November 2024

Detours Ahead is featured in the shorts program The Journeys That Shape Us. We join director Esther Cheung here in conversation with curator Aiko Hamamoto.   Can you speak about your background in animation? I graduated with a bachelor of animation from Sheridan College in 2019. To be honest with you, I chose to do schooling in animation because it had the most job opportunities at the time. My thinking was, that if I went into illustration, I wasn’t going to know how to animate. But if I went into animation, I’d still know how to draw, so I could illustrate on the side. It was a business decision because  I didn’t want to be a starving artist. And it turns out I really like it…after the first few years at least.   Animating was my least favourite part of the process at the beginning. It was a really tough learning curve because it’s difficult and tedious and you’re drawing the same thing with just the slightest bit of difference between each frame. But over time, I learned that there’s an art to it. It’s meditative and fun. I really enjoy it now.   What was the process for making this short? The short stemmed from two road trips I took during a summer that were vastly different. Each trip was about 3000 km long. I took the first trip from Vancouver to Toronto by myself. And in that same summer, I drove back with my dad. This was a very different drive overall, I believe, because of the way we were being perceived and thus treated in Canada. It was very interesting because both were in the same summer, in the same year, and on Highway 1. It was essentially the same road trip, the only isolating factor, being an ‘us’ instead of just me.  The catalyst for the film became that difference.  I kept on wondering why my experience alone was so different from my experience with my dad. It was fun trying to figure out what the story was and how to keep it grounded in that road trip that it was seeded from. It’s challenging to tell a traditional road trip story in an interesting way while staying true to how I remembered and felt everything to be. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist and like to do everything myself. The only person on the whole project that I hired was Ambrose, a sound designer who is amazing. This type of workflow is non-traditional. I don’t often get to touch parts of the pipeline such as compositing or script-writing in my day job.  Writing, in particular, was an interesting part of the process. Drawing is my usual medium; my way to process and communicate. The grant process flips my personal creative process backward as I am required to write and explain myself before drawing. I am thankful for my journalism degree as it definitely helped me learn how to process through words a little bit better than in the past.    How did you navigate working through grief while working on this project?  It hit me like a truck when I realized the stark difference between how I can move through the world versus how I could move when me and my dad were together. It’s tough to pinpoint because I have few people to verify this experience with. My ‘code-switching’ creates the unique opportunity to live the world on either side of the coin: as someone culturally accepted, as well as someone othered. It’s quite a bizarre experience and one that is quite prevalent in North America as a child of immigrants.   Throughout the film, I was trying to wrestle with those questions: Why were people treating us so differently? How am I being perceived when I’m one way and how are we being perceived in a group or when I’m with my dad who has an accent?  I realize that I am so privileged because of my cultural fluency and it’s ridiculous because my dad has been in Canada longer than I have. So what does it mean to be Canadian? What does it mean to be Chinese-Canadian?  How does perception create identity and how does it own and limit your own understanding of yourself? That was my grief.    Has your view on grief or those moments changed since making the film? It’s a work in progress. It’s hard to put fact onto memory because memory is so faulty. I can only be as honest as possible through my experience of either side of the coin. This is especially so since my dad only has his experience to go off of, and nothing to compare it too. “This is just what I live. I don’t know any different. This is just how it goes.” But I’ve experienced both sides, And it feels a little bit lonely in that regard because there are not many people who can vet what I’ve said. I can’t fact-check my memories.  It wouldn’t be honest if I tried to prove something about the greater state of the world or the country. There’s nothing to prove. It’s purely anecdotal. I figured the most honest way to tell that concept or that feeling is to just tell it as I see it.   In your artist bio, you mentioned that the relationship with place is important to your artistic work. What places are important to you? How has that relationship changed over time?  My first film, 風不太冷 In Passing, is based on my parents’ stories of telling me about growing up in Hong Kong. That one was very place-based as well. I went back to Hong Kong in 2018 to experience Hong Kong for myself, have my own experience, and patch their stories to the place.  This time around, Detours Ahead is very rooted in Canada—specifically so. I tried to situate the film from the West to the East Coast; through what you see geographically from the water of

