Stories of Rootlessness: Interview with Yuwen Zhang

Yuwen Zhang is a Chinese filmmaker now based in NYC. She had sojourned in various countries before moving to the United States in 2019 to pursue her M.A. in Education at Columbia University. After teaching for four years, she returned to her alma mater in 2023 as an M.F.A. Film candidate in Creative Producing at Columbia University. Throughout the years, she has produced short celebrity commercials and has participated in one feature. Her works premiered at the Cairo International Film Festival and the Beijing International Short Film Festival (BISFF). Films that are grounded, with the intention of capturing the zeitgeist of the contemporary young generation, especially those exploring themes of cross-cultural rootlessness, always resonate with her.

In a sit-down interview, Yuwen discusses her producing philosophy – transitioning from teaching to creating – and how this branches out to the stories she tells and what the role of a producer should be.

You began in education before transitioning back into filmmaking. What did teaching give you – creatively or personally – that you now bring into producing?

Teaching taught me a lot about how you manage and understand an audience – classroom or moviegoers. You know how much the audience will get out of tension. With teaching, you’re managing your audience, especially with kids, with short attention spans. Education is very helpful with a directorial approach, and even producing, because of management skills. How you tell a story and build immersion is essential in navigating a viewer. With teaching, even today, I find similarities to establishing a set-up, rising action, conflict, and resolution between engaging students and viewers. Teaching is natural storytelling.

Your work often resonates with stories of cultural displacement and “rootlessness.” What draws you to these narratives?

My film is about a Chinese immigrant and his mother, who is a non-English speaker. She can tell he’s not okay. This idea came to me in the Summer of 2023, when the wildfires happened in Canada, and the whole New York skyline was filled with ash, and it was hard to breathe. I was teaching a class that day, and at that time, many refugees arrived in the United States. These people are treated more like data than human beings: statistics of immigration in this country. I had immigrant students in my class then who didn’t speak English, along with American students. That Friday, when the sky went yellow, the American students didn’t know what to do about the natural disaster and were scared, but the immigrant students were focused on their studies as if nothing was happening. I wondered if that was because this sort of natural disaster was normal for them. I don’t know, and we can’t always know these things about people and their environments. That’s why I’m fascinated by stories about people and their lives.

As an MFA candidate in Creative Producing, what’s your philosophy of what a producer should be?

I think about this a lot, actually. It’s an interesting dilemma; the purpose of making art is to shed light on humanity. We try to make the world a little bit better through the lens we’re telling. The ironic part is that when you’re on set, and the pressure is high, how you treat people sometimes doesn’t reflect who I am – I become someone else, in a way. It’s not that I become an awful person, but there’s an irony when time, money, and progress become factors and how that changes my role. I still try to translate whatever someone wants to make onto the screen. That’s my goal: Maintaining a collective experience with perspectives against the conventional “aura” of hierarchy commonplace in filmmaking.

Can you walk us through your producing process – from the moment you connect with a story to the moment you’re on set?

One recent project is with a Korean director, so I’ll describe that. The story is about a four-person Korean immigrant family in New York, and each of them goes about their own lives on this one day, but their stories all interconnect as their actions support each other. I connect with these types of immigrant stories and with people struggling with the choice between settling down and being free spirits. For me, some issues arise, but I’ve learned to solve them as you go – that’s how it often goes. Don’t point fingers or gossip; I could hear that on sets sometimes, and I hate it. Obstacles come up, and we overcome them.

Your projects have screened at Cairo IFF and BISFF. Did participating in international festivals change your perspective on how your films are received across different cultures?

I can’t speak much about Cairo since I had a minor role. Regarding Beijing, I was an on-set producer. As for how an audience from a different culture would perceive my work, I can’t tell. When you break down the festival’s process, from the filmmaker’s side, we’re always thinking about who can tell this story. The audiences are all different, and sometimes the festivals take films of a certain category or criteria. That’s how they schedule their screenings at the festival. The festival wants something – good or bad – that fits a spot they’re looking for.

Is there a project from your past that you feel best captures your vision as a producer? Why?

I like The Silent Voice, which I produced for my thesis. The Asian family story resonated with me, but I love the subtlety. We shot it on 16 mm film and used minimal dialogue. It wasn’t slow cinema, but the emotions were expressed through gestures.

Are you currently developing any new projects that explore the same themes – or are there new subjects you’re eager to explore?

Something new. In February, we will be shooting a lawsuit story. I’m also exploring science-related topics, which is different for me. Recently, we experimented with Virtual Reality technology. There wasn’t a story to it; we just tested the VR tech because we know how things are advancing.