“Friends From Home”
"Friends From Home" is an animated short film that follows the stream of consciousness of a third-generation Asian American college student as she holds conversations about generational differences over Zoom with her California-based friends and family. As the multi-faceted complications within race, identity, and upbringing are gradually unpacked, a much more hidden and disturbing issue is suddenly revealed.
My purpose
I intend for this project to draw a line between the more commonly told perspectives of first and second generation Asian Americans (more specifically, their feeling of disconnection between their native country and being “American”) and the experiences of third generation Asian Americans (in which there are even deeper feelings of isolation between their first and second generation counterparts, their native country, and being “American”). Additionally, I also plan for my project to convey a sense of reassurance and catharsis for other third generation Asian Americans--and possibly Asian American adoptees and mixed Americans as well--who may have also experienced the same inequities by feeling invalidated or unaccepted by some members of their own ethnic group for being less connected to their roots.
My Process
In order to create this project, I conducted and recorded interviews on Zoom with my family and second generation Asian American friends, in which I confronted them about significantly uncomfortable past conversations/interactions I remember us having as a result of our generational differences. These stories then culminated to my final request for them to express their opinions of me as a third generation Asian American, as well as third generation Asian Americans in general. I then extracted fragments of audio from the interviews that I felt were summative of each conversation, and then storyboarded/animated a “visual essay” expressing my reactions and sentiments associated with them.
