Eve Liu
“ON YOUR RADAR” IS A WEEKLY GRAD FILM NEWS SEGMENT THAT FEATURES A STUDENT PICKED AT RANDOM.
EVE IS CURRENTLY A 3RD YEAR STUDENT AT GRAD FILM. WE ASKED HER A FEW QUESTIONS, AND HERE’S WHAT SHE HAD TO SAY:
1. Where do you consider home and what is it like there?
I'm 25 and getting New York to share her secrets with me is still fun, so this is home.
When I'm 53 and ready to be happy and surf and eat really clean, I'll go home to Sydney and get my accent back. Home is where I can take my jacket off.
2. What is currently inspiring you as a filmmaker?
I get REALLY obsessed with things. It could be anything - random things. Like now it's Viktor Tsoi, translators, post-colonial Singaporean Pop like Charlie Electric Guitar Band, Tseng Kwong Chi's self-portraits, the Misty Poets, Bōsōzoku, that article in the NY Times about the girl in Tainan who got swept away by a kite!
There is so much life and humour and possibility when you realize that seemingly opposing things are in some ways, always enamoured with one another. Imagination and reality, the East and the West, genre and documentary, life and death...In their encounter, something transforms, exchanges, spars. Even a couple years ago, I was really adamant on creating AUTHENTIC CHINESE™ STORIES, as though there's an all-knowing, foolproof, non-polluted way of doing people right. And that's so boring: it's the exact opposite of authenticity. I'm Asian Australian, and I'm figuring out that that push and pull is what's the most invigorating, the continual remixing and recontextualizing of geographies and experiences and styles and histories that creates this multi-faceted palimpsest of life that is so completely my own. That search is so exciting!!
3. What has been your most rewarding experience at NYU Tisch Grad Film so far?
Getting a little closer to discovering my own style with every film experiment.
Realizing I'm better than I think, and worse than I think.
Being humbled, invigorated, challenged, ripped apart, frustrated, enamoured, inspired, killed, and resurrected by my peers.
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