Christal Cooper
*This feature originally was published in the Asian American Times (www.asianamericantimes.us) on May of 2010. It has been updated for this blog.
“A Filmmaker Called S. Leo
Chiang.”
To celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month, PBS across the United States will
rebroadcast A Village Called Versailles and Mr. Cao Goes To Washington
starting this week. The two films will
be shown back-to-back on stations such as WGBH World (Boston), WHYY (Philly),
and Alabama Public Television.
PBS Northern California (KQED) is hosting a film and conversation event
on Thursday, May 29 in San Jose to highlight the rise of Asian Americans in
Silicon Valley politics and show clips from Mr. Cao Goes To Washington. You can now watch Mr. Cao Goes To Washington on
VIMEO and A Village Called Versailles on iTunes.
A
Village Called Versailles
first aired on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 via Independent Lens on PBS.
Versailles is located in the eastern section of New Orleans and
consists of the most dense ethnically Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
The name refers to “Versailles Arms,” the New Orleans East public
housing project where a group of Vietnamese refugees was first resettled in
1975. This unusually tight-knit group –
most of whom are devout Catholics with roots in the same three rural North
Vietnamese villages – fled from North to South Vietnam to escape communist
persecution in 1954, and then came to New Orleans during the Vietnam War
through the Catholic Church’s refugee-resettlement program.
Surrounded by lush wetlands and with a humid climate reminiscent of the
Mekong Delta, the Versailles clan was grateful to find peace on the easternmost
edge of New Orleans. Fellow refugees,
who had first settled in other parts of the country, moved to join their
friends and family in Versailles, and the community grew steadily through the
1980s and the 1990s to 8,000 strong.
Like the rest of New Orleans, Versailles was devastated in the fall of
2005 by Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed. Many Vietnamese
Americans in New Orleans East were evacuated and dispersed. But despite all of the difficulties they
faced, the community, led by Pastor Vien Nguyen of the Mary Queen of Vietnam
Church, refused another forced exile.
“There has been a switch,” Father Vien says. “Before Katrina, home was Vietnam. After Katrina, home is here.”
Armed with this new sense of belonging, the Versailles Vietnamese
returned just six weeks after Katrina to begin rebuilding. By January 2006, more than half the community
had returned, and the rest of the City began to take notice.
Ironically, it was the flood and its aftermath that catalyzed the
transformation of Versailles from an isolated refugee community into an
integral part of New Orleans. Besides
the work of community leaders such as Father Vien, Vietnamese-American
activists began arriving from elsewhere in the country after Katrina to work
with community members toward the goal of gaining unified political voice for
the previously ignored Versailles community.
Soon after, they found a common enemy in the Chef Menteur
Landfill . . . .
A
Village Called Versailles
directed, produced, and written by filmmaker S. Leo Chiang, is produced under
Walking Iris Films, which is owned by Chiang and Mercedes Coasts, whom Chiang
met while at graduate film school at USC School of Cinema-Television in
1995.
Chaing’s work has been broadcast nationally on HBO, Discovery Channel,
Travel Channel, Learning Channel, AMC, and others. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical
engineering and received his MFA in film production from University of Southern
California. He also collaborates with other documentarians as an editor, or as
a cameraman. He is an active member of
New Day Films, the social-issue documentary distribution co-operative.
Chiang was born and reared in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He and his family resided in a three-story
building, where the first floor was his father’s medical practice, and the top
two floors were the family’s residence.
“I’d
come to watch him work, and help my mother, who was a nurse/pharmacist, in the
pharmacy. I wanted to be a doctor.”
Chiang comes from a very large and extended family – over 30 cousins,
and almost all of them live in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
“We
lived pretty close to each other so we saw each other and played together often.
“
By the time he started middle school the playtime ended and intense long
hours of school began. As an escape, and
only when he had the extra time, he’d go to the movie theaters alone to watch
movies.
“I
remember watching my very first Jackie Chan movie, "Drunken Master".
Also remember seeing the first Indiana Jones movie and thought it was the most
amazing thing ever.”
By the age of 15, Chiang moved to San Jose, California where he graduated
from high school and attended University of California, Santa Barbara, where he
received his BS in Electrical Engineering.
“I
was good with math and sciences. When I was at UCSB I also completed all the
pre-med requirement classes and then took the MCAT. You can say that I fit the
stereotype of the overachieving Asian American college student.”
Throughout his college career, he
continued to be a movie fan, especially the first three Indiana Jones
movies, “The Shining” (“which still
scares the hell out of me”), “The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly”, and the Hong Kong movie “Comrades, Almost a Love
Story.”
Once he received his degree, he got a
job at Apple Computers in the San Francisco Bay area.
“I tested printer and digital camera
software. It was a good first job out of
school working for a company whose products I loved and still swear by, but I
can’t say that it was a very fulfilling experience. I was there for two years.”
After leaving Apple Computers, Chiang
decided to take classes in something he enjoyed – the movies. He began taking film classes at a local
community college, and then interned for a filmmaker in San Francisco.
“The filmmaker told me I needed to apply to
USC film school where she had graduated.
She told me she was writing me a letter of recommendation. I went along with it, thinking I’d never get
it. I did, and I took that as a sign
that I needed to change careers. When I
made the decision to go to film school in my mid-20s I felt like I’ve found my
identity.”
Chiang felt even more grounded when he
met his partner of seven years, who is also an artist.
“He travels a lot and has erratic schedules
like I do, so we understand what each other go through. I don’t know how my filmmaker friends who are
parents do it. It’s just so much work.”
