 Welcome to Saint-Tek, Hawaii, Asia in reveal. This is Johnson Choi, the host. The guest today we have Corey Tong, president and producer of Makai Motion Pictures. Corey, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks, Johnson. I met Corey more than 10 years ago at the Hawaii International Film Festival, looking back to the time when the Act 221 tax credit and a lot of things happening. And I've been working with Corey for more than a decade. And Corey is bringing some very interesting projects from California to Hawaii and to the mainland USA. Corey was born in Hawaii, one of the successful local boys that make it big in California. And since I travel to California all the time, I do see Corey quite a few times a year. Okay, Corey, let's talk about your next big project coming up. Well, thanks, Johnson. I've been based in San Francisco and sometimes in Hawaii, but I work a lot, as you know, with Asia Pacific Region. I'm very, very interested in sharing and producing content and stories between North America, Hawaii Pacific Region, and Asia, taking things back and forth. So I've been involved for the last three years with a new documentary that has just come out recently, and we will be launching it next year on public television. So I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a bit, but it's a new documentary directed by James Q. Chan, and he and I have been producing this film for the last three or four years. And it's called Forever Chinatown. It's a documentary about an amazing artist based in San Francisco named Frank Wong, who was born and raised in his youth in San Francisco, Chinatown, moved to Los Angeles, traveled the world. But he has an amazing body of work. He creates miniature models, miniature architectural models, dioramas that are of one inch scale. So they're miniatures, but they're incredible. They capture his memories of growing up in San Francisco, Chinatown, as well as some of his own romantic thoughts about memory and what he thinks of when he remembers his family growing up in the neighborhood of San Francisco, Chinatown, the sights, the smells, the people, his grandmother, his aunts. So this artwork is in the Chinese Historical Society Museum in San Francisco, and James discovered this and showed it to me and we thought it would make an incredible film. So throughout the last three years, we've been putting the piece together and now the film has just been finished. We just launched it, had its world premiere at Full Frame Film Festival, which is a wonderful documentary festival in the States, in the East Coast, and we of the U.S. And we have taken it to New Zealand. We hope that we'll be able to bring it to Hawaii for the Hawaii Film Festival. That will be exciting. Yeah, so we hope to bring it to Hawaii in the next couple of months, and we're waiting to hear about that. But we also will be taking the film throughout the world and then to different parts of Asia, U.S., Europe, hopefully, and other parts of the world where there are Asian communities who have built their own physical neighborhoods or cultural neighborhoods. For example, Hawaii has an amazing Chinatown, has incredible history. We'd love to bring it here so that people who either grew up and know the Chinatown, or not just Chinatowns, but any neighborhood that somebody might have grown up with, whether they're immigrants or, you know, long ago, you know, generations who've lived here, or recent immigrants, I think everybody feels this nostalgia or very, very strong ties to the many of the neighborhoods that they grew up. Actually, you know, there are so many Chinese immigrants, you know, came to Hawaii, and also even more, you know, immigrants that went to San Francisco who built the real world. And now the wave of new immigrants, you know, coming from China is very different from those that came 100 years ago, but anyway, there's a lot of connection. And there is a lot of interest expressed, you know, in Asia that they want to take a look, you know, on the historic perspective, how those early immigrants did in the early year. And this film will be a very good way to recapture and to help the younger generation that live in a different part of the world to see how the earlier immigrants to America spent their life. Yeah, and it's very interesting. Actually, quite a few years back, we went back to Hong Kong and, you know, look at some projects, and there may be some of the things that the Asian country like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, or China may be interested to look at it too, right? Yeah, and we hope to take this film out into the world where we can take some of the artwork itself and the film. We would like to go to places where there are strong Chinese communities, not just in China, but in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, other places, Thailand, Philippines, where the Chinese diaspora has gone all over and has settled, even in London, in South America, very, very fascinating way that not just Chinese but Asian immigrants and Asian diaspora has gone throughout the world and developed their own sense of their community. They've found each other. They've had an amazing, you know, sometimes they might be the only family in one city, but that might end up, you know, growing. They might bring their friends and family there. That's why there's so many Asian hubs, communities all over, especially in North America. And so we hope that this film captures some of that of the way that