Dr. John Stover, sociology faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, writes that documentary filmmakers play a significant role in shaping activists histories long after the events have transpired.

Documentary filmmaking is a vibrant form of social activism.

Tonight, we meet a documentary filmmaker who advances social justice causes like inequality, racism and discrimination.

We're having this conversation at the Chinese-American Museum in Los Angeles.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCC.

PBS.

Welcome to everybody with Angela Williamson and Innovation, Arts, Education and Public Affairs Program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, Dr. Angela Williamson.

Curtis Chen is our guest.

Curtis, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Before we get into why you're here today, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Growing up as a very open question.

I like to describe myself as being Detroit born, New York bred, L.A. based and London bound.

And I can sort of explained all later.

But so I was born in Detroit, raised there.

My family had long roots to the city arriving, you know, in the late 1800s or somewhere around there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I Detroit, Yes, there were Chinese people in Detroit even before there was a Ford Motor Company or Motown music, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

They actually they came from Canton, China, to Canton, Ohio, for some insane reason and then found out there were no Chinese people in Ohio.

And then they moved to Detroit, where there a lot of it, a few more.

And so, you know, at that time, Detroit was just, you know, taking off, you know, to become the giant manufacturing hub that it was.

But, yeah, they started off like most Chinese-Americans doing the railroad, doing the laundry.

And then, you know, when Chinese restaurants became really popular, starting in the thirties and forties, you know, they went into the restaurant business and that's where we've stayed ever since.

And being in that restaurant business, it was a family affair.

Right.

So tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah.

So it was started by my great grandfather and he brought in his two eldest kids.

And so it was split between my half of the family and my I guess my cousins or second cousins it would be.

And so it was always a big family affair whenever we would do things.

Everybody pitched in.

And I grew up there, you know, worked my way up from being a busboy to, you know, washing dishes to waiting tables to managing.

I mean, just did everything.

And so it was a really great learning experience.

I think, you know, I learned so many skills and just things about people working in that Chinese restaurant.

And do you think working in that Chinese restaurant is the reason why you probably chose your career path, or was it something different because you became a writer for television?

Well, I don't know.

I don't know if if that has influenced, you know, my career.

I mean, I think it's definitely influenced my personality.

You know, there's so many intangible things that you learn growing up in a Chinese restaurant.

And one things I talk about is like, you know, Detroit was a very racially polarized city between blacks and whites.

But the Chinese restaurant is actually one of the few places where everybody would go.

So you would actually see, you know, people from the white community, the black community, the Jewish community, etc., etc.. And one of the greatest lessons that I learned in that Chinese restaurant was from my dad, who was a person who himself had grown up in Chinatown, never went to college, but yet he found a way to have a conversation with everybody that came in through our door.

And I think that taught me that it is easy to connect with people if you just try and all you have to do is listen and that, you know, people, even if they have completely different backgrounds, you know, you can find that point of connection.

And he taught me not to be afraid of people that were different than me.

And I think that these these these wonderful life lessons that you that you learned growing up, you know, is what was so fabulous about being in a Chinese restaurant.

Okay.

So now I want you to walk me through how you go from Detroit to you mentioned Los Angeles.

So tell me what happens to get you to Los Angeles.

Okay.

This is my whole book that I writing.

But so thank you, sir.

So I worked as I'm writing this memoir called Everything I Learned.

I learned in a Chinese restaurant, and it's broken down like the Chinese believe.

Eight, eight, eight is a good luck number.

So it's eight stories in elementary middle schools, eight stories in high school and eight in college.

And, you know, I actually didn't want to go to college.

I was one of those kids that just, you know, was just going to travel around the world.

I mean, but it was also, you know, as a gay kid coming out at that time, AIDS was a big issue.

And I just didn't think like, what was the point of staying four years in college, you know, when, you know, frankly, I could be dead in ten years.

Right.

And so I just had a different attitude about things.

