‘Yellow Rose’: A Breakthrough Film for Filipino Americans1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIt’s the first Filipino-led film backed by a major American studio. It features award-winning Filipino stars from Broadway, hit movies, and music.
But it almost didn’t get made.
“I definitely gave up,” confessed the film’s director and co-writer, Diane Paragas. “I gave up somewhere in the middle of this 15-year journey. I said, ‘It’s never going to happen.’”
“Then, I went to the Toronto Film Festival, and I went to a screening with Mira Nair, the great Indian film director, who had just finished making a picture called ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist.’ Someone in the audience asked her what brought her to her material [for that film] and she said, ‘I’ve been doing all these films with predominantly white casts. And I realized that since I last made a South Asian film, there hasn’t been a South Asian film. So when I stop making movies, [South Asians] stop making movies.’ She realized it was her obligation to make films about people who look like herself, because if she doesn’t do it, no one else is going to do it.”
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions
