Far East Deep South is now streaming until June 3rd on PBS.org, WorldChannel.org and the PBS app.
On May 4, the documentary “Far East Deep South” made its premiere on World Channel, kicking off Asian American Heritage Month. Unfortunately, on the same day, two Asian women – 63 years old and 85 years old – were stabbed at the bus stop in San Francisco.
This year’s Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritage month came after a year of increased and public Asian hate in the United States. More than ever, voices of the AAPI community as well as stories about immigrant experiences have been spotlighted as violence against Asians have spiked since the Atlanta Spa Shootings and other instances, calling to question the history of such hate and sentiment.
“Far East Deep South” is a documentary that follows Producer Baldwin Chiu’s father Charles Chiu in a journey that uncovers their lost family history and the racially complex experience of Chinese immigrants in the segregated South. Director and Producer Larissa Lam’s directorial debut, this insightful documentary unveils the impact of race-based immigration policies on their family and the symbiotic relationship they had with the black community during the Jim Crow era.
Lam and Chiu spoke to Sampan about how the project began five years ago, the process, and how it prepared them for this time of increased anti-Asian hate crimes. Lam said, “I really felt like there was an absence of the history of Asians in American being one, documented and two, actually taught in classrooms and discussed in the public arena.”
Lam added, “And yet today, you know, in this moment, we have seen the anti Asian sentiment rise up in the last year, which has always been bubbling under but now has really come to the surface. I think everything that we felt and the reasoning why we made the film has been in a sense justified, because we were preparing for this moment the whole time.”
Married couple Lam and Chiu first created a short documentary called “Finding Cleveland,” before it turned into the feature length “Far East Deep South”. Before the film, both Chiu and Lam had been working in the entertainment industry already. Lam is a music artist, TV and radio host, a music composer and sometimes on-camera talent. Chiu on the other hand, is a licensed professional mechanical engineer who is also a hip hop artist and beatboxer. Now, both Lam and Chiu work full-time in the entertainment industry, adding filmmaking to their repertoire.
Bringing such a personal story to the big screen, they took special consideration in making sure the story was objective and representative of the immigrant experience. Chiu said it was important to them to make sure “that it wasn’t just Chinese people, or Chinese American people talking about their story. We wanted to get the voice of the white community, the Black community. We wanted to hear from all the communities and we wanted to hear it from different age groups.”
Not only was on-screen representation important, the people who worked behind the scenes encompassed a diverse range of people. Rather than have an all-Asian cast, Lam explained how they benefited from working with a non-Asian editor. Lam said, “I’m actually glad we had a non Asian editor because we would include things – for instance, there was a line where Baldwin and his father were talking about growing up ABC, and those of us know that’s American Born Chinese but [the editor is] white. He’s like, ‘what does that mean?’ Then all of a sudden, we have to define it for people.”
Moreover, it was an educational experience for those involved in the documentary. “They learned a lot in the process because I think that’s the other thing: working on our film changed them,” said Lam. “So now when some of the Asian hate crimes are happening, one of our camera people posted on Facebook and talked about how this was wrong, and he’s a white guy from the south. […] And not that he was racist before, but I think he wasn’t aware of some sensitivities and some of those areas that were blind spots for the white community. But because he spent so much time with us and saw this history, I think that forever changed him and now he’s an advocate.”
Within the Asian community there has also always been rifts and tensions between the different groups, but because of the shared experiences there is no reason to be against each other. The executive producers of “Far East Deep South” are Japanese, and yet they also saw parallels between the Chinese American experience with the Japanese American experience. Lam referenced Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote “an injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere.”
The lack of diverse representation of Asian and immigrant stories in the media has informed the way people of color have been treated. Lam identified that, “We still are not quite past the stereotypes and boxes of our people, or even creating new ones, like “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Hence, their goal is to change that. “We’re really wanting to make sure that history, moving forward, is more inclusive of the Asian American experience,” said Lam. “We all learn about segregation, we all learn about the American South, but we want to make sure that we are now included in those stories when we’ve been kind of erased in the past and even beyond.”
The discrimination against Asians extends beyond the national borders of the U.S. In an interview with a Danish radio program, Lam and Chiu realized the global implications and interest in now publicly discussing anti-Asian sentiment.
Lam said, “Ours isn’t the only story, so we hope there are other stories that are told, and people will make them and or seek them out because there have been a lot of stories that have been told in the past; they just didn’t get the widespread exposure. We really hope that this is a movement that continues to keep going.”
Far East Deep South is now streaming until June 3rd on PBS.org, WorldChannel.org and the PBS app.
