MACAU | Best known for her work in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” Steven Seagal’s “On Deadly Ground” and David Lynch’s groundbreaking TV series “Twin Peaks,” Joan Chen is currently in Macau as a member of the competition jury for the 2nd International Film Festival & Awards Macao.
In a roundtable interview with InterAksyon and other international media, the 56-year-old Chinese-American actress and filmmaker talked about some of her career highlights as well as her jury duty for the ongoing film festival that concludes this Friday, December 14.
Joan was asked about her experience filming “The Last Emperor” which was screened in the festival’s Special Presentations section.
“All of us were very excited to be in that project. Me, Maggie Han, John Lone, we were like little kids in the candy store. It was a lengthy shoot, about seven months and I was with it for about five, it was a long study of how it all came together,” she recalled.
Joan said what made the experience very special for her was the fact that about two years before that, she had auditioned for the lead role of a Chinese newscaster in Michael Cimino’s “Year of the Dragon” starring Mickey Rourke.
“It was one or two years after I arrived in the U.S. I tried really hard to get that part, I hired a speech coach. I worked in a restaurant earning $5 an hour and I had to pay my speech coach $200 per two hours of session. Of course I didn’t get it, I was heartbroken. I had no money left and after months of audition, I thought everything was wasted,” she further shared.
Except that it wasn’t wasted, the same casting director of “Year of the Dragon” kept calling her and eventually, Joan was cast in, yes, “The Last Emperor.”
“She brought me in to meet Bernardo Bertolucci. And the casting director told him, ‘Don’t look further. You have your empress.’ So I guess hard work in a roundabout way paid off.”
Joan considers it “a great experience” to have worked in “The Last Emperor,” which went on to win nine Academy awards and is now considered a film classic.
“I was a distracted young person [back then]. I didn’t pay much attention to a movie set until ‘The Last Emperor.’ Somehow it commanded my attention and I was watching everyone working. It was a great experience.”
Her fascinating time in “The Last Emperor” which was released in 1987 eventually led to her interest working behind the camera. By 1998, Joan directed her first feature, the acclaimed “Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl,” which made the rounds of international film festivals where it also won several awards.
“I saw a story I really wanted to tell and I was determined to tell it, as simple as that. I had no experience, I never directed but back then, I was fearless, I didn’t think that much. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m a woman, this is harder.’ But I did in a way grew up on the movie set. To me, that was a familiar place, it was home. That part wasn’t that hard and I had great people helping me,” she further shared.
Joan said the hard part came during post-production as it was something that she as an actor was not very familiar with. But two years later, she once again sat in the director’s chair, this time for the May-December romantic drama “Autumn in New York” starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.
After that it took her a long time to direct a film again. While she remained in front of the camera and to this day continues to act in mostly Chinese films, Joan said she could not direct again because her family became her priority.
“It’s such a commanding job. It took me so long to go back because I have children, I have a family. If you take on a project from beginning to end, it will probably take you two years, it’s a very obsessive kind of work and I think it’s just hard if you also want to be a mother at the same time,” she pointed out.
“I did direct a short film called ‘Shanghai Strangers’ about four years ago, just to have fun, to remind myself what making films are all about. But again, I was nervous and I had to relearn. It’s great that at this age, I could still be challenged, still get scared and still have the desire of wanting to tell a story as well as wanting to explore new ways to tell a story.”
In recent years, Joan also added the role of film festival juror to her distinguished resume, having served jury duty in prestigious festivals in Berlin, Venice, Shanghai, San Sebastian, Hawaii, Antalya and St. Petersburg.
Asked what she usually looks for when judging films, Joan said she just waits “to be surprised or touched or be stimulated, to be transported.”
“I just sit there waiting to be turned into a different person. Hopefully, I walk out of the theater a little different from when I walked in. If I look for anything at all, that’s the kind of pleasure I want to [experience when watching a film],” she mused.
“We have a good selection of films here and I personally appreciate the fact that we’re judging the works of first and second-time directors. You can feel that raw passion in their films.”
The 10 competition entries in the festival are “The Hunting Season,” “The Cakemaker,” “Custody,” “My Pure Land,” “Foxtrot,” “Beast,” “Wrath of Silence,” “The Hungry,” “Borg McEnroe,” and “Three Peaks.”