Dien Vo is an independent filmmaker and professor of film and media at Bard College at Simon’s Rock (Great Barrington, MA). In this interview, we discuss the creative intricacies and thematic depths underlying his poignant short film “An Occurrence.” “An Occurrence” emerges as a contemplative piece, characterized by its moody and meditative aura. The narrative revolves around a multigenerational family endeavoring to navigate a ceremonial day.
1. “The title ‘An Occurrence’ suggests something out of the ordinary or unexpected. How does this concept resonate with the events and emotions explored in the film?”
My intention was to simultaneously depict the ordinary and a broader interconnectedness between people. The title suggests a single event or moment, yet the film shows how there’s never just one thing happening at a time. Many moments or gestures are a convergence of countless thoughts, emotions, and personal histories between multiple people. And while we can intensely be in our own private moments, life continues beyond us, which is why the film occasionally shows the lives of strangers. Though the event emphasized is a ceremonial day, there’s much more happening, whether we’re in sync with others or not. A moment can be a single event, or the synchrony of many things happening at the same time.
2. “The narrative of ‘An Occurrence’ revolves around a ceremonial day with a culturally-mixed family. Can you share more about the significance of this particular day and why it becomes the focal point of the story? What served as inspiration for you to tell this story? Is the film based at all on real-life events?”
The family is planning for two events: grandma’s memorial and the grandchild’s birthday — different ends of life and death. The specifics of when these events should occur is complicated because the characters’ lives are governed by both the standard Gregorian calendar as well as the traditional Chinese calendar. One of the characters, Ana, recently moved back to the US but works for a company in Asia on their schedule, overnight. While she’s physically here, her life rhythms are synched to another continent and people. The ceremonies are attempts to continue with traditions, make them work in modern life, and bonds four generations.
I thought all of this together would be an interesting metaphor for being between multiple cultural worlds. The characters have mixed marriages and mixed-race children. The inspiration partly came from my own experiences and observations on how other immigrant families navigate such experiences. No person or event is clearly one thing, and each moment can belong to a different cultural orientation — or multiple. People integrate, incorporate, and adapt customs to their different environments.
3. “Can you walk us through your casting process for ‘An Occurrence’? What were the key steps you took to find the right actors for the roles in the film?”
I found Katie Lynn Johnson (Ana) and Grace Lin (Mother) on Backstage by browsing actor profiles and listing our project. Flonia Telegrafi, our producer, found HP Wang (Grandfather) by reaching out to various Chinese and Asian cultural organizations. In all cases, we contacted these actors, shared the screenplay, and had video meetings. Katie and Grace are working actors, and HP was a notable leader in the Asian community. Based on video footage I saw of all of them, I knew they would work beautifully on camera. The video meetings were held to gauge chemistry and working dynamics. All the actors could relate to the experiences in the film, and interestingly, everyone had mixed-race families, too — another experience explored in the film. They were all generously supportive in working on something so different.
4. “Your film emphasizes the significance of unexpressed feelings and clandestine realities within the family. How did you approach capturing these subtleties in your direction and cinematography?”
I find that often, filmmakers make everything abundantly clear to audiences through redundant dialogue, keeping character motivations straightforward, and ensuring that the emotions acted aren’t misread. But, as in life, audiences like interpreting people on their own.
Since this is a film about different magnitudes of communication — expressed, unexpressed, or understated — we wanted to encourage audiences to pay closer attention and feel comfortable filling in blanks. What can we know about people through what we see, versus assumptions? That’s why so much goes unsaid, and why subtle actions and gestures carry extra significance.
Everyone in the film is trying to read each other, even if our signals aren’t clear, and I love that audiences are doing the same. If viewers see some things in ways I didn’t intend, I see little harm in that and am glad for their participation. It’s realistic to find people hard to understand in life.
We made a number of creative choices to finely attune the audience’s attention and senses. The actors speak in volumes between whispering and speaking. The lack of music encourages viewers to have their own emotions and observe characters with minimal influence. We linger on shots that are important puzzle pieces. Perhaps the most important technique employed was providing clarifying exposition later than expected, which heightens the sense of mystery.
5. “As the film centers on Asian-Americans, were there any specific cultural aspects or traditions you wanted to highlight through the narrative? How did you integrate them into the story?”
Yes. It’s common for many Asian families to live in multigenerational households and support each other in big and small ways. While this is tradition, things can vary with changing times and new environments.