But my mom being the type of person that she is and, you know, wanted me to go to college and do things that she didn't have an opportunity to do because she was working in the restaurant, you know, pushed me to go to college.

And so I ended up going there and, you know, that's where I started my writing.

I had never written before, really.

And it was only because I got into a select creative writing program there that really set me on that course.

And so, yeah, that's that's how I became a writer.

And what university did you go to in Michigan?

Oh, of course.

I and I remember ask that question and answer.

Session in Detroit.

You got to go to Ann Arbor.

Yeah.

Okay.

So in my mind, you're still in Michigan and you start creative writing.

How do you get working for television?

What you know, so, you know, I so got into this great writing program at Michigan.

They just launched this creative writing program for undergraduate was a highly selective program to get in.

I think they took somewhere between 15 and 20 people in the program.

Yeah, yeah, it was tough.

And so I got to take advanced level classes, but at the same time it was also a challenge as as a person of color in a writing program where I'm the only, you know, minority.

And I don't know if you ever had that experience.

At all.

But, you know, it's a challenge because of the way you're perceived and the way your stories are are, you know, taken.

And, you know, I actually had a terrible experience that actually made me leave school a little early where, you know, this will be in the book.

But, you know, I signed up for this advanced fiction writing class because and I was a poet at that time, you know, And so most of my classroom poetry.

But I thought, oh, I'm going to push myself and take a poet fiction writing class.

And so I took this fiction writing class.

And the lecturer, I think she was a lecturer, you know, the shorter for professor.

But she said, Oh, you guys are young writers.

You guys should break from a different perspective.

And so, you know, all the other writers in class wrote, you know, from a different perspective.

They were white.

And so sometimes they would write as a person of color and they would say things that I didn't think people of color would say, you know, like, Oh, I love my almond eyes, You know, I mean, we don't see things like that.

And so I would always have to comment.

And when it came time to for me to read my piece or to write a piece in reading class, I decided that I was not going to follow her assignment because as a person of color, I don't get to read many stories, you know, from a Chinese-American perspective.

And so and I was working full time and going to school at night.

And so I thought, like, I have very little time to actually write.

And so I'm not going to waste it on an assignment.

I'm going to write something I want.

And so I wrote this story about this kid growing up in Detroit, Chinatown, and having a crush on his Chinese school teacher.

I turned it in the other people in the class, they all really enjoyed the story.

They said nice things, but you know, my my teacher didn't say anything.

She just asked me to come to her class, her office hours the next day.

And I showed up and I thought like, okay, she's going to bust me for not following the assignment.

But instead she first told me to stop talking about race in class because it was just slowing down the creativity of the other kids, other students.

And then she accused me of plagiarism because she said, this story is too good to be from an undergraduate.

And I thought like, okay, this is not the right place for me to grow creatively.

And so I moved to New York, and that was a great decision because I got to take classes with people like A.S. Gaye.

I got to meet writers like David Henry.

I mean, like it was just great and it was much cheaper than being in college, you know?

So, you know, and and at that point, I met a lot of other Asian-American writers, and we formed an organization called the Asian-American Writers Workshop, which is actually still in existence today.

It's one of the largest Asian-American literary arts organization in the country.

And, you know, when I was in, I became the first executive director.

But when I left, you know, we had a budget of about $700,000 a year.

We were giving, you know, fellowships to writers of $10,000.

You know, so many famous writers, Asian-American writers have come out of that program.

And so that sort of set me on that course.

And so, no know, if I did and I don't know if I had intentions of becoming a TV writer, I moved out here more because of love, because the guy I was seeing at the time was out here and we had a long distance relationship.

And at some point we said we should pay you to live in the same city if we're going out.

And so as a writer, I had more freedom.

And so I moved out here and I didn't know what I was going to do.

And so TV seemed like an interesting job, and so I pursued that.

And how was it for you in the writers room?

We're talking about the eighties and nineties.

