Helen Lee (director)

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Helen Lee
헬렌 리
Born
이현주

1965 (age 58–59)
Seoul, South Korea
CitizenshipCanadian
Alma mater
OccupationFilm director
Years active1990–present
Notable workSally's Beauty Spot, Prey, The Art of Woo

Helen Lee (

Scarborough, Ontario. Interested in film at a young age, she took film studies at the University of Toronto and, later, New York University. While in university she was influenced by gender and minority theories, as reflected in her first film, the short Sally's Beauty Spot (1990). While continuing her studies she produced two more films before taking a five-year hiatus to live in Korea beginning in 1995. After her return, she released another short film and her feature film debut, The Art of Woo (2001). She continues to produce films, although at a reduced rate. Lee's films often deal with gender and racial issues, reflecting the state of East Asians in modern society; a common theme in her work is sexuality, with several films featuring interracial relationships
.

Early life

Helen Lee was born in

Golden Age of Hollywood.[4] She later wrote that the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong spoke to her racial identity as an Asian Canadian, an experience she found to have influenced her filmmaking;[5] excerpts from the film were included in her first short.[6]

Lee began her tertiary studies at the University of Western Ontario, taking art studio and business courses, before transferring to the University of Toronto;[7] there she majored in English literature and film studies.[1] By 1989 she was attending New York University (NYU), studying under Homi K. Bhabha, Faye Ginsburg, and Michael Taussig,[4] with a scholarship.[1] During this period she was influenced by Trinh T. Minh-ha's paradigms on women and ethnicity, as expressed in the 1989 book Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism; these were later expressed in Lee's first film. She later described Minh-ha as at one point being her "ultimate role model".[8]

Early film career

Lee made Sally's Beauty Spot, a 12-minute-long

Whitney Museum of American Art before returning to Canada.[7]

In 1992 Lee made the forty-minute long film My Niagara, which featured scenes shot in Japan that were reminiscent of

Super 8 Kodachrome, then transferring it to 16 mm film. Filmed in Etobicoke, Ontario, at the childhood home of co-writer Kerri Sakamoto, the film detailed a young Asian-Canadian woman living alone with her father after the death of her mother. Scenes were also shot at the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto.[11] Francesca Duran in LIFT writes that the film, which had a budget of $80,000, had a theme of cultural displacement,[10] and that My Niagara was well received.[12] That year she also released the three-minute To Sir With Love.[13]

After My Niagara, Lee took a position as a director observer on the set of

Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, before returning to the CFC as a director residency.[7] She continued to be involved with the American company Women Make Movies, a distributor of feminist media, which she had become involved with while at NYU.[15]

In 1995 Lee released the 26-minute-long Prey, starring

short films been respected it would have been a watershed mark.[18] That year she also released the four-minute M. Nourbese Philip.[13] She then took a five-year hiatus, which she spent in Korea.[7]

Post Korea

In 2000 Lee released the 22-minute short Subrosa, following a woman's search for her mother in

sex scene.[19] Although Priceless, meant as a sequel to Subrosa, went through more than thirty drafts, it was ultimately cancelled[20] despite interest from Alliance Atlantis and Citytv.[7]

Anita Lee, co-producer of Priceless, then suggested that Helen Lee make

Sook Yin Lee as Alessa Woo, the Toronto-set film follows an Asian-Canadian art dealer who finds herself living in close quarters with a handsome and talented Indigenous artist but considers him unworthy as he is penniless. The film also stars Don McKellar, Alberta Watson, Joel Keller, John Gilbert and Siu Ta. Executive producer was Peter O'Brian. Original paintings were provided by Kent Monkman to stand in for artworks by Beach's character, Ben Crowchild. Artworks were also loaned by Suzy Lake and then-Power Plant director, Marc Mayer, appears in a cameo. The film had its world premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival, and was commercially released in Canada in 2001 by "Cineplex Odeon Films.[21] It was invited to the Busan International Film Festival that autumn, continuing its festival run. The original soundtrack – by Ron Sexsmith and Kurt Swinghammer – notably won a Genie Award for Best Achievement in Music – Original Song.[22] That year she also released the three-minute Star.[13]

After The Art of Woo, Lee announced that she intended to adapt Kerri Sakamoto's novel The Electrical Field with the author, and a "romantic thriller".[23] However, neither has yet been released.[24] In 2002 she mounted the video installation Cleaving at the Werkleitz Biennale in Germany.[25] She married around 2008,[4] and that same year released the short Hers at Last, about the interactions of two women living as "outsiders" in Korea.[26] The short was premiered at the Seoul International Women's Film Festival as part of an omnibus entitled Ten Ten, in celebration of the festival's tenth anniversary. The omnibus also featured works by fellow directors Byun Young-joo, Ulrike Ottinger and Lee Su-yeon.[27]

Themes

Race,

didactic ways, such that the "racial melancholia ... are like seepages in the more obvious dramatic or comedic content".[28] She contrasts her films with the 1993 drama The Joy Luck Club, which she considers a film with obvious, easily consumable, ethnic content.[29] She considers the stereotype of Asian women as seductresses, either demure "lotus blossoms" or vociferous "dragon ladies", to be a degenerative one which is "sometimes extremely offensive", but one that has "a cultural memory that demands [the viewer's] attention."[30]

Lee's works often include elements of sexuality in their characterizations. She writes that the main characters of My Niagara and Subrosa reach a greater understanding of themselves and their relationships after sexual encounters. She considers sex as "never the culmination or end point", but a signifier for intimacy.[31] As such, she feels that the more intimate aspects of sex are best conveyed wordlessly, through how it is presented, although she concedes that "talky sex" can be appropriate for romantc comedies.[31]

Filmography

All of the below are short films unless noted.

  • Sally's Beauty Spot (1990)
  • My Niagara (1992)
  • Prey (1995)
  • Subrosa (2000)
  • Helen (2002)
  • The Art of Woo (2001; feature film debut)
  • Hers at Last (2008)
  • Into Such Assembly (2019)

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d Lee, Biography.
  2. ^ a b Jew 1991, p. 41.
  3. ^ Hoolboom 2008, p. 26.
  4. ^ a b c Hoolboom 2008, pp. 22–23.
  5. ^ Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1391.
  6. ^ Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1399.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g MacDonald 2001, Helen Lee.
  8. ^ Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1395.
  9. ^ a b Hoolboom 2008, p. 24.
  10. ^ a b Duran 1992, p. 4.
  11. ^ Hoolboom 2008, pp. 26–27.
  12. ^ Duran 1992, p. 6.
  13. ^ a b c Hoolboom 2008, p. 34.
  14. ^ Duran 1992, p. 3.
  15. ^ Jew 1991, p. 42.
  16. ^ a b Hoolboom 2008, p. 28.
  17. ^ a b Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1390.
  18. ^ Hoolboom 2008, p. 29.
  19. ^ Hoolboom 2008, p. 30.
  20. ^ a b Hoolboom 2008, p. 32.
  21. ^ a b Braun 2001, Art of Woo.
  22. ^ Crow, The Art of Woo.
  23. ^ Reel.com 2001, Interview.
  24. ^ Lee, Filmography.
  25. ^ Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1396.
  26. ^ Ciné-Asie 2009, Hers at Last.
  27. ^ Newsen 2008, Seoul International Women's Film Festival.
  28. ^ a b Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1393.
  29. ^ Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1394.
  30. ^ Jew 1991, pp. 44–47.
  31. ^ a b Shimizu & Lee 2004, p. 1389.

Bibliography

  • Braun, Lisa (7 December 2001). "Art of Woo an incomplete study". Jam!. Toronto. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2012.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  • Crow, Jonathan. "The Art of Woo". Archived from the original on 15 January 2012. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
  • Duran, Francisca (October 1992). "Interview with Helen Lee". LIFT. Toronto: 3–6.
  • "Interview". Reel.com. Hollywood Entertainment Corporation. 21 October 2001. Archived from the original on 9 February 2005. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  • "Hers at Last". Ciné-Asie. 11 October 2009. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012.
  • ISBN 978-1-55245-200-4
    .
  • Jew, Anne (July 1991). "Interview: Sally's Beauty Spot". Discorder. Vancouver: CITR-FM: 41–47.
  • Lee, Helen. "Biography". Official Website. Archived from the original on 24 February 2013. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  • Lee, Helen. "Filmography". Official Website. Archived from the original on 25 February 2013. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  • MacDonald, Fiona (25 June 2001). "Helen Lee". Playback. Toronto.
  • "포토엔 서울국제여성영화제 개막작 '텐 텐'의 배우들" [Seoul International Women's Film Festival Opening 'Ten Ten' of actors]. Newsen (in Korean). Seoul. 10 April 2008. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  • S2CID 143989595
    .

External links
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