Valerie Soe

Since the 1980s, Valerie Soe has worked ardently to foreground the faces and voices of Asians and Asian Americans on the screen. As a Bay Area native and award-winning San Franciscan filmmaker and artist, she strives to peel back the curtain behind the lives of those who experience racial erasure and discrimination, tackling issues of identity formation and anti-racism struggles. These themes reflect the very personal and political struggles Valerie has faced throughout her childhood, college years, and adult life as a Chinese American woman in America.

Over the past 30 years, Valerie has created more than 20 short experimental videos and documentaries. Works such as Love Boat: Taiwan (2016), art/film/revolution (2007), Carefully Taught (2002), Picturing Oriental Girls: A (Re) Educational Videotape (1992, Best Bay Area Short, Golden Gate Awards, San Francisco International Film Festival), Black Sheep (1990), ALL ORIENTALS LOOK THE SAME (1986, Best Foreign Video, Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani) reflect not just her talents as a filmmaker and artist but her dedication and passion for social activism. She has screened such work in a myriad of venues some of which include the Getty Center’s California Exhibition and the New Museum of Art in New York City.

Today, she continues to make work while using her practice and experience in the film and art world to educate college students in the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University.

This interview was conducted and recorded on November 14, 2017 via Google Voice from my home in Santa Cruz, CA to Valerie’s office in San Francisco, CA.

Kristal Chan: I wanted to start of with a more broad question about your background and childhood. When you were growing up what were some of the things good and bad that inspired you to be an artist? Was there a particular moment in your life that really drove you to pursue film or was is a culmination of life events?

Valerie Soe: When I was a kid I never thought about being an artist. I didn’t think about really pursuing art until I went to college at UCLA. Growing up in a mostly white suburb, I encountered a lot of people who were prejudiced against Asians. That was definitely part of what colored my life. At the same time, I had these strong family connections with being Chinese American and so was attached to my cultural identity. That really balanced out a lot of the prejudice I had to face back then. When I got to college I was a bio major for about a week, and then I switched to English but I didn't like that either, so I finally decided to work in film and art. That’s how I ended up in the art department. But even then, I was working a lot with the Asian American studies department while also editing the Asian American student newspaper. I just really wanted to find a way to combine my interest in activism and organizing and so forth with creative practice. UCLA has a really famous film school, but it was more conventional in terms of how it taught form. Even the documentary program was very straightforward and geared toward narrative Hollywood stuff. It was only when I found the art department that I began to have more freedom to look into issues about identity and culture and politics and do it in a way that was more formally interesting. That’s why I found the art department more interesting that the film department.

KC: So you didn’t go to film school per se but you were involved very much with the film culture being that you went to UCLA.

VS: I didn't go to film school because it was really hard to get accepted at the time as an undergraduate. Of course, I didn’t have a high enough GPA either, but it really did work out well because that’s when I found the art department at UCLA. They were more flexible with the subject matter–especially the way they encouraged us to talk about art. That’s when I started making more experimental work.

KC: Despite not going to film school and not being in UCLA’s film program, you still managed to do many film related projects at my age?

VS: At that time back in the 80s, there were a lot of people making video art that was not straight filmmaking. I was able to see people who were using the video form in a way that wasn’t for television and create work in the same way. We were artists who were really trying to expand the uses of the medium in a creative way.

KC: I’m interested to know if your parents were supportive of you pursuing an education and career in the arts? I know many 1st generation kids get a lot of harsh criticism from their parents about going into STEM because it’s a feasible option. My mom still calls me every other week asking about law school. What was your experience within your family as a young artist?

VS: Hahaha, well I was actually really lucky because my older brother. who is 5 years older than me, had started as an engineering student at UC Berkeley, and he dropped out to go to art school. He became a really talented graphic designer and made a lot of success for himself. So I think my parents really did soften up to the idea that you could do something that was not necessarily so strict or conventional. We didn’t have to go to grad school or law school or something. They were definitely still worried about me getting a job, but they knew it would work out one way or another.

KC: Could you talk about your first jobs making films?

VS: I never really made a living making movies, because you can’t do that unless you’re working in commercial film. I always had odd jobs or regular desk jobs, and eventually I started teaching 5 or 6 years after I got out of grad school. Before all of that, I worked as an office manager, an apartment building manager, I even taught art to little kids! I did all kinds of things that patched together an income. I never made money off of my creative or filmmaking practice. I probably lose money. I try to tell people if you really wanna do it you shouldn’t necessarily think about only monetizing your work. You can do something just for yourself and for the sake of doing it.

