Fil-Brit filmmaker Andrea Walter on biculturalism, feeling like a foreigner at home

"Write what you know" is one of the first advice given to young writers and for good reason. Conveying emotions as genuinely felt by the writer in any medium will resonate with its audience.

The emotions upcoming independent film "Empty by Design" wants to show to its audience are particularly rooted in the bicultural experiences of its creators and actors.

At the center of these experiences are that of Filipino-British writer and director Andrea A. Walter, who grew up flying from one country to another. 

"Having parents [who] traveled around and moved around a lot, I never felt one with where I was at even when I'm here," Walter told GMA News Online at the Conrad Hotel. "I feel more Filipino than any other country I've lived in, but it's hard to get into that."

"When I'm home, I'm considered the white, the foreign friend, even though they know I'm Filipino, but when I'm in the States or when I'm in England, I'm the Asian friend. There's a constant battle of what you do."

The feeling of wanting to feel at home even though one is already surrounded by familiar faces and experiences is a strong part of the film, as producer and actor Osric Chau noted.

"Even if I'm in a Chinese school with all Chinese kids and I was born in China, I can still feel like an outsider. It's just about that sense of belonging, or lack thereof," he said.

It's a feeling that resonated with every person they've pitched the movie to so far, and it has to talents such as Yoshi Sudarso and Jasmine Curtis-Smith, the lead for the movie, to commit to the indie project.

Another layer of growing up

Figuring out who she was within her own culture as a third culture kid, Walter mused, added "an extra amount of work" to the process of figuring herself out as an adult.

"Having some of my friends who are Japanese-American or anyone who was raised in their culture, not a third culture kid, they skip all that, they don't have that. We spend the whole time confused," she said.

Empty By Design writer/director (and Fil-Brit) Andrea Walter & co-producer Osric Chau talk about their experiences with having wildly different cultural bgs.

Actor Chris Pang, star of EBD & Crazy Rich Asians, later spoke about highlighting a different side of Manila in the film. pic.twitter.com/bgvZxdU3Rp

— Rie Takumi (@rie_takumi) July 25, 2018

Third culture kids (TCK), defined Merriam-Webster, is rooted in the word third culture, which "refers is the mixed identity that a child assumes, influenced both by their parents' culture and the culture in which they are raised."

Kate Mayberry writing for BBC explained that being a TCK means having a "broader world view" with rooted cultural awareness, coupled with a sense of rootlessness and the thought of home being "everywhere and nowhere."

"In general, you growing up, in a place and you feel like you're supposed to feel one way but really, inside, you're not. I think it's just that whole thing of trying to be something or someone you're not," Chau offered.

"That's just part of having an identity. Or if you don't have an idea 'cause you think you're supposed to be a certain way — it's just that feeling of being lost, just a weird sensation to walk around life with. And I think most of us, we live through life trying to find ourselves, and that's a big part of it."

A different side of Manila

Unlike the usual independent films, "Empty by Design" will frequently feature the glitzier parts of Manila, a deliberate choice by the team not only to show a side of the Metro but to differentiate it from the rest.

"There's so much content about poor Manila and slum, and we wanted to make a film to celebrate the good parts of Manila as well. In our story, we've got a very modern, metropolitan version of Manila, the side that you don't get to see so much in films," Chris Pang, actor and lead of the film "Crazy Rich Asians," said.

"It's just life in another large Southeast Asian city," Pang added. "It's something that we purposely wanted to highlight

Walter said the film took cues from Wong Kar Wai's depiction of modern China and Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation." The latter's film and the former's filmography made heavy use of its scenery to convey unspoken emotions, and made use of cities to do so.

"We're just doing that version. There's so many other movies, we don't need to do what everyone else is doing. We're doing it from my perspective and their perspective. We're just trying a different thing," she said.

"We wanna show how it's more fun in the Philippines," Pang winked.

Location scouting for the film was an eye-opener for Pang, who has seen the grittier side of the Philippines in films but did not quite expect the effect of seeing the real thing.

"It wasn't surprising to me, but it was shocking," Pang admitted. "I knew in my head that it existed. But to actually see it, drive through it, it becomes more than a location, an idea. You really see people living there."

Seeing how quickly one can move between the slums and high-rise buildings in the city surprised Pang: "It really highlighted the gap between rich and poor here."

An auteurship

"Empty by Design" is the first truly independent film Chau and Pang have done where they're involved in all aspects of the movie.

"We've all worked on numerous films in a lot of different capacities. This is a huge learning experience for us. Even if we've been through this process, we've never been on making all of the decisions, calling all the shots. It's been really cool," Chau said.

"Ideally, we'll make a film that we personally enjoy that resonates with us and in doing so, we hope it resonates with other people as well," he continued. "Ideally, we can show the world outside the Philippines what Manila can be like from our perspective."

Pang noted that they came in "at the right time" when "representation and diversity is part of the conversation now: "Fortunately, we can tell stories that are relevant to that conversation."

"In that sense, we have a responsibility to it because if we don't do it, who else will? We can't rely on the established model of filmmaking to create content for us, we really gotta go chase it ourselves," he added.

For Walter, the film is also a little love letter to the second golden age of Filipino cinema in the '70s to '80s and a contribution to the number of unique indie Filipino movies distributed to foreign screens.

"As a Filipino filmmaker, I really wanna push the way Indonesia pushed 'The Raid.' I wanna push our art, our form. I don't want to just have the same old s--t every time. I want to see Filipino artwork seen in the masses outside," she said. "We have a problem with distribution here and I want to help that." — AT, GMA News