Announcement

Ethan and moi.

My blog

To Ride a Cow 騎牛找馬

Monday, Mar 17, 2008 2:10PM / Standard Entry

After I graduated from Berkeley and got turned down from UCLA film school the first time, I had decided to not wait for film school and start making films. The result became my first video short "To Ride a Cow" <<騎牛找馬>>.

It was the summer of 1992. I rounded up my best girl friend from college and my first boyfriend Mike and we started to shoot the video. We shot it in a few days and I edited it at the East Bay Media Center on Super VHS.

I couldn't find anyone who would do nudity so I decided to put myself in it. It was not an autobiographical piece. It's a fictional story about a girl and a boy who get together and bond when their bisexual lover goes away for the weekend.

I remember feverishly trying to finish off the piece before Mike drove me off to start grad school at Yale. At first, I was rather discouraged because my friends didn't seem to get or like the piece. I started sending it out to film festivals when I was at Yale and continued to make videos.

It just started snowing in New Haven when I got a mean call from the New England Film Festival complaining that I was short my entry fee payment. I grudgingly sent them a check for 10 bucks.

Two weeks later, I got a call from them and they said they wanted to invite me to Boston because I had won Best Student Video at the New England Film Festival. A couple of months later, I got a call from Hong Kong and heard that I won the First Prize at the Hong Kong Independent Film & Video Awards. It was judged by Tsui Hak who commented on how "exciting" my piece was.

Tony Rayns programed it into the Hong Kong International Film Festival and it started getting programed everywhere.

On its way to Tokyo Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, the film was seized by the customs because of frontal nudity. I guess I accidentally exposed myself in one of the sex scenes.

Oops.

Because of that, I was dubbed the new enfant terrible of queer cinema. Just a few years ago, I was dubbed the aging enfant terrible by a critic as Ethan Mao was released.

Those were the days.

"To Ride a Cow" was how I got started making videos... and I just posted the short in its entirety on Youtube in three parts:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfwCAKex6Oo

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxK0IJ2p1qo

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hUmjm9dnSY

Go bears!

1 comment– Add a comment
Faust!

Friday, Mar 14, 2008 3:41PM / Standard Entry

Here's something no one has ever seen. When I was at UCLA film school, I took a class with the famed Polish director Jerzy Antczak who made us shoot a scene in one shot. One shot with no cut or whatsoever. That was my priceless education and here's the result:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONgHWFEdGxE

I accidentally found a 3/4" tape that contained the said film school assignment.

Simply priceless for nostalgia!

I was a postmodern brat!

2 comments– Add a comment
Beefing up my Youtube

Saturday, Mar 1, 2008 5:21PM / Standard Entry

Hey folks,

I've been beefing up the content on my Youtube channel with clips and trailers from my features... check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=marginfilms&p=r

21 clips total!

2 comments– Add a comment
A Special Preview of A Chinese Class

Friday, Feb 8, 2008 12:42AM / Standard Entry

Hi folks,

I want to invite to you to a special preview of the documentary short "A Chinese Class" that I just finished cutting on-line:

http://www.marginfilms.com/achineseclass/preview/achineseclass.640x360.mp4

I'd be grateful for your feedback in terms of how fast it loads and how well it streams/works! And any comments!

Quentin

4 comments– Add a comment
Jia Shanghai Special

Tuesday, Feb 5, 2008 4:16PM / Standard Entry

Hey... I just want to share this with you and I don't usually advertise for anyone. Jia Shanghai is having a special for Chinese New Year at their hotel. I've got to say that Jia is my favorite hotel in Hong Kong and I'm sure that the Shanghai Jia is equally fab too! I just love Jia!

Have fun for me in Shanghai! Or better yet... take me there!

1 comment– Add a comment

10/19

Quentin Lee

Stats

Quentin Lee is a producer, writer and director based in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong...
More

Quentin Lee is a producer, writer and director based in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong. He grew up in Hong Kong, immigrated to Montreal as a teenager and went to UC Berkeley for college where he received a B.A. in English. He then went to Yale and UCLA for his M.A. in English and M.F.A. in Film Directing respectively while he was hustling the film festival circuit with a feature collection of his shorts called Flow.

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, Quentin Lee’s first feature Shopping for Fangs opened to critical acclaim during its limited theatrical release in the U.S. Quentin wrote, co-directed (with Justin Lin), produced and self-distributed Shopping for Fangs through Margin Films. The success of Fangs paved way for Quentin's second feature Drift and Justin Lin's 2002 Sundance hit Better Luck Tomorrow.

Following Fangs, Quentin returned to a more personal realm; he produced, wrote and directed Drift, a drama that became a hit in the gay and lesbian film festival circuit and was sold to Wellspring Media. It was also released theatrically to rave reviews in Los Angeles.

Ethan Mao is Quentin's third feature as a writer/director. Premiered at the AFI Film Festival 2003, it also won the Audience Award at the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and was sold worldwide.

0506HK is Quentin's first feature documentary about his emotional attachment to Hong Kong. It features Hong Kong cultural icon Kam Kwok Leung, filmmakers Peter Chan and Teddy Chen, documentary director Tammy Cheung, and animator Raman Hui. The feature world premiered as part of Vancouver International Film Festival's "Hong Kong Stories."

Quentin is currently at work on several features such as The People I've Slept With, Chink, and a documentary short titled "Chinese Class."

More
Occupation: Director
Gender: Male
Total visits: 105,454