My main rea­son for trav­el­ing to LA was to inter­view Li Ling-Ai’s nephew Andrew Li who was a young boy of 8, liv­ing in Nanking when Rey Scott and Li Ling-Ai began pre-production for KUKAN.

I hoped to find out more infor­ma­tion from Andrew about Ling-Ai’s con­nec­tions in China at the time. Though I was able to gather some valu­able infor­ma­tion from my inter­view, the 5 days in LA turned out to be about so much more — a lot of it behind the scenes stuff that will never make it into the documentary.

Get­ting to know the tal­ented film­maker Ann Kaneko was one of the unex­pected bonuses of the trip. Thanks to gen­er­ous dona­tions from early FINDING KUKAN sup­port­ers, I was able to hire Ann for a cou­ple of days as my LA Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy. Hav­ing a dp with a real inter­est in the project and expe­ri­ence with both edit­ing and being a char­ac­ter in her own films was invaluable.

Wit­ness­ing Ann bal­anc­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to her work with the demands of rais­ing her 8-month old daugh­ter Ceiba was a real inspi­ra­tional shot-in-the-arm too.

As I lunched with Andrew Li, his daugh­ters Por­tia and Quincy, and his wife Gilda I got a sense of the rich life Li Ling-Ai had beyond KUKAN and the pro­found rip­ple effect that per­sonal sto­ries can have through time and space.

 

Film­ing B-roll scenes of Ed Carter at the Mar­garet Her­rick Library intro­duced me to this gor­geous build­ing and amaz­ing film his­tory resource for the first time (I am already think­ing of excuses to return to spend more leisurely hours there).

It also gave me an excuse to hook up with the peren­ni­ally upbeat Rebecca Bozzo again. Becca is a ded­i­cated young film­maker who shares a pas­sion for old movies and has been a FINDING KUKAN sup­porter from almost day one.

Dan & Denise Lev­enick invited me to their home in Pasadena to view their mother’s home movies and pho­tographs of 1930s Hawaii. Besides giv­ing me another rea­son to mar­vel at the gen­eros­ity and kind­ness of strangers, Dan and Denise pro­vided me with pre­cious “before-my-time” knowl­edge of my home town.

Talk­ing to AMPAS Pres­re­va­tion­ist Joe Lind­ner about the ardu­ous process of restor­ing KUKAN gave me new insights into the pre­cious nature of old film, the his­toric value that even old home movies have, and the galling num­ber of films that have been destroyed by time.

Finally my hosts in LA, John and Ille-Heid Zaner, pro­vided me with an inti­mate view of what liv­ing in LA can be like, invit­ing me to neigh­bor­hood par­ties, pro­vid­ing home-cooked meals after long days of shoot­ing, chauf­fer­ing me around in vin­tage vehi­cles, and shar­ing Ille’s sis­ter Elke’s amaz­ing Christ­mas cook­ies with me.

The result is that after my 5-day pro­duc­tion shoot in LA, a city that I once had a very low opin­ion of, I can’t wait to go back.