Yeah, you know, being the only person of color is a challenge.

And when you say when I say I'm the only person of color, that includes the crew too, I mean, it's like completely, you know, and so it is a challenge.

You know, I haven't completely processed all this stuff because that would be my next book.

But, you know, you have to you know, you have to make compromises or you have to position yourself in a certain way.

So, for instance, I knew at that time, you know, and, you know, as an Asian-American, I was doing sitcoms, right.

And there's no such thing as the Asian-American sitcom writers, because at that time, because they didn't really think Asians as being funny people, they don't think of well, I mean, they don't know.

That's not the stereotype of Asians.

We're not thought of as being as funny people.

But I am gay.

And people do think of gay people as funny.

So I actually had to play the gay card more than the Asian card, you know what I mean?

And so you know how when you marry multiple heads, you have to play different ones at different times.

And so that was sort of what I was thinking at that time.

But yeah, now I have stories of like the challenges of it and, you know, it was difficult and, you know, looking at it now because it's been a good 15 years since I've worked in television, I see the landscape has changed so drastically and I think that's really wonderful.

But I know definitely, you know, there are more opportunities now.

And like even the idea of like some of the shows that I would think that I would love to write back then are probably not things that that you could even tell your agent about because they probably would have said, Yeah, let's try to find something a little bit more commercial, something that we could actually sell.

But I don't think that Asian-American writers encounter that same situation now.

At least that's not what I hear, you know, because again, I don't work in that field anymore.

But from what I hear is that you can and if you read the trade papers, you actually see Asian-American projects coming up.

So I think that's a big change.

And hopefully it's not a temporary fad, but something that's more long lasting.

That will continue like a trend in a way that it will be a trend.

So before we get to our break, I want to transition you a little bit, because when we come back, we're going to talk about what you're doing today.

But you end up leaving Los Angeles and going back home, and that really changes what you start to do next in your life.

So tell me a little bit about that before we go to our break.

Yeah, I took a detour in life.

I started making documentaries, which is a whole new field that I had no training in.

But it's been wonderful because I've been able to talk about social justice issues.

But I also took another slight detour where I was started.

I worked as one of the directors of outreach for for the Democratic National Committee, the DNC.

So I was doing some political work for a little while.

Yeah.

So I just became much more political after my dad passed away because I just felt like, you know, this is where I can contribute.

And so, yeah.

When we come back, I want to hear about those changes.

Talk a little bit about what you did for the DNC and also the Obama administration.

So hang on.

We'll be back to talk to in a few minutes.

When I was growing up, my mom was extremely tidy.

We were trained to put things back where we got them from.

One day when I want them to my mom's house, I felt like I was in someone else's house.

There was stuff everywhere and just growing up the way I grew up.

And to see this transition was very alarming.

When Sean talked to me, it was a wake.

Up call, and that's when I went to the doctor.

I was horrified to learn how they followed him out, grabbed him and held him down as they hit him with a baseball bat until Vincent's skull cracked.

And child, Vincent's last words were, It's not fair.

Before he slipped into a coma and died.

Welcome back.

Before we went to our break, you gave us a teaser, and I thought it was just one detour.

But you said you had to.

So I want you to talk about those two ways that really change the way that we see Curtis Chin today and how you really became much more involved in the political process.

While it may seem like I have all these different strands in my life or I'm schizophrenic, they're actually pretty connected, right?

I mean, they're all related to social justice work, whether it's I'm making a film, whether I'm on the lecture circuit or whether I'm volunteering for a political campaign, It's all about equality.

It's all about fairness.

It's all about bringing more equity to our society and making sure that America lives up to the brochure that we put out about, you know, the type of country that we want to be.

And so, yes, my primary work is in documentary filmmaking, but now also writing this memoir that that hopefully we can talk about in a sec.

But, you know, I've also done some political work.

I did a brief stint with the Democratic National Committee doing outreach to the Asian-American community.

