Jennifer Chiu

Ethnicity: Hakka-Chinese

Occupation and/or Company: Filmmaker

Years of experience: More than 10 years

Personal & professional philosophy:

Curiosity and a thirst for knowledge are what drive me in all my work, whether it’s personal or professional. I love filmmaking because of its collaborative nature and I believe that many brains are better than one!

Upcoming performances/ project:

I am excited to be premiering my film, Clan of the Painted Lady, to audiences across B.C. and Canada in the next couple of weeks on The Knowledge Network. Along with my screening in Vancouver at the VIFF Centre on May 23, I’m also showing the film at the Blue Mountain Film Festival in Ontario on May 28 and holding a community screening in Toronto on May 31 at Cineplex Fairview.

What is the highlight of your work?

The highlight of my work will always be the connections that I make with people I meet and work with as I make a film. I feel so privileged to be able to enter people’s lives, hear their stories and often go home to meet their families and film them in their most private and personal spaces — moments I will always cherish. I love hearing my creative collaborators’ ideas and trying them out — even if they are a big departure from my own. I love it when I discover a new way of seeing something because I was able to let go of how I used to see it.

Future goals:

I’m writing my first dramatic feature about a young Chinese person who immigrates here during the Cariboo Gold Rush in the 1860s. History painted the Chinese as a mass of people without individual stories. Many came willingly, but many were sold into slavery — which is a darker part of this history that I’m interested in exploring. I’m also looking forward to expanding my understanding of the experiences and perspectives of the Chinese people and how they navigated encounters with so many people from across the world who found themselves here, on the Indigenous lands of what we now know as British Columbia.