Christian Oh: The Power of Asian American Storytelling

In this episode, Dana Tai Soon Burgess speaks with Christian Oh, former president of the DC Asian Pacific American Film organization and longtime advocate for Asian American media and arts. From his journey as a Korean American creative to his leadership in shaping the DC APA Film Festival, Christian reflects on identity, representation, and the transformative power of storytelling. Together, they explore the rise of Korean cinema, the importance of passing the torch to new generations, and how film can combat racism and build empathy through shared human stories.

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Transcript

Dana 0:04

Today's guest is Christian Oh. He is the president of DC Asian Pacific American Film. The organization was established to be a beacon of creative output for Asian and Asian American media arts through community outreach, including social media, and is a conduit for collaboration between other Asian Pacific American organizations. One of its major contributions is the DCAPA Film Festival. Prior to his work here, Christian was the co founder and executive director of Collaboration DC, an Asian American talent competition in the DC metro area. He has been a panelist, moderator, and a professional MC for many events pertaining to Asian American media. Christian has produced and directed award winning film shorts, music videos, commercials, and public service announcements. For Welcome to Slant Podcast, Christian. It's great to have you with us here today.

Christian 1:07

Hey, I'm happy to be here and it's great to reconnect with you, Dana.

Dana 1:12

I like to start at the beginning you are a man of many talents. Can you tell us where you grew up and what drew you to APA media and arts?

Christian 1:24

That's a great question. I was born in, Seoul, South Korea, and my father brought us to of all places Ames, Iowa, at the age of two. And we were the only Asian family in a hundred mile radius at least And my father was 1 of the very few, probably less than dozen or so Asian American students at the Iowa State University. He was getting his Ph. D. in ceramic science engineering. And so I. never grew up in an area where there was a lot of Asian Americans. So from Ames, Iowa, we moved around to Chicago, and then Cleveland, but we ended up in Roanoke, Virginia of all places. And again, I was the only Asian kid in a class of 500 students. And so I really didn't embrace my Asian Pacific American sort of identity. So I ended up Getting a full ride scholarship to Penn State for engineering in the school of engineering, because my father was an engineer and he expected his oldest Korean son to be an engineer. But in my sophomore year, I realized I truly enjoyed creativity more than STEM or science. And switched majors not realizing I would lose my scholarship, and then being the, older generation Korean father that he was, he disowned me. So I ended up having to drop out of Penn State I got into my car, I was homeless for a good eight months living out of my car, and then I got accepted, thankfully, to George Mason University. And so my creativity side, the APA media side, and the art side didn't hit until I realized that there's a lot more Asians at George Mason. I joined the Korean Student Association, and I started embracing my Korean identity, and then realized that, oh, I love, More so the creative arts, whether it be singing, dancing. Now, obviously my parents would not support that. I wanted to be a, someone in the performing arts, but I ended up actually majoring in international studies It wasn't until collaboration, which I think is where I first reached out to you. Collaboration was an Asian American talent competition, similar to America's Got Talent, and even before that. I was involved with the Asian Pacific American film festival starting in 2008, I believe. And just got really plugged in with the Asian American community. And then of course, any performer, I wanted to just get connected. And I think that's where my love of APA Media and the arts really began.

Dana 4:08

And then you received your film education at GW's Documentary Center.

Christian 4:16

Oh yes, I have I've gone to every school named George since my first school. So George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington. I've got a master's in information systems technology. I've got a graduate certificate GW documentary center. I used to teach at the University of Maryland for Asian American Studies, teaching film, video, and social media.

Dana 4:39

Tell us, how does your Korean American perspective inform your work?

Christian 4:45

When I was younger, I would say I was ashamed of my Korean Americanist because like I said, we were in areas that there weren't any other Asian American or Korean American. My mom would have Korean music on and I'd have occidental white and black folks friends over and they'd be like, what is that? And I'm like, mom, turn it off. But now we've seen an evolution. It wasn't until Psy kicked down the door with Gangnam style that K pop became very much mainstream and not just K pop. Korean cinema has evolved from the days of old boy to now with, even more recently parasite or there's other Korean films that have been garnering so many accolades, Korean dramas and Korean TV. You go to any streaming channel, they're all showing Korean dramas and Korean variety shows. And then we talked about K food, Kimchi was like, ugh, back then. Now, five star Michelin chefs are incorporating kimchi into the, into their fusion dishes. So I feel like my perspective has evolved and I'm now very proud of my Korean American background and heritage because Koreans are cool. St. Paul said, when you get older, you throw away the childish things. And I think I've thrown away the childishness of my perspectives back then and really grown into them.

Dana 6:06

Yeah. What do you think is driving this new wave in the film industry and music industry? Why are we looking to Asia now? Why are we looking to Korea?

Christian 6:17

That's, it's funny. We actually have to thank the Chinese for a lot of this. And what I mean by that is in the late eighties, Chinese were trying to follow the MTV sort of. and they had music televi And channel V, because the content was strictly Chinese, but they were like, Oh, what's all this stuff coming from Korea, they started showing videos on channel and I think it started giving East Asian I guess exposure to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan. Obviously J pop and J rock was already existing, but you started blending the K pop sort of melancholy, the melodrama and and then, it became very popular even though they didn't understand the language. cinematically, The stories, the human relationships, the overall human struggle are relative. Same thing with the music. It's not all about talking about my assets, right? We're getting money or getting, whatever it's the messaging and the content has been a little different with Korean K pop music, even though. are embracing, sexiness cells where you're showing off your six pack, you're showing off your midriff, your shoulder, your legs. But it's still in a somewhat innocent package, right? And so I think K pop and K cinema have evolved to be much more embraced and accepted.

