considered a success that won’t work for most documentaries. So what we need is a platform that can be deemed a success with a film that gets a tens of thousands or a few hundred thousand views and can pay filmmakers for their work.
WAITING ON GODOT… OR A DEAL
So unfortunately unless you live near a theater where the team has a screening you can’t see this yet. But hopefully there will be news soon- I know many in the doc community love this film. An untold story about a community we often don’t hear from. A film made by a member of that community. It is both a celebration and an examination of the history and culture of the Vietnamese community in this country, told with intimacy and artistry. I love this line from Elizabeth: “After decades of absorbing violent and tragic narratives dominated by toxic male perspectives, I realized it was time to tell a different story—one centered on joy, celebration, and reinvention.” Follow the team’s distribution plans, and I will also update this space if there is big news!
Watch the New Wave Trailer here and check out their Instagram.
P.S. NEWS and MUSINGS
The Sundance lineup was just announced! I will be there writing about the Sundance festival for all of you. Films I am excited to see so far are Folktales, Pee Wee, Marlee Matlin, Move Ya’ Body: The Birth of House, The Perfect Neighbor… and I haven’t even read the whole lineup yet. Please send your reccs and invite me to your parties.
The What are you? Journalism’s impact on complex identities is an essay on how print journalism covers the ‘second generation’ identity. “As of 2023, 34% of the US Asian American population is second generation. The number is the same for the second generation Latine population.” There is not enough coverage of this group so journalist P. Kim Bui is working to explore this subject in her own work. (I saw New Wave with her! She loved it ofc) Follow her if you are interested in learning more…
What does it mean to be a 26-year-old white man in America? Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione: 2 men greeted with public adoration, zeal for vigilantism. And they are both 26. Two 26-Year-Olds: One Killed a Homeless Man, Another is Suspected of Killing a Healthcare CEO
My non-documentary reccs of the week:
A classic film on the mother-daughter relationship is Postcards the Edge. Watch the trailer and weep/laugh … and watch the film! This is one of my all-time favorites.
Sing Sing reminded me of the power of art to heal. To be honest, I had totally forgotten that was possible somehow?! Making films (and living life) can be numbing. But this film cracked my heart WIDE open. I had the incredible opportunity to see this film at the first San Quentin Film Festival a few months ago.
Bravo Elizabeth I look forward to seeing your film