maybe our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents came into this particular country, but also to many other countries. Yeah, the happening of Chinatown throughout North America, not just San Francisco, Hawaii, including New York, Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, I mean, there are changes happening there and to some bodies like King and also to others dislike because they said the fabric of the old Chinatown has changed. And I've been spending my last nine years in San Francisco monthly because my wife worked there, you know, and I can see their arguments. And we are afraid that as time goes by, you know, some of those old historic aspects of Chinatown as San Francisco might be gone. I mean, this kind of film will be a good way to document the old Chinatown, the old memories of Chinatown, and then hopefully the newcomer that live in Chinatown will appreciate a little bit more what's happening historically in Chinatown. Yeah, we hope so. And of course, you know, change is inevitable and in many urban cities around the world, lots of gentrification going on, lots of globalization, and it doesn't always have to be a bad thing, but it can hopefully be integrated well so that people still maintain really the sense of cultural community because that's so, I think, I believe it's very important in living a very good quality life is to have people, friends, community food, cultural elements that we can always connect with and then of course share with others because I think in a place like San Francisco, that's the beauty or Hawaii. The amazing things about these cities are that it brings a lot of different cultures together and they can share their own but learn about everyone else's and hopefully this film will share a lot about what San Francisco, as I mentioned, San Francisco, Chinatown is about, but really I think a lot of people will reflect on it and really think about their own neighborhoods and their own families. We showed this to a piece, a clip of the film, to some different audiences and there was a wonderful Latino woman, San Francisco, who said she felt so moved by it because it reminded her so much of her own grandmother's life and kitchen. The film is about seven miniatures that are created by this artist, Frank, and each one is very different and unique, but it's from his own personal memory. So one of them is his grandmother's kitchen. The other one is living room during Christmas time. Another one is on the street, it's a shoe shine stand that he remembers and another one is the neighborhood herb shop, the medicinal herb shop that in many ways, there are a few of them that still exist. I'm not sure if they're any here in Oahu, but in Honolulu still, but San Francisco, there are a couple of remaining ones, but they don't quite look like the way that they used to in the 40s and 50s, which is what Frank's artwork captures. Not just in Honolulu, San Francisco, Chinatown, actually in many parts of the world. I still remember the old Hong Kong where I was brought up and I look at some of the historic photos. Of course, there's no miniature sculpture. Yesterday I was looking at the old Kaite Airport in Hong Kong. I still remember those paintings. Landpain, kitchen, buildings, it's kind of scary, but those pilot were so skillful to land the plane. So some of those, along the same concept, maybe you can help develop other documentary. We would love to. Well, one of the besides, now that the film is finished, besides its television broadcast that's coming up next year, we are doing two other projects. One is a neighborhood preservation project. So specifically about San Francisco, Chinatown, but on a larger scale, we hope it inspires other people in other cities to do similar things where they record the stories, families who lived in these places and their own memories of whether they're recent memories or memories from generations ago. But the same thing could happen in Hong Kong, could happen in all over the place, in China, in Japan, in Singapore, Korea, all of the different, and not just of course Asia, I mean everywhere in the world. San Francisco, but again Honolulu, New York City, Toronto, all of these cities are made up of many very fascinating neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, Jewish neighborhoods, the Black neighborhoods. It's amazing, really, really strong, strong cultural ties. Compared to San Francisco, actually that's a lot of city in Asia because the rapid economic growth, the transformation was so dramatic that there is really even need more of this kind of documentary because San Francisco may transform in 70 years. In China, it could transform in 15 years. Like in Hong Kong, it transforms also very rapidly. Every year it's changing. Every year I mean every year you go back to Shanghai or Beijing or Chengdu, like right now they have a G20 in Chengdu in the end of the month and in fact they transform the whole Chengdu into a metropolis city. So things are happening and changing rapidly, rapidly in Asia. I know that you're also bringing the screening to other parts of the country, other parts of the world, can you share with us? Yeah, we'll be, in fact next month in September we are taking the film to Hanoi in Vietnam, to the Hanoi Cinema Tech. So we were invited to bring the film and we are, James and I are going, James the director and I are going there to present the film. And that'll be a really amazing experience. We'll be showing the film, very