But the thing that I've been most proud of is, you know, being invited to serve on Barack Obama's Asian-American Leadership Council during his first presidential run.

There was about 20 of us from around the country that were invited to participate in weekly calls to, you know, talk policy issues, things that would be addressing our community, talking points, all this really fun stuff about the campaign.

And, you know, anybody that had an opportunity to work on the Obama campaign.

You just sensed a hopefulness and optimism.

You know that you want our country to get back to at some point.

And so I still think of that as as a great opportunity experience.

You know, obviously, after the election, you know, maybe my opinions may have softened a little bit after you see the administration.

And but, you know, it was a great learning opportunity, you know, but at the end of the day, like I said, it was about social justice.

So and everything that you've done since is about social justice.

And so tell me about you talked a little bit about the book.

Definitely you can talk about that.

But also to there are some other documentary films that you've been working on as well that really fall under the social justice umbrella.

Yeah, well, I have to say that, you know, given my bio, it was almost inevitable that that I would get into this work because not only was I coming of age during the murder of Vincent Chin, which is the hate crime murder that happened in Detroit, where a Chinese-American was murdered by these two white autoworkers who said, it's because of you, other blanks that were out of work.

And so that shaped my racial identity.

But I also came about came of age in the eighties during the AIDS movement.

And so that, you know, really shaped my sense of identity.

And so I moved to New York and I became involved with groups like Act Up Queer Nation and protesting there.

And I think between those two things, it was just sort of inevitable that I was, you know, going to be political on some level, right?

I mean, you know, I mean, it stares you right in the face like that.

I mean, when these life and death matters are confront you, you know, do you run away from it?

You pretend it doesn't exist or do you grab the bull by the horns and say, look, we've got to do something about this?

And so that's what I've tried to do.

So you have done so many different things regarding social justice and Vincent Chan that makes sense because you grew up and you have personal connection, but you've chosen other topics as well to focus on in your documentary filmmaking for example, test it to talk about how did you determine that subject matter?

So Test It is a documentary that looks at the New York City public school system.

They have these elite magnet schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech.

I don't know if you've heard of them, but, you know, they're really world famous.

So many top caliber people have come through them.

The issue is that the only way to gain admission is to take a single standardized test.

And so when you look at the New York City school population, which is about 70% black and Hispanic, but when you look at these top schools and realize that it's only 1% black and 3% Hispanic, it becomes a giant and a red flag that everybody should be concerned with, like what's happening and how this impacts the Asian-American community.

Is that at these schools?

Well, Asian-Americans represent about 15% of the New York City public school system.

There are about 70% at these schools.

But the interesting data point that I found was that Asians also had the highest poverty rate in the city.

And so you can't necessarily make this correlation between race and class all the time.

And so I really want to sort of explore that.

You know, you know how these things intersect with each other.

And so that's what drew me to the topic.

And obviously, as someone whose family, you know, my mom never graduated high school, my dad went to, I think a semester or two of community college.

They really pushed education on us as a way to improve our lives.

And so I'd always grown up with that.

But as someone who, you know, had gone through quite a different few different educational opportunities in the Detroit area, you know, your brief stint in the Detroit public Schools all the way to a well-to-do public school, you know, in the suburbs, I saw the disparity between, you know, the opportunities right between the different school districts.

So it's always just it's always just fascinated me, like how the kids that I knew in the Detroit school system probably had a different trajectory than the kids in these other school system.

And I was always just curious about that.

You spent so much time, especially with Vincent, who and then also I'm sure you're going to be doing this with Tested as well.

You spend so much time going into colleges and universities.

Do you ever have students ask you like, how can they be a documentary filmmaker because they have their own issues they want to talk about?

Because normally when there's documentary filmmakers, they have those issues that are personal, or are they asking you other questions?

Yeah, to be honest, I don't think young people need to ask me if they can be a documentary filmmaker.

I think they already assume they can be because they've been living their lives filming already, right?

