About "My Father's House"

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Winter in New England. 

After a decade away –– in which he missed his father’s death and funeral –– twenty-something Jo returns to 

his childhood home to witness its demolition.

Here, in its last days, Jo walks old rooms, confronting 

his tenuous relationship with his late father and his home.

When Jo discovers that Leslie –– an old flame & once-best friend –– played caretaker to Jo’s father in his last days, the pair reconnect, remember, and reconcile their homes, identities, and pasts. 

 MY FATHER’S HOUSE is about going home. 

It’s about a house –– what it was, what it meant, what it’s become, and what’s left of it. It’s about family –– how it hurts, holds, breaks, and somehow, perseveres beyond blood or time. It’s about masculinity and queerness –– both always defined in response to our fathers, our friends/lovers. 

Through his avoidance of his home and all these things, our protagonist has seen his life emptied of the things that give it meaning. Now he will face them, and, through this, we, as viewers, are given permission to as well.

Through this home and the story within it we will track the breaking of our repressions & pasts, 

question the relevance of our familial/social bonds, and open them to new possibilities.

 In a time when we’ve lost touch with ourselves, 

MY FATHER’S HOUSE is an attempt at reconnection.

Our film hopes to revolutionize representation of Asian-American, queer, and male/masc stories via a nuanced portrait of grief, home, and love.

We invite viewers to learn from its characters a new way of listening to their lives –– their pasts, families,  and their ideas of what a full life can be.

MY FATHER’S HOUSE has an audience in those who have struggled with their parents, hometowns, or identities. More specifically, it has an audience in the queer community (it is a story of closeted love and its many forms and hurdles); it has an audience in the Asian American community (it shows unseen sides of our cultural experience). 

I believe the house, the home, holds the whole spectrum of human emotions. It’s all there. A story to tell, and, through it, we will find new shadows, and a new kind of light.

 Lastly, MY FATHER’S HOUSE will serve as a place for all those living in absence to gather. 

A cold, restrained creative palette will help characterize the weather, atmosphere, and place.

Things will be spare, allowing for a deeper resonance –– in the quiet, things seem louder. 

We’ll use static, long takes that let the space, objects, and characters speak for themselves, and for a creative ‘stage’ for performers and production to work their magic. 

I wrote this in my hometown of Salem, NH, culled from my experiences –– the goal is to shoot it there. We’ll work with a handful of locations and a crew of family, friends, and collaborators. 

We’ll use careful compositions that do a lot with a little, i.e. returning to the same ‘frame/setup/image’ but in a different season or year. Figures isolated in empty spaces or against landscapes. Rich, visual metaphors are preferred to verbose dialogue. 

Subtlety & minimalism, simple setups, clear expressions.

Here, we draw upon films like… 

Tsai Ming Liang’s THE RIVER 河流 (for its excavation of a family through absence/silence)

Fei Mu’s SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN 小城之春  (using familial & local as a site of the political)