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About The Film
Driven by a lifelong lack of Chinese American heroines to emulate, filmmaker Robin Lung goes on a quest to discover the real life equivalent of a fictional Chinese American female detective. As she follows clues she runs across a fascinating memoir written by a Chinese woman from Hawaii named Li Ling-Ai and unearths a 1941 Oscar-winning documentary that Li worked on called KUKAN – an epic color film about war-torn China that has been “lost” for over half a century. Lung’s hunt for a heroine takes on a new dimension as she tries to track down the story behind KUKAN and prove that Li’s role in the film went beyond the Technical Advisor credit she was given. She quickly discovers two other people who have their own reasons for digging into KUKAN’s amazing past: Ed Carter, the documentary curator at the Academy Archives who’s seeking the missing cornerstone of his collection; and Michelle Scott, the granddaughter of KUKAN cameraman Rey Scott, a young artist who longs to know more about her dead grandfather and the mysterious photographs he left behind.
Finding KUKAN is a documentary film-in-progress that tracks Lung and her fellow KUKAN investigators as they probe into the many mysteries that surround the movie: How did two inexperienced filmmakers succeed in getting the attention of the President of the United States and the Hollywood power Elite? How did Rey Scott get access to Chinese leaders like Chiang Kai-shek and manage a trek across China that even by today’s standards is jaw-dropping? Was Li Ling-Ai just an inspirational muse or did she take an active part in the actual planning, production and promotion of the movie? As the investigation unfolds, we uncover an inspiring story of two fiercely independent spirits and open doors to forgotten chapters in history.
