After TMU — Tiffany Hsiung

Tiffany Hsiung is an award-winning filmmaker based in Toronto. She is listed as one of DOC NYC’s 40 under 40. Hsiung recently won the inaugural Toronto International Film Festival’s ‘Share Her Journey Short Cuts Award’ after the world premiere of her recent film Sing Me a Lullaby (2020), as well as a Directors Guild of Canada award for Best Short Film. Tiffany received the prestigious Peabody award for her debut feature The Apology (2018), along with the DuPont Columbia Award and the Allan King Memorial Award.

Why did you choose to study at Ryerson University?

TMU was one of the universities that I knew had a very practical film program and it was also very close to home. I was strategic about finding a technical university. Reading about the program and seeing alumni who went to TMU for film made it encouraging to apply. I think that most people, when they go to university, they want to leave home. I didn't feel that way. It was still about staying in the nest, but also being independent. For me, university was a time of independence in my own city. I felt like it gave me an upper hand when studying. Instead of trying to get to know a new city in a new place, I was actually more focused on getting to know myself and exercising myself in this new space of independence. I was able to fall in love with the city all over again, through a different lens of being a film student at TMU.

What are the skills you developed through university that have helped most in your career?

Discipline and initiative. 

I was very rebellious going into university. I think what post-secondary education can give you is a sense of discipline of your own life and the trajectory of where you see yourself. I think I did need the guidance and discipline of those four walls of a classroom at TMU to really hone in. That definitely applies to so much of what I do today, working with other people. 

Another big skill set in what I took away from TMU is initiative — finding your own initiative and running with it. In my last year, I decided to be part of Function Magazine and school committees where I helped fundraise and create events that supported our last year of exhibitions. Being part of that allowed me to understand the importance of community. It helped me understand what you can do to support others, how your voice matters, how what you contribute matters. It does make an impact. Being part of the community and seeing work come to fruition is something that you can be very proud of. I think that is something that I continue to do. 

How have you been involved in the film community and why does that matter to you?

I’ve been elected as the Directors Guild of Canada’s Second Vice Chair for the Ontario Executive Board. Ontario is the largest chapter in the Directors Guild of Canada. I'm also a board member of Documentary Canada in the Ontario branch and recently I was elected into the Hot Docs board.

Overseeing millions of dollars that impact our film industry or members is something very important to my heart. Echoing marginalized voices and ensuring that diversity and equitable things are being thought of when we are putting things out and championing initiatives, these all really matter to me.

I believe that coming from TMU and understanding, at a very young age, how your contribution to the community makes a difference definitely permeated into where I am today and how greatly I try to contribute. 

What are the biggest challenges you've faced in your career and how have you overcome them?

I think it's always a journey. After graduating, I remember feeling like a little tiny fish in big water. I think post-secondary school protects you. It prepares you, but it still protects you. 

Understanding that the film industry can be very cutthroat and you have to have a really thick skin to navigate it has been challenging. Being prepared to be disappointed, but also knowing how to translate those disappointments into lessons of how you can overcome it, is really hard. Not many people survive in film and not many people continue it.

I think that we are seeing changes recently, but I graduated in 2007. Carving out my own path was one that I needed to do if I wanted to stay in the industry. In an industry that's predominantly run by older white males, no one was going to hand that out to me. No one was going to be like, ‘those opportunities should go to women of colour.’ It was a challenge, but I was facing that at TMU, as well. It was a predominantly white program, not many people of colour. Families/parents weren’t really excited about paying for post-secondary education for their children to study film; they didn't see a lot of us in the industry. I was just really stubborn.

The challenges were real and they still are, but you either fight for yourself or fight within the community of people that are also fighting the same fight. I've been very fortunate to find my way. I've been supported by friends and family, people that just believed in the films and the stories that I wanted to tell. 

What is the best piece of advice you have been given and what advice would you offer to a new graduate or filmmaker?

You can't skip any steps. I know we all want to get there really quickly and do things, but sometimes when you skip steps and rush, it hurts so much more when you're faced with a challenge and have to go back to the beginning. Taking the necessary steps to home in on what you want to do, why you want to do that and not just think about the end game is really important for any type of career that you do. 

It's okay to make mistakes. You learn far more from your mistakes than from your successes. When I talk with students, I don't just focus on the accolades and successes of films I've done. I actually spend the majority of time talking about my mistakes. If one person's mistakes can be taught and thousands of people have incredible lessons they can apply to their own life, then that mistake wasn't made in vain. I still make mistakes, but I think I'm quicker to identify them and to learn from them. 

For new filmmakers: We're very, very privileged now to live in a society where technology allows us to just go and do it. Don't hold yourself back, don't wait. With what you have today, don't limit yourselves thinking that you need x, y and z, before you can start. Don't wait for somebody else to cut you a cheque.

