Queer women in color
Madeleine Lim's media arts class inspires young filmmakers.

By Laurie Koh

THE CALIFORNIA ARTS Council's funding has been executed on the budget gallows. But independent filmmaker Madeleine Lim has managed to continue teaching a free 16-week digital video workshop for queer women of color ages 18 to 25. In this town of film festival junkies, Lim has devoted herself to jump-starting the careers for the next generation of her peers, encouraging them to make films that can screen at Madcat Women's International Film Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, UC Berkeley's Women of Color Film Festival, and Frameline.

Down-to-earth and direct, Lim, 39, is a compact woman with extra-strength energy. She grew up in Singapore but left at age 23 when the homophobic environment there proved too limiting. She journeyed far and wide looking for lesbian community and landed in San Francisco in 1987. After a first career as a travel agent, Lim pursued an MFA in film at San Francisco State University and began crafting award-winning works such as Sambal Belacan, a rich, queer narrative that explores her mixed ethnic heritage (mostly Chinese Singaporean, with touches of Malay, Indian, and Portuguese).

"There was a very diverse population at SFSU, but the film department was mostly straight white men," she recalled. "I thought that was rather strange, considering the makeup of the rest of the student body. In the final year I was the only queer person in class period. It started me thinking about access and agency. I thought of course who would I want to pass my skills on to but queer women of color, to help them tell their stories." Lim got a CAC grant, and over the next three years, the state supported her efforts as she taught more than 150 such students as an artist in residence.

These days she cobbles together funding from the Astrea Foundation and others to continue teaching. Lim's intensive, no-nonsense program, officially titled Queer Woman of Color Media Arts Project, has helped me and a surprising number of others learn to heft a camera and tell our stories.

"She had her shit down, and she expected us to have our shit down too," said 25-year-old Ching-In Chen, whose documentary-poetry project deals with the plight of elderly people being evicted from Oakland's Chinatown.

Lim's lesson plans distill filmmaking to its most important components. Covering everything from editing to festival distribution, Lim's classes forgo superfluous theory in favor of getting students out the door and filming.

One of her primary concerns is demystifying technology for her students. "Because of economic issues, and survival issues, we don't think to go into film or media, or we don't have access to that technology," she said. "The film world is mysterious. My aim is to put the skills in the hands of queer women of color. The more films there are, the more images of our real lives, the better it is."

When I took her class, all I needed to do was find the red button on the camera before we were off running around the Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center (a sponsor of Lim's and the workshop's classroom) shooting the "joyful pen," the "confused water bottle," and my own "depressed backpack." The center's equipment is by no means state-of-the-art – two small digital cameras and two Mac computers with iMovie – but it's enough for Lim's purposes. "I learned how to get comfortable with a camera among women that I really respected," said 23-year-old Cristina Mitra, who used her newfound skills to profile her cartographically ignored neighborhood in Off the Map: A Journey Through the Excelsior. "Where else could I get one-on-one instruction in a group as specific as queer women of color?"

With that in mind, Lim also requires that all participants crew on at least two of their classmates' projects. Indeed, participants deemed the production help and the constructive criticism of their peers invaluable. Jeanette Aguilar, a 28-year-old who produced the feature Simone's 24 through Lim's classes several years ago, agreed that "to get feedback from the other queer women of color in that setting was such an amazing experience!"

Twenty-year-old participant Gloria Ngo said, "Madeleine really knows about discipline, consistency, and groundedness when living artistic passions. Although she may come across as strict, she really cares about her students' creative expressions in the world, and she stands for nothing less in her classes." No doubt about it, Lim is a hard-ass, but in the best sense. Art is a priority, no excuses. A simple but guilt-inducing "Why not?" is Lim's response when a student admits she hasn't done the work. And although the class is free, she treats the deadlines like they're carved on tablets. My film was in damn sorry shape when our rough cuts were due, but I was forced to show it. After I knocked the class unconscious with 20 minutes of talking heads, she calmly advised me to "be ruthless" with edits. She made me rediagram all the themes I was pursuing.

Lim nudged us for a reason. She said one of the biggest challenges in teaching is getting students to finish their projects. Once they leave the workshop structure, it's all too easy to let life get in the way. "That sense of satisfaction in creating something is a very important part of the process," she explained. "You've got to push to finish, especially with a film, as compared to other types of art like drawing or photography, because it takes longer to do."

Lim believes it's also crucial for students to share their work with their communities. To this end, she creates screening opportunities for her workshop members, the biggest of which is the Queer Woman of Color Film Screening at the Queer Arts Festival, cocurated with Darshan Elena Campos. The screening (June 15 this year at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center) is free and always packed. "The atmosphere is really incredible – watching new filmmakers experiencing an audience with real love, support, and sense of community. Some filmmakers go years before experiencing that public acknowledgment," Lim said.

QAF executive director Pam Peniston said, "I think Mad is an amazing individual. Essentially she is creating her competition, but she is so gracious and so fired up with passing on this knowledge. [She has] a passion to create artists as well as her own art." Peniston, whose Queer Cultural Center has helped Lim write grant proposals, adds, "We, as others trying to fund Mad, get a pretty big bang for our buck, because we are not only supporting the artists but also those from their classes."

Have Lim's efforts worked? Several students have shown their work at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the S.F. International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and others. One sits on the board of Cine Acción as a direct result of her workshop piece. Most important, Lim continues to work hard to expand an underrepresented group in the symbiotic system made up of filmmakers, festivals, and audiences.

I, for one, am grateful. After much swearing, this technological idiot made a short documentary about the all-female hip-hop collective Sisterz of the Underground. It was fitting that I filmed them with my own chick crew, a setting in which fuck-ups weren't tragic. I'm quite happy with the piece mostly because, hell, I actually made it. I couldn't have done it without constantly keeping Lim's filmmaking philosophy in mind:

Step one: Take yourself seriously.

Step two: Just pick up the damn camera.

Step three: Work with your peers.

Step four: Finish!

Step Five: If you can't find community, perhaps you haven't built it yet.

Laurie Koh is an editorial assistant at Girlfriends Magazine.