Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jeremy Thao. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jeremy, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My resilience is forever fueled by the tenacity of my refugee parents and their will to succeed in the strange new world of America that they found themselves in after the end of the Secret War during the American war in Vietnam. To be the firstborn American child of war refugees means that my existence is the direct result of sacrifice.
My father lost his father when he was 13. My dad guided his mother and four younger brothers through the war-torn jungles of Laos until they reached the safety of a refugee camp in Thailand. So how dare I not dream big?
Whenever I feel defeated in my filmmaking career, I remind myself that I am not simply furthering my own story but I am also amplifying my parents’ voices and preserving their legacy. That always brings me back down to Earth and reminds me of the direction that I need to be moving toward.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I started my filmmaking career as a first assistant director and coordinator in 2017 and started my own production company called Bee Water A/V after winning a filmmaking grant from Film Impact Georgia in May 2021 to produce my latest short film called “Wokman.”
Wokman is a story about a day in the life of the Li family, the only Chinese family in town, as they chase their American Dream from inside of their restaurant, China Wok.
With the rise of hate and violence towards the Asian American community alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, a mentor told me that an effective and immediate way to combat this rise in anti-Asian sentiment was to share pictures and stories about our families, to humanize our people as much as possible.
In that moment, I realized I needed to stop just thinking about Wokman like I had for the past two years and finally started to write the script. It’s a strange feeling when chapters of fear and uncertainty within a community lead to the blossoming of art to better understand how we feel.
Wokman is my attempt to share with the world why I think I am the way that I am. Making this movie has shown me that my passion in filmmaking is to help amplify the voices and stories of underrepresented peoples.
We started our film festival circuit in September 2023 and we are hoping for a big 2024.
I am currently working on the treatment for the Wokman feature screenplay while simultaneously developing film and television projects with exciting collaborators.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Leadership — Too many film directors forget or ignore the fact that they are in a position of leadership, whether or not they like it. Starting my filmmaking career as an assistant director allowed me to cherry-pick the best attributes of directors and also to avoid characteristics that I did not like seeing from my perspective as a first AD.
My advice to up-and-coming filmmakers regarding leadership is quite simple: Filmmaking is the harmony of countless human relationships and relationships require work, time & investment. When you prove to your team that you care more about them than your movie, their desire to work hard for you multiplies. Learn what makes your cast and crew move. You are about to walk through Hell and back with these people and it is your responsibility to know how to motivate them, encourage them, and love them.
2. Vulnerability — I’ve come to realize that vulnerability and creativity are one in the same. Making Wokman forced me to look at myself in ways that I’ve always ignored. For the first time in my life, I really processed how it felt to grow up as an Asian American and the son of refugees. Hearing people’s responses to the Wokman script and film have shown me that storytelling goes far beyond a medium for entertainment. Storytelling can help us explore and understand things that hurt and confuse us.
If you don’t risk being cringe, you are really preventing yourself from reaching levels within yourself where the true stories live. It’s true what they say, that we all have stories within us that can make someone cry. But it’s our job as filmmakers to figure out how to compile the parts of a story and then how to present the story as a whole to make the best movie possible.
3. Confidence — There is a type of loneliness that accompanies creating something out of nothing, with only hope and ideas fueling you. It’s never guaranteed that there are going to be other people verbally or externally cheering you on. So you need to get really good at doing that for yourself. And unfortunately that’s a really difficult thing to do for some people, like myself.
What really helped me along the way to becoming a screenwriter and director was learning as much about the filmmaking industry from as many points of view as possible. Assistant directing, coordinating, and being a production assistant were never my favorite moments of filmmaking, but they were hands down the most important chapters of my filmmaking career thus far.
My experiences below-the-line have slowed things down for me as a producer and I encourage all directors to learn and get experienced in film crew roles other than directing to get a better understanding of filmmaking as a whole and to better appreciate the crew that will be helping you make your movie.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I have been yearning to collaborate with more Asian American creatives, chefs & filmmakers. The foundation of my filmmaking career has been built on amplifying the voices of immigrants and refugees and I want to use my platform as a storyteller to do my part in helping bridge the gaps that the greater AANHPI community has with other communities.
In particular, I am excited to connect with fellow Southeast Asian creatives and helping shine a light on peoples and cultures that are lesser known from that region.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/wokman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremythao/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-thao-551411148/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Thao
Image Credits
Brandon Clifton
