Today we’d like to introduce you to Li Anne Liew.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I spent much of my childhood at a thrift store my mother volunteered at. There, I found stories and escapism in objects and patrons, but most importantly, I gained my passion for storytelling by absorbing myself in every single Sweet Valley book they had. I was thirteen when I stole my first and only object – my older sister’s camera. She occasionally took photos, and I was curious, so I did the same.
I was fifteen when I found an online community of young creatives who loved making short films of their own lives and anything they deemed interesting. They were the first people who made me feel that I had a creative voice. While art-making always felt restrictive in my academic curriculum, I found filmmaking to be a creative outlet and a form of self-expression. So, I began to document my travels and adolescence. Much of this still permeates, but today, my films are conceived in a narrative form. My work grows as I grow. Just as I loved capturing strangers in urban settings, I learned that I loved telling character-driving stories of how people are affected by their environments.
I’ve gotten the opportunity to study film in Malaysia, the UK, and the US where I recently graduated with a degree in Film Production from Chapman University. Film school is where I learned to develop my passion for writing and directing as well as found my closest creative collaborators. It was where I took risks with visual experiments to find my voice. I’m invested in the emotional quality of conveying certain feelings in a creative manner that expressed be found in other mediums. At school, I got the opportunity to explore entertainment marketing, creative development, and animation through my internships with Paramount Pictures, the Walt Disney Company, and the Los Angeles Times. Each film I make is a record of myself at a certain period of my life. I think that filmmaking has a special way of capturing the most personal parts of ourselves, and I hope to keep doing it.
After school, I worked as a Digital Designer at Pop-Up Magazine, the acclaimed “live magazine” show featuring original and unforgettable true stories, art, music, and performances from Oscar-winning filmmakers, New York Times bestselling authors, popular radio and podcast voices, and internationally-renowned artists—accompanied by illustration, animation, film, photography, and an original score performed onstage by a live orchestra. There, I got to animate the tour’s brand identity and art-direct live stories performed for thousands of people in historic theatres nationwide.
As a teenager, I felt that Malaysia was the source of my vices so when I left home to study in Southern California, I naturally pivoted to immersing myself in images of the desert, American suburbia, and any cold climate. But on year 4 of moving away, I realized that all I wanted to do is make films about Southeast Asia – the food, architecture, my family and the heat. I learned that I find things to be interesting after a brief separation.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Like anyone, it hasn’t been a smooth road, and I can only expect a multitude of struggles to come.
Becoming a filmmaker in a foreign country is hardly an easy task, with the plights and anxieties of immigration bureaucracy as well as distance from home. Going to a predominantly white institution, I found myself being the only person of color on set many times. I have also been the only woman of color in many of my professional experiences. Furthermore, though I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to screen my films at festivals, I have also received prejudiced comments based on race. The experience can be incredibly isolating and disparaging to the self-esteem, but it has prompted me to find and create community wherever I go.
Filmmaking is extremely expensive and time-consuming. I taught myself graphic design and animation as a way to stay creative with fewer resources. It is also how I financially support myself now. I take any free time to focus on screenwriting, but motivation can be hard to find after a long work week. I also find myself in a constant cycle of whether to put money in to make a film or save it for a bigger one that might happen in the future. Every step feels like a risk; art-making is filled with doubt and uncertainty. It’s a love-hate relationship.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a filmmaker, motion/graphic designer, and photographer. I love being creative in the visual medium.
I’m incredibly proud of a short film I wrote and directed last year, Where No One Lives, which I collaborated on with an incredible crew (Editor – Aleia Jacobs; Production Designer – Annie Harumi Harris; Director of Photography – Cooper Lichacz; Sound Designer – Clarisse Guevarra; Producer – Cynthia Wang). The film delves into the lives of three next-door neighbors, all of whom live in the same apartment building and find themselves in search of connection, forgiveness, and company on one night. With a fully Asian ensemble cast, I wanted to explore diverse women coming of age at different ages in a medium overwhelmingly dominated by white and teenage coming-of-age stories. It has collected multiple awards and played at festivals I’ve long admired, such as the Cleveland International Film Festival and SCAD Savannah Film Festival.
Another project I’m proud of is ‘With Love’, which I directed for a Malaysian fashion studio, Oh Sebenar, as part of their National Day Campaign to champion women’s rights. The film depicts the shared subconscious and universal feelings that Malaysian women of all ages and ethnicities face daily. It is narrated by the four primary languages spoken in the country: Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English.
In the design world, I have had the pleasure of art directing, illustrating, and animating multiple stories for the Los Angeles Times and the late Pop-Up Magazine. My favorite project at Pop-Up Magazine was editing two videos for Patagonia’s Working Knowledge series, a set of videos about the environment and sustainability.
Currently, I’m designing graphics for Pier 57, a historical pier in New York City, which has been a wild and fun ride. I also love experimenting with mixed-media animation, especially with stop-motion and playing around with animated frames on paper. It feels very tangible and rewarding in that form. While filmmaking is my main passion, design and illustration help to grow my visual ideation skills. I find both mediums to interact with each other nicely and unexpectedly.
Photography might be the most “hobby-like” medium of my work. I love street photography because I think a lot of that natural observation lends to writing and developing characters in narratives. It’s not a full-time career for me, but a fun way of documenting the world and my experiences when filmmaking is too expensive. However, one fun photo achievement is a photo of mine on a Vance Joy cover!
What sets me apart from others (and everyone from everyone else) is our personal voices. I’m still very young and learning what I want to say and how I want to express my style. Currently, my work aims to provoke emotional responses from character-driven stories that stem from memory, impermanence, and loneliness. I’m inspired by the emotional quality of settling within familiar and unfamiliar places; processing the memories and nostalgia of a familiar place and the longing for escape to unknown places; the staleness of staying and the emotional vulnerability of leaving a place. I want to capture the atmosphere and temporality of these situations; the architecture, the people, the soul, and the anthropology of a place. I hope to forever make films that make the mundane feel grand and intimate.
It’s been so much fun to experiment, fail, and sometimes succeed, but mostly a lovely thing to make and put art out in the world.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
The world is changing rapidly; it’s hard to predict where the industry is going. Also, I never look too far into the future, so I will talk about my dreams. I hope for more stories and art by diverse creators in the world. I’m biased, but as a Malaysian woman, I want to see more Southeast Asian stories and films in the mainstream and more arts accessibility and opportunities for Southeast Asian creatives. I want filmmaking to be recognized as a career path in the country, where people can tell the stories they want to tell without restrictions. I also want better environmental sustainability in the film industry!
Trends are temporary. I love storytelling because its core doesn’t really get affected by changes through the thousands of years it has existed. I think it’s just important to tell stories that are meaningful and authentic to yourself and express yourself in the wildest ways.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lianneliew.com
- Instagram: @shotbylianne
- Other: https://vimeo.com/lianneliew