On August 29, 2005, just as Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans, Chiang was in the process of moving from Taiwan to Singapore
for a film production of a travel show for Discovery Channel Asia. Like everybody else, he saw it on the news,
but he would never know how much Hurricane Katrina would impact his life, both
career wise and personally.
One of the areas to be devastated by
Hurricane Katrina was a small, Vietnamese Village, called Versailles. The community not only faced destruction from
Hurricane Katrina, but within the next few months, they were expecting to be
destroyed all over again, by turning part of their community land into a dump
site for Katrina debris.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Chiang
learned about A Village Called Versailles.
“I had been discussing another potential project with a geographer
friend who had been studying the rebuilding of New Orleans East. She was just
telling me about her work and her encounter with the folks in Versailles. She was
talking about the elders protesting, about the young people stepping up, about
the charismatic pastor who was one of the leaders of the community. When I
heard the story, I thought that this could be a fantastic film.”
Chiang knew he had to do this film, but
he wasn’t still sure of what the main focus of the film would be on.
“I thought about following the
community as they move forward with all the ambitious projects they are working
on. I thought about doing a film on just Father Vien. But the more I learned about the history of the community, about the parallel of their several
displacement experiences, I realized that we have to look back to the beginning
of the community and tell the story of how they got to where they are today.”
The film took more than a year to
film. It took over 16 months just to
edit the film. And then there were
financial difficulties, which only delayed the film even more.
“We had to stop for months in the
middle to wait for funding.”
Creating the film A Village Called Versailles is
more than just interviewing subjects, filming, or editing; but also
fundraising.
“I wrote grants after grants and got
many rejections from all but one for the first year and a half. We finally got
CPB money from ITVS and also money from Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
when I was already in post-production. The funding, as you can imagine, is a
huge help. We also got money from Center for Asian American Media towards the
end.”
The post-production was the most
difficult time for Chiang because the hours of footage needed to be tied
together.
“We had to make sense of the hours of
material. But of course, we were still
missing a lot of material we needed, so a ton of energy and time went to
finding archival footage.”
Once the film was finished there was
still more work to do.
“We worked very hard getting film out there.
Apply to film festivals. Connecting with organizations that may potentially be
interested in the story. Traveling around to show the film. We are lucky that
folks responded really well to this film so far, so it feels like the work is
worth it, and we are doing this incredible story justice.”
A Village Called Versailles is continuing to flourish. Most of the individuals featured in the film are
still living in the same area and doing the same things they were doing in the
film.
“Joel Waltzer still practices law in New
Orleans. Minh is still the head of the
youth organization. Mr. Ngo is still
very involved in the community work.
Mimi left New Orleans and moved to Houston, where she worked as a
medical translator. Councilwoman Cynthia
Willard-Lewis termed out of the City Council and is planning her next move.”
Visit avillagecalledversailles.com for more information and to sing up for the
e-newsletter. Also, visit Twitter
@versailles.doc, or go to Facebook for more information.
Also go to the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation:
MQVN-CDC website at (mqvncdc.org). MQVNCDC
is the non-profit organization of community activists who oversee all the
development projects in Versailles, and visit Vietnamese American Young Leaders
Association of New Orleans: VAYLA-NO (vayla-no.org), the youth org.
Photo
Description and Copyright Information
Photo
1
Title
graphic for A Village Called Versailles.
Attributed
to Ida Hands Studio.
Photo
2
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
3
Advertisement
poster for A Village Called Versailles airing on PBS on May 2010.
Photo
4
Religious
procession in Versailles in 1975
Photo
Attribution - Archdiocese of New Orleans
Photo
5
The
Church
Photo
6
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
7
Father
Vien Nguyen
Photo
8
“I
will Rebuild” Sign
Photo
9
Katrina
Dump Site located outside of Vietnamese-American community known as Versailles
in New Orleans
Photo
10 ZA
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
11Z
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
12
S.
Leo Chiang
Copyright granted by S Leo Chiang
Copyright granted by S Leo Chiang
Photo
13
S.
Leo Chiang at the Versailles Lunar New Year Festival in 2009.
Photo
Attribution – Andy Levin
Photo
14
Jackie
Chan at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2012
Photograph
attributed to Georges Biard
CCASA
3.0 Unported License
Photo
15
Harrison
Ford in The Raiders of The Lost Ark
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
16
S
Leo Chiang
Copyright granted by S Leo Chiang
Copyright granted by S Leo Chiang
Photo
17
Movie
Poster for The Shining
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
18
Scene
from The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in which the character Bauby, paralyzed,
dictates one letter at a time by eye movement.
Photo
19
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
20
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
21
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
24
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
25
Header
for A
Village Called Versailles
Photo
26
Religious
procession in Versailles 1975
Photo
Attribution – Archdiocese of New Orleans
Photo
27
Protestors
line up outside of New Orleans City Hall to protest the shutting down of a
toxic landfill in their neighborhood in 2006
Photo
Attributed to James Dien Bui
Photo
28
Young
Versailles community members participates in protest to shut down the Chef
Menteur High Landfill 2006
Photo
Attributed To James Dien Bui
Photo
29
Line
of protestors
Photo
30
Joe
Watzer – the only non-Vietnamese lawyer with an office in Versailles
Photo
31
Minh
Nguyen
Photo
32
Cynthia
Willard-Lewis
Photo
33
Community
organizer Mimi C Nguyen takes the mic at a protest, 2006
Photo
Attributed to Yoojin Janice Lee
