Victoria G Interviews Miida Chu

Victoria G: What inspired you to become a director?

Miida Chu: I started making films when I was in fifth grade. At first it was an excuse to get friends together over summer breaks, but when I screened the finished (awful) film in front of them, they went wild. I realized the power of reimagining the world, whether for silly laughs or positive changes. It's addicting.

VG: Who are some directors that inspire you?

MC: I don't have a favorite director. Usually it's the particular works that inspire me. I love films that explore the inexplicable complexity of our transient life, Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander are two of my favorites that get close to encapsulating that. I also love films that reaches deep into the muddiness of our unconscious, João Pedro Rodrigues's O Fantasma and David Lynch's Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me have always inspired me.

VG: What is your favorite thing about directing?

MC: I love designing the musicality of shots and movements. I'm the type of director who edits in her head before going on set, and I go as far as designing the music that goes along with it. I love having the sureness of rehearsing everything in my head until I'm 100% confident it works. Seeing your design coming alive on set as well as in the edit is the most beautiful thing ever.

VG: What was the first film you directed?

MC: It was a treasure hunting movie called Under the Right Angle. It's a treasure-hunting movie very much inspired by Nicholas Cage's National Treasure 2.

VG: What is your favorite project you have ever done?

MC: I worked on a very ambitious project back in 2020. I set out to make a film that's a shot-based palindrome, that is, a film where the second half of the film has the identical shots from the first half, except they're played in the reversed order. I proceeded to discover a whole collection of tricks that is able to hide information in the first half and only unveil them via the new causal orders in the second half. It's mostly a theoretical project now, but it still feels like discovering uncharted ground in cinematic expressions when I come up with a new trick.

VG: What are some qualities you look for in a project?

MC: I often look for something new I get to learn, especially in the psyche of the protagonist. I like to get inside the head of the characters and experience something I would never expect. I think watching and creating cinema is living lives in parallel universes albeit vicariously through other people's bodies.

VG: What was the inspiration behind Eureka?

MC: I was inspired by the intersection of oppressions the Chinese women faced in the 1880s American West. I kept wondering what it was like to be confined in this futureless time and place, and what it took to break out of the confines and embrace the dark unknown.

VG: How would you describe yourself in three words?

MC: Curious. Sentimental. Blasphemous.

VG: What are your social media handles?

MC: Insta/Twitter: @miidachu

VG: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

MC: Hopefully retired, running a successful ice cream shop, and starting to invent new genres of soup and soup noodles.

VG: What are three qualities every director should have?

MC: Perseverance, imagination, and confidence

VG: Do you have any advice for an aspiring director?

MC: Watch a lot of films and feel how you gravitate toward them despite the critical/public opinions. Once you start to realize what you're into, what you're curious about, you naturally know what stories you want to tell, and how you want to make the films you're destined to make.

VG: What's next for you?

MC: I'm working on a trans coming-of-age romantic fantasy feature project. It's about a high school girl who discovers that the lover in her dream is having the same dreams as her in real life, but can't bring herself to find him because she's a closeted trans girl living as a boy in the real world.

VG: RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS What's your favorite film genre?

MC: Mystery

VG: What's your favorite movie?

MC: Synecdoche, New York

VG: What is your favorite pastime?

MC: Binge the symphonies of Gustav Mahler.

VG: Who's your favorite superhero?

MC: Wonder Woman

VG: What's your favorite candy?

MC: Sour Patch Kids

VG: What is your biggest fear?

MC: Die of regrets.

VG: Do you have any pets?

MC: No, but hopefully pigs in the future.