The Apology and Sing Me a Lullaby are deeply personal films. What did creating them teach you about the art of storytelling?

Don’t put your ego first. I was able to work with so many incredible filmmakers and storytellers (like Anita Lee and Mary Stephen) that I would say are the pioneers who paved this way for filmmakers and have done so much for women of colour in this filmmaking sphere. Working with them taught me the art of storytelling is to not put your ego first, because so much of directing and storytelling is ego, and I think we can really get in the way of ourselves. 

Surrender to the power of the story. Try not to fear or create obstacles that will limit your vision. People are going to connect to the universality of what makes us human. That's what I see people connecting to with The Apology. The mothers aren't perfect, they don't say perfect things, they don't act in perfect ways, but that is what being human is all about. When you don't shy away from that, people are able to know that story so much more. It’s the same thing with Sing Me a Lullaby. It took me a while to get there, but the moment I was able to surrender to the story and allow people to connect to the human aspects of what was going on, you got a film where there's a bridge.

Showcasing Asian culture and heritage has been threaded throughout your work. Why is sharing these stories so important to you? 

When you're born and raised in North America or Canada, and your immigrant parents come from China, Taiwan, different Asian countries, you're often battling this identity limbo crisis of “I am Canadian, but I don't look like what is said to be ‘Canadian.’” You're constantly fighting yourself and your heritage and your culture, because the things that you love when you're at home really are conflicted the moment you leave your house. 

This goes back to why representation matters and why Asian stories, people of colour and their stories matter. They are on the screen for the eight-year-old version of Tiffany watching. Seeing people that you can identify with on screen makes a huge impact on how you appreciate and see yourself in your culture. It's not just about being proud of your family, it's about understanding how they are viewed and seen on the world stage in your own country. It is incredibly validating. It sucks that we have to validate, but that's just the society that we live in.

Asian hate has been going on forever, but it is more dominant now during this global pandemic. Asian hate has dehumanized my people, our culture, and identity. My work is to humanize my lived experience, my culture, my heritage, our traditions. Why I do what I do and why my work has so much reference to my cultural heritage, is to humanize it. We are people, and we have feelings, we have emotions, we go through these things, just as well as everyone else.

That is why I fight to do the work that I do.

How has mentorship helped you to advance your skills and professional experiences / opportunities?

I've been mentored, but not in the most conventional form of mentoring. Everyone that I've been able to work with and who have been so generous enough to offer me advice, has allowed me to apply that in my own lived experience; while also learning and understanding the fight that they've been on for years. When I was at TMU I acted in Romeo Candido’s pilot series. Since meeting him, when I was 20 years old, he's always been a champion for all the work that I've done. He's still continuously in my life.

You need to have gratitude if you're going to work in a collective community. If you intentionally want to make change, you have to have gratitude for what has been paid before you starting out. You have to acknowledge the work that has been done before you and how and what you need to do to continue that legacy. 

Mentorship has helped me be a better communicator to new people emerging in this work. I do get tons of requests to mentor other people and, when I have the time, I absolutely want to. I’ll never not take a phone call to share advice with emerging filmmakers. I reached out to many people too.

I think that if anyone is trying to reach out to people for advice it's important to know what you're asking for. What is one burning question that you really need support on. That’s actually the best way for people to support and help you. The more specific you are with your need, the better anyone, any mentor, can support you.

What do you enjoy most about being a filmmaker and writer? What do you enjoy least?

I enjoy the privilege to develop relationships with new people every time I am given the opportunity to document their stories, and also the new people that I get to work with and collaborate with to tell a story together. I am so fortunate that I get to do this for a living. Yes, there are some really shitty parts. I'm not going to sugarcoat it all, there is, but even if I don't enjoy something, I find joy in it. I'm trying to really practice that.

I would say the thing that I least enjoy is having to sometimes navigate against a machine that has been built 100 years ago. A machine that was not built with consideration to people like me — a queer, Asian, female filmmaker, who has grown up with dual identities and cultural experiences. I dislike that the job that I do is having to be reminded of that. Constantly having to navigate, convince, bring the machine up to date and re-educate people. I dislike having to do that work. You don’t expect to have to do that work when you come out of school. I try again to find optimism in it. What doesn't kill me will make me stronger. I know that, if not in my lifetime, then the next generation’s lifetime hopefully won't have to experience that.

Reflecting back, what do you wish you could tell your university self?

This is just the beginning. Have some compassion for yourself. Love yourself. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. You need to take care of yourself if you're going to continue the marathon. Even though you think that working hard and suffering is the way to achieve things, be compassionate for yourself. Love yourself. That is going to make you a better filmmaker, a better person to be around and to work with.