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Monthly Archives: April 2013
April 25, 2013 — Major Archival Discovery Starts with a Party
It was my husband Paul who convinced me that I should have a fundraising party. So last October I got many volunteers together to throw one. Terry Lehman Olival helped by sending press releases to the local media and got the attention of Star-Advertiser reporter Mike Gordon.
“That might be the coolest story I’ve heard in a long time,” Mike said, and promised to write an article on it. The more Mike found out, the more he wanted to know. His article grew and grew. My fundraising party came and went; my Kickstarter campaign came and went.
Finally the opus turned up – a 3‑page spread on the film, complete with color pictures, showed up in the Sunday newspaper and drew response from people as far away as Kentucky!
DeSoto Brown, curator at the Bishop Museum, also read Mike’s article and something clicked. He remembered a donation of lantern slides made to the museum by Betty Li, Li Ling-Ai’s older physician sister, back in the 80’s. In fact the slides were marked as being related to KUKAN! Early in my research I had read that KUKAN’s director Rey Scott lectured with a group of slides, but no one in his family remembered seeing them or hearing anything about them. I had given up on finding them.
So I was on pins and needles last week when I finally connected with DeSoto at the Bishop Museum and had a chance to examine the slides myself. They didn’t disappoint — 97 images of 1937 Nanking, including some with Rey and Betty Li, brought Rey’s first trip to China to life for me in a thrilling way and helped answer some of the mysteries that had been plaguing me for years.
April 21, 2013 — Looking Forward; Looking Back
We are Editing!!
Three fourths of the way through production with over 4TB worth of raw footage and an amazing story that continues to unfold in the present as well as the past, I really needed help to put some reins on this film. Good thing I had Shirley Thompson (editor of the online fundraising teaser) scheduled for four weeks of preliminary editing (funded in part by all the generous contributions of our Kickstarter backers and Indigo party attendees).
In four weeks here are the major things I learned:
1) We have an INCREDIBLE three act story that reads like a major Hollywood movie script!!!
2) We still have a long way to go and lots of fundraising to do to give you a final film that can do justice to this incredible story.
3) So many of the things I’ve learned and experiences I’ve had and great people I’ve met will not make it into the final film.
4) It’s all part of the process
As a response to #3, and inspired by the recent blog posts of fellow Asian Actress/Actor history detective Durian Dave, I have made a pledge to blog about my FINDING KUKAN encounters and adventures as often as I can in the next few months. It may only be to assist my aging memory cells, but if you’re interested in sharing a little of the journey I’ve been on, please drop a line or a comment to let me know you’re out there. And stay tuned for more about #1, 2 and 4 in future posts. There are plenty of surprises in store.