How I has become a filmmaker so far.

[Sunhoo Lee]

When I was 5 years old, my family was not rich. And I was ashamed of that. So whenever I talked about my family to my friends, I created a story that I was born with lots of money. The story was so perfect for that age between my friends so all of them believed that my family was wealthy. However, soon the truth was revealed and I got in trouble. Now I remember that it was the first time when I can first see myself as a storyteller in my life.

While studying Mass Communication and Journalism in the college, I first made a social documentary film in South Korea in 2001. It was about a social movement for enlarging rights for disabled people, specially the freedom to commute around. I could learn, while making the documentary, that it was not only about letting people know that there are people who fight for their rights that had not established in society and they deserved, but also about changing and progressing my perspectives as an individual of this world.

After I graduated college, I move to US 5 years ago from South Korea. Because I have not grown up in US, I see myself who sees this country with a totally different perspective from how American people usually recognize their country. The experience living in a country as a foreigner gives me more space to think about meaning of diversity and variety of this world.

Film seems to me that life is but a dream. I dream film. I dream my film also makes others dream. This is how I see myself as a filmmaker whenever I produce any film. And I always hope that any film by myself is going to be shown to audience and to communicate them with it.

I am always interested in directing however as a filmmaker I see myself as a storyteller first. So I would love to develop the story and write scripts that I am thinking about. I aim those projects would be feature films. 

While I was attending Academy of Art University, I had three mentors: Matthew Jaobs (Writer/Director), Tim Boxell (Director) and Robert Keats (Screenwriter). While I was discussing with them about my film, “Until We Meet Again”, I could cover many different subjects in filmmaking such as Developing a story, Writing/Revising a script, Directing actors, pre-Production process, etc. It was great experience for me that I could get helped by listening to suggestions and advices whenever I had any issue to consider to make a film. After these processes, I could finish the film, "Until We Meet Again" that waw shown at couple of film festivals including Sacramento Film Festival.

Recently, I am developing a story about immigrant people whose lives being pushed to outside of borderlines from the major society in terms of conditions of their daily lives.