KC: You mentioned going to grad school. That’s definitely a daunting path that me along with many of my filmmaking friends have sort of shoved to the back of our minds. As a filmmaker who went to grad school how did your time there inform your work and what do you feel you gained from pursuing higher education past undergrad?

VS: For me going to grad school was a way to focus on learning more in depth about what I wanted to do with my practice. I got my MFA in video and photography at the Chicago Art Institute. It was a little different, because I was used to being in California - this huge multicultural place. Chicago was multicultural in a different way. It didn’t have much of an Asian American population. But what I gained were years of practice to really focus in on how I wanted to use moving image. My bachelor's was never enough. I was finally able to intensively practice my experimental work in grad school.

KC: Having moved around so much and living in different places for school all while pursuing your art, do you feel as though where you live informs the kind of work you make?

VS: Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come back to the Bay Area after I got out of grad school. Chicago didn't have the kind of cultural activism that I was interested in as far as Asian Americans are concerned. Coming from California, especially growing up in SF and studying undergrad in LA, I was really surrounded by all of that, and I wanted to come back to a place that had this culture of political activism. And also in the late 80s and early 90s, SF was in the middle of this big experimental and alternative film and video art scene. Working with all these artists, indie people, hippies, and beatniks really nurtured a lot of the creative work outside of the commercial Hollywood world down in LA. SF had this amazing, alternative filmmaking community that had fostered a long tradition of counterculture. The city attracted all these people to make their art! Punk rock bands and independent galleries and film screenings in everything from big movie houses to little teeny micro theaters. At the time it was a really lively place to be as far as being an artist and filmmaker.

KC: You talk so passionately and really paint a wonderful picture of the SF you grew up in, fell in love with, and came back home to. How is 2017 SF different from the city that informed so much of your practice and creativity?

VS: Well, it’s mostly rich white people now, isn’t it? I feel like the tech industry has really taken over. It’s a bit sad because a lot of people I knew don’t live here anymore. They’re getting priced out to Oakland, and some people can’t even afford to live there anymore! But, you know, there’s still a lot of cultural diversity here and that’s what is important.

KC: Earlier you spoke a lot about the dichotomy between commercial production and experimental video art. Do you feel there's a way to negotiate those two practices? That being the commercial industry and subversive content? Is there a place for those types of films?

VS: I don’t know about that. I actually had a discussion with someone last weekend about this and talking about whether or not you can work in a commercial form and still be radical. In some ways you can be a little, but you’re always going to have to answer to someone else’s vision. However, it other ways you could argue that you get more exposure so maybe that means you have more cultural influence. So… I don’t know it’s really hard to say. It’s tricky.

KC: I really want to understand this stigma around not being able to hybridize the two. I feel making subversive content within a narrative structure warrants a lot criticism.

VS: I think a lot of it comes down to where the money comes from. If you’re making a movie that you’ve financed yourself, then you have all the creative control and you don't have to worry. But if someone else is funding your work then a lot of times they’re going to want input. That’s especially true if you’re getting money from these commercial entities who support narrative structures and mainstream content to make some kind of profit.

KC: So then how would you go about defining work that’s strictly experimental?

VS: I think of experimental film as being part of independent film production, stuff that is not made to make a profit, but more for the filmmaker’s artistic vision. A lot of people use it as a form of activism, so they are trying to advocate for a certain position and that again isn’t necessarily only to make money. The important thing for those kinds of folks is to find an audience. Some people don’t even worry about getting any profit or theatrical screening. They finish the movie and just put it up on the internet immediately so people can watch it for free. It's more important for them to get an audience and to get people to watch than the monetization.

KC: Your early work speaks true to your definition of experimental work. I wanted to ask you about Black Sheep in particular because it was one of the first films I saw of yours. It kind of took me by surprise, because a lot of your work comes from a really personal place. People say a place of truth or experience, and I know that this film in particular is about your Uncle Joe who was sort of a black sheep in your family. Watching it for the first time, I thought it was so great because I saw an Asian face on the screen, but it was just a regular story. Nothing was being exoticized or otherized. It felt really different. You do really great things with normalizing Asian faces and voices on the screen in a lot of your early films. I was wondering if you could explain the process of making that film in particular? How you decided on making it and what the reception of the audience and your family was like?