curious to show it to the Vietnamese communities in Hanoi. And also to, we'd love to engage and talk with audiences and then we want to continue to take this out into different parts of the world as I mentioned. Hong Kong, Singapore, China. Have you done it in San Francisco already? We had a work in progress screening but also in November we'll be screening the film with one of the film organizations in San Francisco. And we'll announce that in about a month, we'll let everyone know where and when. Corey, we are going to break in a minute or two and when we come back, maybe we can share the audience a trailer. That would be great, we'd love to show a little bit of film. About a minute or a minute and 15 seconds to show the highlight of the documentary. And hopefully that we can also see it at the Hawaii International Film Festival in November. So anyway, we're going to take a break right now. See you in a minute. Hey everybody, my name is David Chang and I am a new host for the show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you how to get the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests in the military, business, political, nonprofit world. So no matter what background you're from, we have something for you. Please join us every other Thursday at 10 a.m. at thinktechhawaii.com or on the art of thinkingsmart.com. I look forward to seeing you. Hi, my name is Kim Lau and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha, my name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on ThinkTech Livestreaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Welcome back to ThinkTech Hawaii Asia Review. This is Johnson Choi, the host. My guest today is Colin Tom. At this point, we would like to share with you a short trailer about the documentary that Colin was talking about. In the last year or year and a half, I have trouble remembering things. I'm getting very forgetful at times, so that's what my problem is. I want to capture my memories, and the only way for me to capture my memories is to make them in three dimensions. All my miniatures are composites. It's half-wishing and half-memory. Memories get fuzzy and get more beautiful as years go by. That was the new day trailer about the documentary through the help of Makai Motion Pictures in Hawaii. Colin, maybe you can tell me very shortly how you get to meet the gentlemen and inspire you. And then after that, maybe you can talk about what are your future friends. Sure. So the director, James Chan, who's a good friend and director and producer in San Francisco, called me once and said, oh my God, you have to come and look at these incredible pieces of artwork that I found at the Chinese Historical Museum through another friend of ours. And he said they capture incredibly the memories of a neighborhood. And he described it, and so I went to look at them, and I thought they were amazing pieces of artwork. And then James had already met Frank, the artist previously, but then I met him, and we've had many, many lunches, and many spent a lot of time listening to him and the way that he thinks and the way that he remembers his own life. And they're very romantic memories. They're very, very emotional and sentimental memories. And they are captured in these very unusually obsessive and almost, well, they're realistic memories. So as you just saw in the trailer, if you're going through and looking at these pieces, sometimes if someone doesn't know the scale and you're just looking at, let's say, the photos or the film, you may not actually know that they're one-inch scale mobs like large shoeboxes. You might think, oh, this is a living room or this is a theater set where people might be walking through right away. So that whole idea of capturing something so perfectly and with such incredible detail. And one can spend hours looking at these pieces because there's everything from the food on the shelves is from the period. There are mooncakes being made in the oven. There are eggs. There are pressed ducks. There are all sorts of pieces. There's spam. There's all sorts of things that really were such an integral part of his own life, but the community's life in a very, very intimate way. So after looking at these incredible things, we decided to develop a project and we pitched it to a number of different partners and both partners, funders, broadcasters, and we were very fortunate to have found partners with ITVS and CAM, Santa Fe, Asian American Media, as well as a number of private investors and foundations who all really thought this was a great idea. And so we all spent a lot of time developing the project and went into production about a year and a half ago and then spent the entire almost two years shooting and then editing, working with different musicians, trying to capture the real feel. We came to Hawaii and shot some of it. What you didn't see in the trailer are our Oahu shots that are in the finished film. Well, we might have a chance to see in the future. