Greetings from Los Angeles

Hello Objectifs community!

Happy Year of the Golden Pig! I'm really sorry to have missed this momentous occasion in Asia, but am looking forward to being in Singapore later this spring. Just thought I would say hello here and introduce myself as three weeks in Singapore already seems to be too short a stay...I hope I can hit the ground running as soon as I arrive. Coming from LA, I know I will already lose a day...

I'm Grace Lee and I will be the filmmaker in residence in late March and early April. I work in both fiction and documentary, and sometimes, like in the last film I made, the lines between fiction and reality are quite blurred. I have made several short films and am probably best known for a personal documentary I completed two years ago called THE GRACE LEE PROJECT which screened in many festivals, in several theaters in the US, and is currently screening on the Sundance channel. The film is a humorous look at an identity crisis (mine) and the worlds revolving around many different women who share my oh so common Asian American name: Grace Lee. The film looks at the stereotypes surrounding the name, and Asian Americans in general but as the movie has gotten a wider audience (it was most recently broadcast in S Korea), many people have told me that the concerns are almost universal. I know that there are several people in Singapore with this name, and while I'm at Objectifs, I hope to meet some of them. If anybody knows of a Grace Lee, please introduce me to them! Or at least let them know about www.gracelee.net

Most recently, I completed my first feature film AMERICAN ZOMBIE, which premiered in January at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and which will be going to the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas next. The film is about two filmmakers who team up to document a community of high-functioning zombies in Los Angeles, and their struggles to gain acceptance in the human community. It is a dark comedy and basically a deadpan (pun intended) look into life in 21st century America. Since it is also made by a documentary filmmaker named Grace Lee, I like to call it a personal horror film. You can read more about it and watch a trailer here. By the way, how popular is myspace in Singapore?

While at Objectifs, I will be working on another feature film script and hope to be inspired by the location and the people I meet. I also hope to do a small media project involving Grace Lees from Singapore, so like I said, if you know anyone who fits the bill, please introduce me! I will also run a documentary workshop while at Objectifs, and conduct a couple of seminars about contemporary Asian American feature filmmakers. A lot is going on in the Asian diasporic filmmaking community over here and I think there are some exciting trends happening on both sides of the Pacific.

I think that is it for now. Really glad to be part of this, and thanks to everyone at Objectifs for setting this up. In the mean time, if anyone wants to reach me, please do so at grace AT gracelee DOT net

See you soon,
Grace