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Making a professional living is tough. Even when you find your calling, the choices you have, while they may come more into focus, don’t necessarily become any easier. Throw into the mix that you happen to be a foreign national trying to get a film made in New York City, and said individual has got his work cut out for him. However, when you believe in the medium of film as strongly as I learned filmmaker Jinoh Park does, such circumstances are simply part of the grand quest for artistic growth.

Jinoh Park was born in Seoul, South Korea, but for now, he calls the neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens his home as he commutes daily into Manhattan, endeavoring to make his first full feature-length film. An alumnus of New York University’s Graduate Film Program, he is certainly no stranger to the city.

To date, his short films “Lunch,” “Request,” and “Slowly Silently” achieved international recognition as official selections in numerous film festivals around the world, including the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) Haig P. Manoogian Screenings in Los Angeles, to name a few.

I sat down with Jinoh recently in November, on the second floor of a deli not far from Manhattan’s own Koreatown, to discuss the beginning stages of his film. He had just made his final casting decision that evening for the female lead, an actress by the name of Marina Michelson, with whom he was in the midst of discussing the film’s character roles.

I decided to take the interim to ask his assistant Chris Hwang some details about the film. Its working title is Night and Day. He describes the plot in brief as an actor and actress spending a full twenty-four hours against the backdrop of New York City. There is a story outline, but the script will be developed in organic fashion, which Chris indicates has a notable precedent in the expressionist pastiche method of director Wong Kar-wai.

Jinoh concludes his discussion with Marina, who says her good-byes until their first rehearsal. Although I hope to be able to speak with various members of the cast and crew as the film develops, for now I am eager to begin my interview in earnest with the aspiring director.

If Quentin Tarantino’s voice shoots out like a hare hopped up on caffeine pills, then Jinoh’s voice ambles forth with a tortoise’s profound convictions about reaching the finish line. As we talk, his demeanor is one of continual introspection, so that sometimes his face flashes moments of mild but genuine surprise at his spoken words, as if skirting the edges of knowledge heretofore unknown, but then quickly accepting their intrinsic truth.

Prior to our discussion, I learned from Chris that Jinoh also plans to take the lead male role in the film, so I’m curious to ask him his reasoning behind this particular creative decision. He responds, “I think sincerity is one of the most important factors for me both as a director and an actor. I want to really feel in all honesty, you know, try to achieve in both ways.” He emphasizes that this decision was not a conscious one, but happened naturally as a result of his various experiences in filmmaking over the years. Although he has also had prior acting experience, he feels more ready to take it seriously now and see what happens.

Shifting focus to his role as the director, I ask how he felt about moving across cultures as a Korean national directing an American-based film, citing Clint Eastwood and Ang Lee as filmmakers who have worked on films outside their normal spheres of cultural familiarity, i.e., Letters to Iwo Jima and Sense and Sensibility, respectively.

Indicating his great respect for those two directors, he answers, “I’m very interested in exploring different, specific cultures. I was born in Korea; however, America has been very important to me. So culturally, spiritually, emotionally, I feel very close to the States.”

He continues, “But I think cinema is essentially about a universal language. I truly believe and hope that cinema can overcome any specific culture. And it can really deal with the essence of life like human nature, human heart, human beings.”

To the practical matter of trying to direct the performances of characters in an unfamiliar culture, Jinoh recalls a response by Ang Lee (whom Jinoh had occasion to meet a few times) to critics who questioned whether a Taiwanese-born director could effectively direct a British period piece like Sense and Sensibility. (To my mind, such thinking reveals an inherent Hollywood hypocrisy, since relatively little concerns were raised about films ranging from “The King and I” to the more recent “The Last Samurai,” where foreign cultures were for the most part depicted under the helm of white directors).

According to Jinoh, Ang Lee expressed his belief that no one could truly know how people behaved back then (British people included) and thus found directorial freedom from that perspective. However, with a more contemporary movie like The Ice Storm, Ang Lee had to research far more extensively for the film in order to capture convincing details of the more recent era of the 1970s.

Regarding the barrier of language across cultures, although citing his admiration for Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, who spoke little French yet directed many French-speaking films, Jinoh qualifies that he believes it would be better for a director to be familiar with the language in which he is directing.

When I ask why he decided to make his first feature-length film in the U.S.A. versus South Korea, he answers that it’s not so much a conscious decision as it is a manifestation of where he stands now in his life experience. During his 3 years of obligatory military service in South Korea, he thought deeply about his aspirations, not even sure if he was interested in the particular medium of film.

It wasn’t until coming to the U.S. that his commitment to film evolved. Living here, Jinoh is able to surmise, “One of the happiest moments for me as a human being is when I go to the cinema.”

Unfortunately, since the evening was stretching on into the night and Jinoh still had business to discuss with his assistant Chris, I wasn’t able to explore in greater depth the whys and wherefores of his artistic evolution, but given his open invitation to visit him during various parts of the filmmaking process, I was sure there would be more opportunities.

Similar to the conception of his film, I plan to write future postings (you’ll note the “Part 1” in the title) in like-minded organic fashion. As the film develops, so will this particular series of blogs entitled “Making a New York Film,” paying close attention, as is the wont of this site, to the fascinating cross-cultural issues that stem from filmmaking.

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