As Occupy Wall Street continues this week in New York City, Desiree Lim has other occupants in mind while promoting her latest film The House. It's the story of Jean Kaneko (played by Natalie Skye), a Wall Street banker who leaves New York—only to find ghosts occupying her new house in Vancouver. The Vancouver-based filmmaker spoke with Schema Magazine on the phone about the film and her career as a 'cross-cultural, cross-gender' filmmaker.

The House is already getting offers from American distributors, an unusual experience for the independent filmmaker. She's a veteran of limited releases and shoestring budgets.

"It's probably the straightest film I've ever made," she said. "My work has always been very diverse, like black, white, brown, all kinds of colours in the characters."

Desiree Lim talks about The House

Lim gives me her backstory: born and raised as a second-generation Chinese in Malaysia, she moved to Japan in high school. She lived in Japan for the next decade, studying journalism in university in Japan, where she started making experimental and narrative shorts.

Her career began at Japan's TV Asahi as an associate producer and news director, documentary and lifestyle shows but she always kept an interest in narrative storytelling, and after five years in the corporate world, she became a freelance director. Her debut TV feature film in 2001 was called Sugar Sweet. It was the first lesbian commercial feature by a queer filmmaker in Japan. In an interview with Fridae magazine, she described how she was dismayed at the exploitative marketing—it was sold as a "sexual" film to straight male audiences.

Desiree Lim with The House star Natalie Skye.

Overall, she says she was pleased at the critical and audience acclaim the film received in film festivals worldwide and the fact that she was able to bring an "honest, in-your-face portrayal of female sexuality" to the screen."

The same year Sugar Sweet debuted, Lim arrived in Vancouver. She felt culture shock at the whiteness of Canadian media.

"I was actually very shocked," she said. "We don't have our stories on screen."

But Lim had come at an opportune time. Local broadcasters like CHUM and CityTV were beginning to produce and fund work by visibile minority filmmakers. Her first short, Out for Bubble Tea, first aired on CityTV in 2005, a comedy about Chinese immigrants hanging out at a bubble tea house talking about their lives.

Since then, Lim thinks mainstream media narratives have gotten a little less white and less straight. She cites shows like Will & Grace, The L Word, and Six Feet Under. But she insists these are small victories.

True to her roots, Lim's upcoming project is a romantic drama about a middle-aged woman falling for a younger woman.

"Putting queer stories out there, having people of colour as lead characters— that's always going to be a part of me."

Related Posts on Schema
VAFF 2011 Review: The House

Related Links

The House official trailer.

The House premiers at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival on Sunday Nov 6 at 5 PM in the Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinema in Vancouver.

For more of Desiree, visit Desiree Lim's official website.

***
Patricia Lim is managing editor for Ricepaper magazine and a part-time librarian. She likes to meet weirdly interesting people and attend artsy events to stretch her mind. You can see what she writes on Twitter @ricepapermag.