Meet Lo Lam

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lo Lam.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Lo. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am from Hong Kong. I think I’m true, funny and special. I used to be a law student, then an actor, and YouTube personnel, and then a radio host, then a film student, and finally now I am a writer/director—and I will stick to it.

I was born to a traditional and rather conservative family in Yuen Long, a rural part of Hong Kong. My parents were immigrants from Mainland China, where they survived the Cultural Revolution and poverty-stricken childhoods.

Growing up, I had little input on my future. Choice and independence of any kind were an unheard of luxury due to family background, peer pressure and social taboo. I was a top student, Student Union president, volleyball, handball district champion team player, and piano solo champion in Hong Kong; however none of these spoke for my true passion. No one knew how I secretly repeated the actors’ performances from movies or mimic the models’ postures from magazines and ANTM. Because when I told my best friends about my wish to be an actor, they laughed at my face to my face and also questioned my look, my height, my body shape… etc. They were no mean kids; it was just how Hong Kong people think about the entertainment industry at the time.

So I embedded this little dream and went to study the family mandated business and law program at the University of Hong Kong. I found no interest in nor I was capable of studying the subjects. During those years, I questioned the meaning of my life in a depression state. Within a group of students who constantly looked into their bright future of working in international law firms or the biggest financial banks, my face always only wore dryness. Not until one day when I was at an expedition under CEA HKUSU in rural China, to visit middle school students whose family was suffering from poverty, a young girl opened up to me that her dream was to be an adventurer and asked me what my dream was, I did not understand that I have the right to choose my own dream and decide what to do with my life. She liberated me. Since then I slowly gathered small pieces of courage to pursue my dream to be an actor.

Two months after graduation from HKU (also being jobless), I was admitted to a performance school in Taiwan. I lied to my parents in the beginning, telling them I was going to work for an NGO. After just one week of the crushing guilt, I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. On a chilly night, with my entire family sitting around the television, I told them the truth. There was one quiet moment when the world seemed to have stopped– shattered by my dad’s roar as he ran out to the garden. My mom screamed as she swept everything off her desk in a rage. Their lifelong dream of having a lawyer daughter had collapsed.

However, my parents loved me enough to give me some money to go to Taiwan in the end. I was truly grateful.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Living aboard alone in a place where I knew no one wasn’t quite easy— once I arrived at Taiwan, I had to learn to take care of and support myself, adapt to a different culture and language, fight to get into the competitive entertainment industry, face a lot of rejection and prepare to be an actor mentally and physically in a short time. Nevertheless, there are several sprinkle stories that made it even tougher and here is one:

I remember for months I had to depend on cheap expiring and rotten food from the grocery store to survive. During those days, I went to audition for any jobs every day, from demonstration girls to model for mass photo-shoot to background actors to commercial talent. It was not easy to get a job out of 50 auditions. And I finally got to be a lead actor of a commercial. However, the agent only paid me half and kept procrastinating for the second half. One day I had to confront him because I was late for rent. He was a bulk veteran of fierce gesture and he yelled at me on the street for things to wrong me for things that I did not do. I didn’t know how to handle that but only cried. Since then he disappeared and I never got the rest of my payment. Funny is that a year later my Singaporean friend told me she saw me on TV in that commercial and of course I never received any royalty.

Apart from some painful stories, my time in Taiwan was actually very fruitful and rewarding. After being a YouTube Personnel for three years, I realized that I love telling stories from behind the camera more than in front of the camera. I was lucky to work under an Internet commercial production company to make my own commercials. The more I learned about filmmaking the more I wish to be professional, so I decided to attend the M.F.A. production program at USC. Since then I fell in love with LA, not just because of its amazing weather and delicious food, but also the creative and diverse environment. I feel home here.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
In the four years living in Taiwan, I took part in producing, writing, directing and editing in more than 50 Internet variety shows and commercials. Some of which attained more than hundreds of thousands of views—Ms. Cantonese cares about you (1M views); Grandma’s tears (600,000); MOMO Ba Wu Zhe (500,000). The experiences helped me build my funny, quirky, uncanny visions and style with original ideas. And I’ll keep making such content because I believe the world needs more touches of laughter.

During studying at USC I strike to develop my narrative storytelling skills and style. I have found that I’m drawn to meaningful stories about women’s internal conflicts and immigrants’ lives and struggles. Two of my USC short films Who Lives My Life? and I’m a Doctor, represent some themes in life I am driven to explore. They have been selected by and won some awards in numerous international film festivals.

Currently, I’m working on a few spec commercials to bridge my Taiwan career to LA. And I’m developing two feature films about Chinese immigrants to the US. One of them is called Ah Nui. I was lucky enough to assemble a great team and raised some fund from Kickstarter for making the short film of it.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535648130/ah-nui-a-usc-thesis-film

Ah Nui is inspired by a true event happened during 1900 in San Francisco Chinatown, where accommodated about 20,000 Chinese people, but only 8% of the population was women. The mafia who controlled the brothels and opium dens would deceive and traffic Southern Chinese/ Hong Kong girls. Forced into enslaved prostitution, these girls were often 10-16 years old.

In the movie, we are creating a world to show that the girls actually lived. I would like to show that their lives in the brothels were not shameful, nor were they just symbols in dark history. During the 100 minutes of time, the girls will have the true freedom to be normal teenagers who feel and act freely. They will not be judged or pitied, but only empathized.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I have to thank my family – my parents, my brothers, my sister, my grandma and my aunt. They truly loved me and supported me despite the contradiction of their value or beliefs. It is not easy for them to have me live so far away and not get to see each other often. But without knowing that I have a home and a loving family to go back to in Hong Kong, I could never have survived all these years and kept pursuing my dreams.

I’d like to especially my brother, Yip, who told me to never give up and that I have to realize my dreams because not many people have one by supporting me financially unlimitedly.

And salute to my friends who support me to pursue these impossible and unreachable dreams while the society considers them as ridiculous; and to my boyfriend, Enrico, who completed me.

Also, I would also like to thank the other production teams, Odin and Ye Gon, my boss, King Ge, from the Taiwan Internet commercial company who taught me technical skills and brought me into the filmmaking world.

Last but not least, thank you, Jesus. If it were not God, I would not have made it anywhere.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ahnui.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA4JzAHYYNi2crq0T6NAeWJ0RxoqQ8yBY
• Other: https://vimeo.com/user33840706

Image Credit:
Enrico Targetti, Bruce Chiu

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.