Dana 7:53

Yeah, it's so interesting. Like, when I think back historically, distillation of Confucian values.

Christian 8:02

exactly. It is because, it's all about family. It's about the wholesomeness, the purity, we're not advocating illicit behavior. It's really about, the wholesomeness of connection. Obviously there are other extremes. People don't realize, but there is Korean hip hop that does use a lot of profanity or that talks about some things that very similar to American or, pop culture here. But I think With the reason of our conservativeness in Korea over the past however many decades, it's still resident. With DC Asian Pacific American film, I started in 2006 as just an Uber volunteer. And then since then I've been off and on in various different positions as festival director, as chairman of the board, as president as executive director. And I am actually, it's sad to say, but at the end of this month, I am stepping down because I need to pass this on to the next generation. Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be involved. I'm still going to promote. But I feel like it's the next generation's turn and we need to start cultivating those leaders and those visionaries. What APA film really meant to me is that it's a diaspora that is hardly seen. That though we don't all use chopsticks, we don't all, have Pictorial language systems, but understanding that there are some nuances that are very similar across the board family culture. Because, me growing up in Korea would have been very much different than me growing up here. so we need to know what are those stories and what are those films that can be brought out. And so I've been very passionate of making sure we focus on that. So even though I may be in a much more limited capacity involved I will still be promoting and And fair to say, still a big champion of Asian American everything in the community, as well as the filmmaking community.

Dana 10:17

And who are some burgeoning Asian American directors we should be looking out for in the future?

Christian 10:26

you've already seen one of them and she's doing some amazing things already is a woman named Adele Lim. She did the crazy rich Asians, right? She's going to be putting her spin on the Princess Diaries number three. So again, that's one of my favorite actresses of all time, Julie Andrews, as well as Anne Hathaway returning to their roles and she's going to be directing it. So I think Adele Lim is definitely someone to keep an eye out for. She, she just has this presence, obviously, and perspective to help bring maybe a different. Viewpoint in hollywood because there's so many other Filmmakers, James Wan. If you don't know who he is, he's not burgeoning. He's been around. He's known for our films like saw Insidious he also directed Fast and Furious 7 you've got Justin Lin who's been around since 2002 with his breakout film better luck tomorrow there's Karen Kusama, who directed films like Aeon Flux, The Invitation Joseph Kahn, who was a big music video director. And then there's also an South Asian American filmmaker, Jay Chandra Sekhar, I may be butchering his name but he did back in the day Super Troopers, Club Dread. But those are some that come off the top of my head. And there's probably young ones that I really haven't been keeping a pulse on. Sundance or Tribeca.

Dana 11:59

How can film and art combat the negative rise of anti Asian perspectives?

Christian 12:09

I'll tell you this during the pandemic and during that rise of Asian hate we got very involved in trying to get onto platforms and in that year, our film festival the message was be loud, be proud, right? And we always are, and if you look at the History of the model minority myth. It was written many years ago. But it, it basically said that Asian Americans tend to not rock the boat. They try to be, docile and quiet. I think that's changed a lot over the years. And I think that we, as storytellers, in order to combat a lot of the racism and discrimination and the hate, we need to show that these stories are universal. Whether it be through dance, whether it be through song, whether it be through film we can all relate. And I think that's the best way to combat racism overall, is that we tell these stories and the universality of it and how it connects us all. Because, here's me, and I'm going to be cynical for a second. Somebody said to me, and because I was watching this film called alienation. It's an old film where aliens actually came to the world and they integrated within society. So it was us, the human species, against the alien species. And so the cynicism is that do we need something like that to happen? To blur the lines and get rid of racism, discrimination? No, obviously this is the fictional world, but we need to have stories that say we aren't different. We are not different. That divided that we have this commonality and this bare human relativity that exists in all and the sooner and better we begin to understand that, then the better we can be towards each other, We are not as different as other people make us out to be.

Dana 14:05

Absolutely. When we consider the cultural conversations about diversity and equity today, where does the Asian American community stand in terms of representation in your mind?

Christian 14:19

You can see there's been tons of articles written about the quote proverbial Uh, there's a and it still exists, but I think. We need more people in positions of the C suite, meaning the CIO, the CTO, the CFO. And as they do that, hopefully they don't forget where they started from and provide, opportunities we all should be looking behind us, whatever ladder we're climbing, whether it be the social ladder, the corporate ladder, whatever. And see if there's an Asian American and it doesn't have to be your same type. I should be trying to help elevate them. Cause even if they surpass me on the rungs of those ladders, hopefully they'll be able to pull someone else up.

Dana 15:06

It's interesting when you're talking about the corporate world, I was thinking also about the academic world. I was reading some really fascinating stats recently that within academia, one of the least represented groups were, Asian Americans within leadership. So if you think about academia as a feeder for government positions then you can see where that whole structure needs to really be reconsidered in terms of equity, Thank you so much for joining us today, Christian. We look forward to attending one of your upcoming events very soon. And thank you for your generosity to our APA community. Best of luck to you.

Christian 15:50

Thank you, Dana. It's been a pleasure. Appreciate it.

Dana 15:54

Thank you for tuning in today. Please rate the podcast on your listening platform and tell your friends. Feel free to contact me at slantpodcast.com. It's always great to hear from you, our listeners. A special thanks to our sponsors, the Dana Tawan Burgess Dance Company, the Cherry Blossom Giving Circle, and the De Liam Guan Hickory Legacy Fund.