BY KASEY NOSS | In late March 2020, director Holly M. Kaplan went for a walk in East River Park. It was the same walk she had done many times before, both as a child growing up in the East Village and an adult sent home from Los Angeles by the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, however, would be different: This time, she got an idea.
That notion went on to become “Sunflower Girl,” a short, coming-of-age film about a Chinese-American girl in New York City. Almost a year after its premiere at the Oscar-qualifying Uppsala Short Film Festival in Sweden, with a laudable international festival run in between, “Sunflower Girl” will makes its hometown premiere at the sold-out 47th Asian American International Film Festival in Union Square on Aug. 8.
The film follows Rosie (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), a 13-year-old Chinese-American skater girl tasked with picking up her little sister from school. When she runs into her crush on the way, she must make a difficult decision: abandon her sister or miss out on the chance to go skateboarding with him and his friends.
@sunflowergirlfilm SUNFLOWER GIRL – OFFICIAL TRAILER 🌻✨ A film by Holly M. Kaplan @holly__bb / feat. Original song “Better Off This Way” by Malea Emma @singdadsing 🎶 Performed by Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja; written by Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, @sunny ✿ Sunny Chen #shortfilm #filmtok #indiefilm #film #skateboarding #maleaemma
“Americanism coming in contact with the Asian American experience is the greater theme that I’m exploring,” said Kaplan, who wrote the film partly in response to the increased discrimination and violence she saw against Asian Americans during the pandemic. “Wanting to steer clear of showcasing hate and suffering, I felt moved to tell an uplifting story that explored the universal experience of growing pains from the perspective of a young Chinese American girl in New York City.”
To write the film, Kaplan drew from experiences in her own youth, as well as those of her mother, aunts and uncles growing up as Cantonese immigrants in New York. Most of the crew were childhood friends of Kaplan with similar backgrounds, reunited by their love of film and a desire to see their experiences represented on screen.
“To showcase not only a young female protagonist, but an Asian American one, was a perspective we longed to see in stories growing up,” Kaplan said.
Like many people, the writer/director saw her life thrown into flux by the pandemic; like many people, it gave her an opportunity to reflect. She had been working in L.A. for several years and gone to college in Washington, D.C., before that. By the time she returned home in 2020, it had been almost a decade since she’d lived in New York City full time.
“I think that is what made me realize more — coming back to New York after living in those other cities — like, no, this experience is extremely unique and distinctive,” Kaplan said of her upbringing. “I was starting to have ideas of, like, what if there was a short film or some kind of world exploring this specific experience? Everything was so depressing then. I felt like I wanted to kind of relive memory.”
And that’s what she did. As she walked through East River Park, she recalled story after story from her childhood there, like how the “cool kids” would gather at a secret spot that only showed up at low tide.
“I used to think, who was that cool girl who got invited to hang out with these kids?” Kaplan mused. “What if that was me?”
In the character of Rosie, Kaplan explores her answer. One of her favorite reactions to the film has been when viewers share their own childhood memories with her — how they found some part of Rosie they could relate to, regardless of whether they share the specific experience she represents.
“They automatically will be, like, ‘This really reminded me of growing up with my mom and code-switching,'” referring to alternating between different cultural norms. “‘Or another person who was, like, ‘This reminded me of when I was trying to get this cool guy,’” Kaplan said. “Connecting with your inner child: I feel like that’s what’s been happening, and I am really glad.”
For more information, visit sunflowergirlfilm.com. Didn’t get a ticket? All are welcome to the afterparty at Sugar Mouse, the immersive art game hall, at 47 Third Ave., from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
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