“My kids will like me, right?” “Sometimes, sometimes not. But even if they don’t like you, they’re going to love you forever. And they’re going to appreciate everything that you did for them even if they don’t say it out loud.” “Did you say it out loud?” “Not really.” If you had the chance to go back in time and meet the younger version of your parents right before you were born, would you? The science-fiction short film Desi Standard Time Travel explores this concept in a heartwarming and bittersweet narrative. The main protagonist of the film is Imran (played by Adolyn Dar), a Pakistani Canadian who is about to be a first-time father. From the beginning of the film, viewers are introduced to the tense dynamic between Imran and his ill and hospitalized father, Faisal, over a phone call. Imran’s parents immigrated from Pakistan to Canada as young adults before he was born, and Faisal reminds Imran of all the sacrifices they made for him and his future child to have a better life. He tells Imran how he didn’t have someone to guide him on being a father for the first time and that he’s lucky to have that guidance now. “Thank you for the advice. Maybe I’ll actually call you when I want it.” “When do you ever call? One day, you will actually want to call me, and I won’t be around to pick up.” Fast forward, Imran’s first child is born, but Faisal has passed away. Imran feels a great sense of regret for not having the best relationship with his father before he passed, and he wishes he could ask him for advice on being a father. Unexpectedly, Imran receives a phone call stating that Faisal had a time travel policy under his life insurance that expires soon, and he has the chance to go back in time for one evening. Ultimately, Imran accepts the offer and time travels to when his parents first moved to Canada right before he was born, giving him limited time to talk to the younger version of his father who is facing his same fear about fatherhood. As one of the screeners for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival this year, this short film stood out to me and was able to provoke a strong emotional reaction from me, especially during the first watch. This year’s festival theme is “Reflections”, and this film highlights how the relationships we form within our lifetime can be a source of reflection and growth. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to ask the director of the film, Kashif Pasta, about the inspiration, process, and challenges behind creating this film. Q: Did you have any specific films and other sources of media as inspiration when creating this film? A: “I grew up on a steady diet of British sci-fi and comedy like Doctor Who, where they rarely had the budgets to do something visually extravagant and instead have to rely on the strength of their writing, world-building and performances that brought a sense of reality to the most absurd premises. That kind of grounded feel really stuck with me. When you’re working with limited resources, the concept becomes the star, and you have to make the ideas compelling enough to fill in the gaps. For this film, I wanted to capture that sense of texture, place, and tactility. I drew a lot from Mogul Mowgli by Bassam Tariq, which has a rawness to it, and Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, which feels incredibly real and filmic. I don’t know if the influences are obvious when you watch the movie, but they definitely fueled me through the process. And then there’s Back to the Future of course, which is baked into the collective consciousness to the point where even if you haven’t seen it (and surprisingly, I hadn’t seen it when I made Desi Standard Time Travel), its influence is everywhere. The concept of using a car as a time machine for example just feels natural to us all, because that film has impacted our culture so much.” Q: What was the biggest challenge in creating this film? A: “One of the biggest challenges was finding the right tonal balance between a grounded drama and a sci-fi adventure. I needed to ensure that the emotional journey and the logic of the sci-fi elements didn’t feel like they were from two different films. The tech needed to support the emotions, and the emotions needed to anchor the tech. I had to explain just enough of how the world worked to satisfy curiosity, but not so much that we ended up bogged down in details and lost sight of the characters and their emotional journeys.” Q: What was the hardest artistic choice you made in the making of this film? A: “If the biggest challenge was the balance between sci-fi and grounded reality, the hardest artistic choices were in finding the balance between comedy and drama. The early cut of the film was so funny that the emotional beats didn’t land at all. We realized it was because our main character was too much of the “funny guy.” He was charming, sure, but if he didn’t take the situation seriously, it was hard for the audience to take him seriously when things got real. Luckily, some useful trauma from directing commercials where you need to have so many variations of the creative ready meant that I had already had our lead actor, Adolyn, take on the incredible challenge of playing scenes in a range of tones on set—from comedic to dead serious. His flexibility allowed us to fine-tune the performance in the edit, adjusting where he should be more charming, more serious, or just flat-out exhausted by everything happening to him. That helped us build an emotional arc feel authentic and earned.” Q: Were there any major differences between what you envisioned the film being like versus the end product? A: “My favorite thing about being a