Documentary Filmmaker S Leo Chiang and "Mr. Cau Goes To Washington"

Chris Cooper – 1,236 Words

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Mr. Cau Goes To Washington

www.walking-iris.com

www.sleochiang.com

“Now, you’re not gonna have a country that can make these kinds of rules work, if you haven’t got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose.  It’s a funny thing about men, you know.  They all start life being boys.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once.”

Jefferson Smith (portrayed by Jimmy Stewart) in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!  Public television stations across the country will re-broadcast 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.  And if you are in Silicon Valley, PBS Northern California (KQED) is hosting a film and conversation event Thursday, May 29th in San Jose to highlight the rise of Asian Americans in Silicon Valley politics and show clips from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington and A Village Called Versailles. 

When the Center for Asian American Media, which funds television programs for subject matters based on Asian Americans, asked filmmaker S. Leo Chiang to do a documentary film on an Asian American political figure based out of New Orleans, he said yes without hesitation.

         Chiang is best known for his documentary film A Village Called Versailles that was nominated for an Emmy Award; received eight film festival awards; aired on PBS Independent Lens series; and has been acquired by more than 200 academic public libraries.  The film focused on the rebuilding and transformation of the Vietnamese American Community in post-Katrina, New Orleans

         “A Village Called Versailles is part of the reason I was approached to do this project, because I spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans in the Vietnamese community and they thought I was the right person for the project.  They actually came to me and said they were putting a lot of programs for politicians, one of which was Joseph Cau.”

Joseph Cau is not your normal politician; Cau was at the time considering going to seminary school to become a priest; and in fact, did not come under the political public radar until after $90,000 was found in then Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson’s freezer.  Jefferson would later be convicted of taking bribes. Thus began the novice’s bid for the Senate.

         What makes Joseph Cau unusual are three things:  he is the first Vietnamese American to be a congressman; he is Republication when over 70% of the New Orleans population identify themselves as Democratic; and he is an extreme idealist.   

         It seemed only fitting that the title of the film would be Mr. Cao Goes To Washington; a bit of a spin on the classic movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington with Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith. The film reveals the journey of Mr. Cau’s ideals and his good intentions, only to be a bit dazed by that great dose of reality. The film took about two years to film and complete, beginning with Cao’s campaign for the 2010 election of the New Orleans district congressman office and through his second campaign.  Chiang described Joseph Cau’s bid as Republican Senator for Louisiana being something nobody expected, especially Joseph Cau.

“It was a fluke.  He is the first Vietnamese immigrant voted into Congress and he was the only Republican that voted in favor of President Barack Obama’s health care reform bill.  Mr. Cau is idealistic in terms.  He really believes you can overlook partnership and racial representation.  It was something he strived to achieve during those two years”

         Chiang traveled from his home base of San Francisco to New Orleans and Washington D.C. and spent the days with Congressman Cau. 

“I was in New Orleans for six to eight weeks straight through. I’d just show up at Joseph’s office and hung out there as much as I could and followed him where I was allowed to go with a camera.  Even though there were some things I was not allowed to shoot, I had more access than many people.”

        Chiang and Cau have a lot in common; both are Asian and both at one time considered a different career field.  Chiang, even though he always was fascinated with film at an early age, thought he’d become an engineer, and started taking university courses.

         “I was working apple computers for a while and not satisfied with the work. I was very curious about media and photography and life.  And I liked to play with camera and make weird little short films.  It was kind of a fluke.  I didn’t have too much film training at that point.  It was a sign and I needed to drop what I am doing and go to film school.”

         Chiang was accepted into the film program at the University of Southern California where he received his MFA in film production.  His focus was on fiction and non-fiction films, and he found that he enjoyed the non-fiction the best.

         “I was always interested in story telling and documentaries stood out.   I love traveling, meeting different people, going to unusual places.  Real life stories are so much more compelling than what people can make up.  I tend to lean toward more things that have more observational elements in it.”

         In a screenplay – the play itself determines the outcome of the film; and how it is structured.  In a documentary the participants ad lib at will, and determine the structure and direction of the film.  The writing for the documentary film is based on what was said by the participants.

         “The first step of making a documentary film is to converse with your subject, which Cao would do.  There are lots of discussions about dramatic structure, character development.  You let what you film determine how it is going to be put together.”

         After 800 hours of worthy footage, the editing process can be a painful one, especially when you have to cut the footage down to a 71-minute film.

“The way I like to edit is to start on the scenes and the shoots that I remember the most compelling to me when it was being video taped and start to think about the whole story, and what the film is about.  Even then, there will be more edits.  First passage is not the end product.”

 “I wish that I could include Cao’s back story, which is fascinating and unusual.  As an eight year old he came to America and was raised by his parents, uncles, aunts, relatives and sponsors.  He originally came to California but decided to become a priest and moved to New Orleans.  Joseph’s father died in the middle of his reelection campaign.  A lot of people were against him and he dealt with a lot of personal stuff.  It was tricky to try to capture that story.  He is now studying for a PhD in philosophy.”

Mr. Cao Goes To Washington had its first screenings in San Francisco, the place he calls home.

         “Actually when I first moved to the USA going to high school in Santa Jose I felt comfortable in the Bay area.  It’s a dense city and we lived in an apartment in multiple unites that are the typical San Francisco Victorian.  It is a very beautiful city; one of the most beautiful in the world.”

Chiang is now working on a project with another filmmaker about Lesbian, Gays, and Transgender politicians who live in conservative countries – thus far he’s followed individuals in Kenya and the Philippines.

He is also a lecturer in the Social Documentation program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Photo Description And Copyright Information

Photo 1

A Scene from Mr. Smith Goes To Washington where Jefferson Smith (portrayed by Jimmy Stewart) addressees Congress.

Public Domain

Photo 2

Mr. Cao Goes To Washington movie poster.

Photos 3, 11, and 15

S. Leo Chiang. 
Copyright granted by S Leo Chiang

Photo 4

A Village Called Versailles movie poster.

Photos 5, 8, 12

Anh “Joseph” Cau

Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington

Photo 6

William Jefferson.
Public Domain.

Photo 7

Rep. Anh “Joseph" Cao, R-La, attends the House Oversight and Government Reform 2009, on Bank of American’s buyout of Merril Lynch.

Photo Attributed to Bill Clark/Roll Call/ Getty Images)

Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington

Photo 9

President Barack Obama talks with Representative Joseph Cao, (R-LA), in the State Dining Room following discussion with members of Congress about immigration reform, June 25, 2009.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington.

Photo 10

Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao chats with President Obama at a Congressional Republican event, 2010. (Photo courtesy of House Republican Conference).
Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington

Photo 13

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Congressman Joseph Cao (R-LA) walk over the Judge Seeber Bridge in the Ninth Ward to release a wreath in commemoration of the 5^th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Sunday, August 29, 2010. 

Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images.
Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington.

Photo 14

Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao campaigning for his re-election in Uptown New Orleans, 2010. (Photo by Bao Nguyen)  Production still from Mr. Cau Goes To Washington

Documentary Filmmaker S Leo Chiang and "A Village Called Versailles"

Christal Cooper

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*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

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

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