VS: When I made this movie, in the late 80s early 90s there was very little representation of Asian Americans in media, and there still isn't. But I was really interested in looking into that and presenting alternative views and stories that were not the stereotypes that you see in Hollywood movies. I also was interested in the model minority stereotype, you know that Asian Americans are all doctors or lawyers, and they make a lot of money and so forth? That obviously wasn't true of my uncle in my experience, so I wanted to bring that to the forefront as well. My family, what did they think about it? It was a long time ago so I can't really remember what they thought of it, but I know a lot of people watched it, especially people who are not artists! They say “oh my god, that's like my life! Like I feel like everybody wanted me to be a dentist or expected me to be a dentist, and I really didn't want to be a dentist.” And so that's kind of cool, that other people relate to that story, because I think it's not uncommon. It's just not articulated. There's a prevailing stereotype that all Asians are dentists or doctors, when obviously many are not. My uncle was an artist back in the 50s, so this was a long time ago. And even my brother’s story about how he dropped out of UC Berkeley and went to art school! So yeah, that was probably the genesis of that.

KC: But you don't really remember how your family reacted to it?

VS: I don't know if that many of them have seen it. But I think it’s nice for them to hear their own stories. A lot of Asians and Chinese Americans don't get to see themselves reflected in film or television in this country, so anytime they get to hear a story that they can personally relate to but they don't have to transpose their experience onto white people's experiences, that's kind of fun for them; it’s very gratifying. And I think that's one of the purposes of Asian American film, is just to give that reflection or that mirror to a community that doesn't have a lot of representation otherwise. Because there is a giant Asian American film community out there. They’re churning out movies every year. All these Asian American film festivals have like hundreds of entries every year, and so its just amazing how much product there is.

KC: Is there any work today about Asian American narratives that you really enjoy or that inspires you?

VS: There’s a couple I really enjoyed last year. One of them was Gook By Justin Chon. It's all about the Korean American experience during the riots in 1992 in LA, and another one is a Canadian movie called Lock Picker which is about a teenager, a mixed race teenager in Toronto and his various traumas going through adolescence, and both of those I thought were really good. I have this blog where I write about Asian American film and art, and so I wrote about both of those films. It’s called Beyond Asiaphilia.

KC: So I guess this is the second part of that same question, are there any TV shows about Asian Americans you enjoy?

VS: I don't watch American television very much. A long time ago, I discovered if you watch Asian movies, then they are a lot more gratifying because they present a whole range of characters who are all Asian! If you are just looking for Asian representation in Hollywood movies you won't find it in any kind of useful or significant way.

KC: This is kind of a step away from the previous questions, but I really wanted to add it in this interview with you given the concentration of my experimental class. What does the word feminist mean to you? Do you consider your work feminist? If so how?

VS: Well, I guess feminist would be having a point of view from a woman's perspective, emphasizing that perspective as opposed to marginalizing it. I think my work is feminist because I'm a woman and it's my point of view and my voice. You need to acknowledge your positionality. Understand where you are and where you're coming from and how it all impacts your work. There's nothing universal about anyone’s work. For me it’s been obvious. People who don't recognize feminist work are just not paying attention. There’s no such thing as making objective work or being an objective filmmaker.

KC: Is there any feminist work out right now that you really admire?

VS: I showed this documentary to my class about Grace Lee Boggs called American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. The film itself is really intersectional because she’s a Chinese woman who is very active in the African American community. For any film to be feminist it has to have an activist component. It has to advocate for social change. It can't just be a movie made by a woman. Visibility is great but it doesn't go far enough in a lot of ways. Social change and structural change need to be present and this film really, really does a lot of that work.

KC: I love Grace Lee Boggs. I first learned about her in my Asian Americans and the Media class here at UC Santa Cruz. I guess on that note, as a young woman trying to find her voice in the film world and learning about all these amazing feminist filmmakers, I would like to ask why would you urge other young girls to be artists?

VS: Hopefully, they will feel empowered. They should feel like they can change things and have a voice, and that they have some agency in our society. And not feel like other people are controlling them. And one of the ways of doing that is the power of self expression in whatever medium it may be.