Art & Life with Jo Jo Lam

I was born and bred in Hong Kong until about 16 years old and lived in Australia, London, and Paris. I speak three languages: Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), English and French fluently. Learning languages has been a passion of mine since I always had the desire to communicate and to understand different cultures. Cinema was that one tongue I was looking for. The more foreign films I watched, the more prominent my appetite grew to explore somewhere different.

I begged to leave home at 16 and moved to Australia to learn English whilst finishing high school. I first took a media course and found that my passion for filmmaking had a name to it and it was even a job! From then onwards I was pretty persistent, I took a part-time foundation course in film production for a year at one of the best film schools in Australia -VCA( now University of Melbourne) at night while I attended high school during the day. Even though I was busy as hell, I remember having this feeling that everything suddenly just felt right and possible – and my world exploded in all senses of the word.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to move again to London, UK. I began my BA in film production but had to stop unexpectedly due to financial issues at home a year in. I took it as an opportunity to gain more practical experience in the field and by chance became a professional 2nd camera assistant on a range of productions including commercials, music videos, TV and short films for about four years.

I discovered that cinematography captivated me most as I was working under and learning from all these extremely talented DPs. I started to shoot small projects on the side with friends and realized what I truly wanted to do is to tell stories visually.

I moved again, this time to Paris, France to relaunch myself as a cinematographer as most people knew me as a camera assistant previously in the UK.

Paris is an incredible city and definitely one of the most culturally enriching places I’ve lived in. It was perhaps too challenging a place to start over when there are such intense language and cultural barriers. This prompted my move to LA to really hone my craft. I’m not at all done with Paris yet though as it is one of the best places you can make cinema!

In between those eight years of freelancing, I’ve worked on and shot projects all over Europe ( UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Amsterdam, Germany, Serbia), Australia and Asia which taught me a tremendous amount both in work and in life.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
As I grow older as an artist and a human, I became cognizant of the fact that what you bring to the table as a storyteller – your past and experiences as a person, matter much more than any definitive style. As a cinematographer, what excites me most is the image’s ability to transport an audience elsewhere through movement, composition, and lighting. This allows someone to relate to extremely specific experiences, cultures or traditions that you ordinarily would not understand.

However, if the film is really successful, it will allow you to feel, or empathize with what this moment reminds you of, whether it be a certain feeling, emotion or memory. It doesn’t require explicit descriptions. Ultimately I think this is what cinema does for me and why I’m passionate about what I do as a cinematographer and a filmmaker.

The longer I’ve lived away from home, the more I came to realize how the arts in general only portray a very selective group of experiences and voices that in no way shape or form reflects the very multicultural environment that we live in. I became really aware of the lack of representation of people like me or my friends on screen or in any art forms. It was really jarring. Accessibility, visibility, diversity, and inclusivity are issues that have become very important to me, specifically in the way we work and create cinema both behind and in front of the camera.

Artists rarely, if ever pursue art for the money. Nonetheless, we all have bills and responsibilities and many aspiring artists are discouraged from pursuing art due to financial reasons. Any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with prospective artists?
I’ve never really been able to properly dedicate time to solely study as I’ve mentioned up until now so I know this very well. It’s really difficult but you just have to be persistent and stay lean. I don’t own many things and kept my needs to a minimum. It’s a matter of priorities. For example, traveling is really important to me because it’s the way I live and learn which allows me to bring this back into my art. Living in Europe allowed me to do this easily before as I was able to freelance from job to job in different countries. It’s really difficult though and I’m going to have a tough time when I graduate so I can’t exactly give expert advice. I’d say if you know what you want to do, just keep going and work hard! And it’s not shameful to do small jobs to feed yourself. It is perfectly okay if not honorable that you have to do a part-time job that financially allows you to do the kind of work that you believe in. If anything all of this feeds back into your work and it makes you better. We’ve all been there!

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
In the time I’ve been at AFI I’ve had the incredible opportunity to solely focus on my passion and met the most creative and talented collaborators. A short project I shot on 35mm film last year was selected for the Kodak Vision Award for Excellence in Cinematography and I am really looking forward to shooting more projects on celluloid this year which I’m currently in pre-production for.

I’m also in post-production for an AFI thesis graduation project that we just wrapped principal photography called “The Hideaway”, directed by Jane Stephens Rosenthal.

Most of my work can be found on my website – https://jojo-lam.com. It’s best to contact me personally to view my narrative work as short films are usually harder to share in full because of festival circuits. Documentary work is also very important to me and plays a significant part in my narrative film-making approach. It’s part of my grammar to always find the truth in an image, in a situation or in lighting to portray an authentic story, character or world even in a fictionalized environment.

As I’m in the middle of finishing 2nd year, my website isn’t as updated as I’d like yet but you can follow me on Instagram (@jojolamdop) for more current updates with different projects!