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully we will. I know in Hawaii we do a lot of film projects. It's usually those big Hollywood film projects and where seldom do I hear people where people are doing small projects. And going forward, you are in the creativity or creative industry, so a movie and other things for a long time, since almost after college time. Can you share with me what your future plans that you want to do both in Hawaii, mainland, USA or Asia and how you would like to collaborate with people that could bring your dream, pick your dreams? Absolutely. Well, as you know, I was born and raised here. I had amazing love and sense of home here in the island. Of course, I love being on the West Coast as well, and I travel and work a lot. And everywhere I go, I have incredible inspiration to develop projects, to think about stories. I am very, very interested in continuing to make films like this forever Chinatown as well. These are documentaries, some of them shorter formats, some of them feature length documentaries, television. I am also interested in feature films, and I have developed one feature film and helped to produce a film with a wonderful Hawaii-based team, Jeanette Paulson-Haraniko and Vili-Haraniko, who we did a film called The Land Has Eyes about ten years ago. That is where we met. Yes, that is where we met at the Hawaii Film Festival. So there are films like that that really, really share stories, very important stories of specific cultures, and hopefully they get to be seen and heard all over the world, and in that regard to share a lot of the important cultural aspects of what exists maybe here. But I am also really interested in developing larger-scale feature projects and documentaries, and I would love to really, I find it very important to work in co-productions, which means having, let's say, Hawaii partners, US partners, or North American partners with Asian partners, European partners, South American partners. Right now I am developing a project, one of them is a series with a New Zealand group, and hopefully it will be developed in the next year or so, and it has to do with Maori culture and how Pacific Islanders and their food have moved throughout the entire Pacific region. So that is one of the projects that I am developing. Another is a big feature film that will take place in Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco, and Hawaii, and that one is in development stage as well. We have been working on it, but I have had to put it a little bit on the side to complete this one and another project that came out last year. And so we will be bringing that back forward on maybe the front side burner and we will be packaging that. But I also have a real big interest in developing projects as well in Asia that could potentially come into North American markets and vice versa. I think there is a lot of opportunity for that. There is a lot of opportunity, business opportunity to share resources and talent, and I think that while many people are doing it, there still is a lot more work to be done and it can really continue to develop and be refined. So very interested in working with big partners, small partners, independent as well as larger entities. Today I read the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong that this year, China is expecting to overtake the United States in the retail sales grand total. A box office? No, I am talking about retail. Oh, I see, not retail. Right now it is about 4.8 trillion US. So this year China is going to overtake it. And they also expect a box office sign. In fact, China Money is buying some of the major studios right now in Hollywood. In fact, they are one of the largest screen. They bought a lot of theaters both in North America and also in Europe. So it is very logical where the monies are. It is more towards Asia right now. So I think development firms that are catered to both the North America and also the Asian market may be a logical approach. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think I feel like it is important to also share resources. And so that is why the idea of joint ventures or co-productions in the film industry are very, very useful because then different people have a stake in the outcome and the product. And then there are hopefully more opportunities for distributing the stories and the content all over. And that can happen now with, of course, web opportunities, web series, television programs, film programs, you know, of all different scales. Sometimes backfracts are making the own film, right? HBO is making the own film, right? Absolutely. Yes. And you know, not everyone might be great. Some might end up on YouTube, some might end up on Vimeo and other smaller, but there are more opportunities. Of course, with that comes that there is a lot more content. And so you have to wade through sometimes some stories and films that are not great quality or might not be interested. Interesting. But at the same time, then one can find incredible, incredible stories or films. It might be short films. Could be pictures. Okay, we'll wrap up in about one minute. Okay. For the last minute, what do you want to tell our audience that your dreams next show? Well, love to, for all of you to see this film. We'd really love for audiences to be able to see Forever Chinatown, but also to really think about their own stories and what's important to them, both culturally, personally, and to really reflect and to look at the films and the TV programs out there, find things that are amazing and that they're passionate about and to support them and then to show them. Thank you, Corey. Thank you very much. If anyone have any interesting project, you know where to find Corey or ask the Hong Kong channel at Chamber of Commerce. So Corey. Thank you very much. Welcome to the show. I will hopefully see you at the Hawaii International Film Festival in November. Hopefully. And all over the world. Thank you so much. Thank you.