I mean, that's the generation.

They pick up things, they slap it up on YouTube so they don't need permission.

They're going to do it.

So, no, I think in terms of what they do ask about being a documentary filmmaker is more of the marketing aspect of it.

Like how do you get your films out there?

How do you get people talking about it?

How can you get your film to have an impact?

Because I think that's what they want.

So like, for instance, with our film tested, you know, despite the fact that the New York public school system did not want us to make the film and did everything to stop us from making the film, once the film was released, they were pretty happy with it to the point where they started using it as a film to train their teachers and administrators.

You know, they brought me out to New York like three times to do special talks with their staff.

And so to me, that is hopefully having an impact on these policy things.

And that's where I mean, that's the important thing about documentary filmmakers.

It's great that people want to view these things.

They want to learn about these issues.

But I think it's also important that the decision makers also, you know, can grow from watching your film.

A You mentioned something and you glossed over it and moved on to the final point of what test it has done and how it's being used.

But you talked about those obstacles.

We the challenges.

And so do you have any mention the New York educational system, But have you had any other challenges that you've just had to decide to move forward to get the project done and then all of a sudden everyone has a change of heart?

Or is it pretty much just this one documentary?

No.

One?

No, no.

I mean, there's always independent documentary.

Filmmaking is hard, especially if you want to make for a living.

If you want to do it as a side hobby, anybody can do it.

And lots of people do do it right.

But a lot of people also have day jobs.

You know, I've been lucky enough not to have a day job, you know, because I do enough screenings and get enough invitations to go out there.

But the challenge, I guess, with any creative field is always how do you how do you make a living doing it right?

And I don't know the answer to that.

You know, what's the best way to sort of do it?

But I think it's it is finding the right subjects and but it's not always easy.

Like the current film that I was working on, I actually had to stop.

I was making a film called Our Chinatown, which was looking at this is pre-COVID.

I was looking at issues of gentrification, overcrowding of schools and other issues that were really impacting the oldest Chinatowns in America.

But then when COVID hit, you know, not only did we have to shut down production, but the issues impacting our community had changed.

It suddenly became more about hate crimes, right.

And xenophobia and things like that.

And so I didn't know if our film would be relevant anymore.

And so I sort of put the film on hold.

But sadly, one of our subject matters passed away from COVID, and so we are now editing his story.

He's a very famous photographer and importantly, we are editing his story into a short, a 20 minute short.

And yeah, so I'll release that.

So but but I think that's the one thing is you just have to be flexible and you try to figure out how to make these things work.

That's great advice.

So before I close my conversation with you, tell our audience how they can keep in touch with you because you have this new project coming out that you're going to do in this new 20 minute short.

You may go back to the other project before COVID.

You think you might go back to that project?

I think we can edit the other pieces that we did on the other cities as separate shorts, because I don't because there isn't that pressure as a whole film for it to be as relevant because then people can see them as isolated short pieces.

So I might do that, you know.

But the first thing is just completing the piece just because this guy was a hero to our community, if people don't know him, please look up his work.

I mean, he's he documented the Asian-American community since the late sixties.

Was like an activist all in himself.

Oh, yeah.

He was big time.

And, you know, to the point where it's like when he passed away in January, CNN did a story on him, The New York Times, The New Yorker, everybody covered him.

I mean, so, you know, we show a different side of him in our film.

He gets very personal, talking about his journey as a photographer and the sacrifices that he's made in his life.

And so that's why I really want to finish the film, because I want to show this other side to him that people don't get to see through the photography, right, Because you only see it.

You see his world through his eyes and his lens and the things that matter to him.

And that's a wonderful thing.

But you don't see the the the second side of him, right.

That he that he was very guarded about in a lot of ways.

Thank you so much for this conversation and thank you for using your art for social justice.

And you have to come back when that book.

I have good.

I'm going to find you.

So you have to come back when that book is published because I want to talk about that in depth.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

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