Boom by Karin Anna Cheung

For actress Karin Anna Cheung’s first short “Boom”, she made a 90-second tribute to the late George Lin (festival director, producer, and community activist). George founded the DC APA Film festival and helped grow the San Diego Asian Film Foundation to what it is today. The video was originally released on 9/11/09, the day of the sonic boom in Los Angeles. BOOM!!!

In the short, Karin calls on her industry connections to participate in the tribute, where directors become actors and actors become crew. It’s a massive collabo with Asian American actors and directors including director/writer NaRhee Ahn (Purity), Jeremy Castillo & director Mark Tran (All about Dad), composer Timo Chen (Kissing Cousins & Why Am I Doing This?), singer Bobby Choy aka Big Phony on the camera, actor Christopher Dinh (Up in da Club & K-town Hotties), LA weather anchor Kimi Evans & her mom Nobuko Tokuda (playing executive producer), singer/actress Gina Hiraizumi, actor/writer Joe Ho (Secret Chinese Secret), actor Lanny Joon (West 32nd and Lost) as the director, director David Ren (Shanghai Kiss) and his family, director Jon Maxwell (Eat), and actress Becky Wu as assistant director. In the opening black and white sequence, you see directors Daniel Jai Lee (Eat) and Nadine Truong (Chopsticks) play the male and female leads. Last but not least, there’s director Quentin Lee (The People I’ve Slept With) as the boom guy. He’s also the actual boom guy for the production too. The collaboration rounds out with a nice piece of editing by Grace “Peachies” Su and music by Dawen. Tons of Asian American talent in this production.

Not only was Karin the director, but she also played craft services by serving up her famous ribs. (Apparently, she makes the best ribs in the business.) The visuals for the short look really good for a low budget shoot done at her parent’s house over the course of 4 hours. Nice work Karin!!

We definitely got a kick out of the role reversals of actress Karin Anna Cheung as director and director Quentin Lee as actor in this clever short. Look for an extended version of the short to come out in the future as well as the film The People I’ve Slept With starring Karin Anna Cheung and directed by Quentin Lee. Find out more about Karin’s upcoming projects on Facebook here.

Expect more tributes to George Lin with the theme: “You know you’re watching a bad movie when…” at the 2009 San Diego Asian Film Festival in October.

Boom by Karin Anna Cheung