Grandpa

Video Essay
Written By Steven Chen

Contributor's Note

Grandpa has been three years in the making. I used several different types of film and video, including old Super 8 and Hi-8 family footage, color 16mm film, HD video shot in the TV studio at The Evergreen State College on the Sony HDC 1400, and in my parents’ home, the Panasonic AG-AF100. Each media format has its own personality. In mixing them together, I tried to evoke the emotions of different eras and different ways of seeing. Identity is a vulnerable subject matter. I hope my story will stir people’s feelings, get them thinking about and sharing their own stories with others.

 
Steven Chen

Steven Chen began working with moving image arts in 7th grade at The Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA), an arts magnet school in Vancouver, Wash. It was there that he fell in love with filmmaking. At VSAA, he explored traditional documentary and animation but chose to focus on narrative fiction. That changed during his second year at The Evergreen State College when he was introduced to experimental film and autobiographical documentary. Out of this came Nobody Knows but General Tso (2009), his first personal exploration of multicultural identity and his first work with color 16mm film, and his first video art. Set inside a “pillow fort”, the single-channel video installation, Schistosomatidae (2009)— lumps of plastic grow into Barbie and Ken dolls while Disney clips play behind them—is a social critique on the way children’s movies reinforce gender norms. During his junior year Chen added television production to his studies and produced the 4-episode, sci-fi comedy mini-series, Space-4-Rent (2010), as well as the first version of his autobiographic Grandpa (2010). He spent his final year at Evergreen in a full-time media arts internship where he co-created Olympia Winter Nights (2011), a 6-episode live music television show. After graduating in June of 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in audio, video, and television production, Chen returned to his autobiographical pieces and edited them with new footage and narration into one cohesive piece: Grandpa (2011). He is pursuing filmmaking in Denver, Colorado and expects to create another chapter in the Grandpa series while taking a break before graduate school.

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