This family is ambivalent. They want to live together, but also value their independence. The older characters are all hesitant to receive financial support from their children, even though this would be common and expected in different settings. And yet, they’re willing to support anyone younger. This shows their generosity, but it’s also about one’s sense of self in an individualistic culture like America’s.
While family is central to their lives, the characters are each seeking something deeply meaningful to them beyond the household. The grandfather wants to return to another country. The mother wants to settle into the life she’s made as an immigrant in a mixed-race marriage. The American daughter moved to Asia to connect with a culture she doesn’t fully know. The house is a place of possibility to bring everyone together.
On a smaller level, I thought it would be interesting to show how much the characters support each other in understated and unspoken ways. Grandfather cooks, unlocks the door for Mother just before she gets home, and watches his great-grandchild in the day. Mother takes in her grandchild, and quietly leaves money for her father every day in the kitchen. The granddaughter pays the family’s bills and tries to help them buy the house they’re renting. Although there may have been more traditional gender roles in the past, it’s also realistic that the grandfather would take on domestic duties, and the women would be providers.
6. “You mentioned that the film celebrates Art Cinema. Could you elaborate on the artistic techniques or styles you employed, and what and who served as inspiration? Could you share some classic or contemporary films that left a lasting impression on you and contributed to your appreciation for this genre?”
I’m most inspired by New Wave and auteur films of the 50s and 60s, and later filmmakers of a similar spirit. In combination, they prioritized thematic depth, a willingness to stray from formulaic story structure, active viewership, faith in lower-budgeted works, and comfort with ambiguity.
Past filmmakers I admire are Kieślowski, Tarkovsky, Resnais, Fellini, Varda, and Marker. Contemporary filmmakers I find inspiring include Asghar Farhadi, David Lynch, Bi Gan, Wong Kar Wai, Kelly Reichardt, Ildikó Enyedi, Guy Madden, and Paweł Pawlinkowski.
An Occurrence embraces a looser, alternative narrative structure common in art films. It features characters who don’t have clear and defined goals, who are instead dealing with the layered complexity of human relationships — a lack of clarity that’s at odds with the tidiness of many mainstream films. We start most scenes with some mystery, and provide clarification later than viewers might expect. Hopefully this keeps them engaged. While the scenes are quite simple (most are around a minute long), when edited together, they form a complex mosaic. Later scenes help us see new meaning in prior moments. We also allowed the film to be driven by things other than advancing plot or character goals.
7. “The meditative and poetic nature of your film sets it apart; the film’s setting and cinematography play a significant role in evoking feelings of transition and impermanence. How did you use the visual language to enhance the storytelling?”
The film’s ambience, sensory qualities, and general feeling are as important as the plot. Many times, we pause the story to allow viewers to simply feel the space of a scene: a breeze inside a house, sun rays on an autumn day, random moments of a stranger’s life, and time where nothing seems to be happening.
We further emphasized the subtlety of the writing and characters by keeping the visuals and sounds soft. This kept everything from feeling too concrete or defined. All contrasts feel blended, organic, and fluid. The lighting is always gentle, with notable gradation between light and shadow. Most of the film takes place at dawn and dusk, which look similar, so it’s never fully clear what time of day it is — or what day it is altogether. There are no dissolves or fades to black between scenes, so drastic changes in location and time are striking yet fluid. Urban and rural spaces are similarly blended, as are industrial and rustic soundscapes. The lack of music lets spaces be fully themselves with no distraction, and this gives them a larger presence. These choices seemed fitting for a film about being between things, and where no one is clearly one thing.
8. “The house where the family resides seems to have symbolic importance in the narrative. What inspired you to use the house as an integral part of the story, and how did you create a sense of place through its representation?”
Creating and settling into a home can suggest stability, belonging, and for many immigrants, a sense of commitment to a new culture. We eventually learn the family tried to buy the house they’re renting, but the owner sold to a higher bidder, despite their existing relationship. While home ownership can be a milestone achievement, real estate is often driven by financial interests over human relationships. The actors and I also tried to convey that the family has moved a lot by featuring English, Mandarin, and Cantonese as spoken languages. The home represents the possibility of stillness after so much transition, but that’s never reached. It’s been a transitory space for multiple generations of this one family, a place where other families have lived, and somewhere breezes pass through.
9. “In the context of your film ‘An Occurrence,’ what challenges did you face during production, and how did you overcome them to bring your vision to life?”
Making a film, whether a short or feature, is always challenging. This project was a labor of love, mostly self-financed, with partial funds coming from grants. The crew, many of whom I worked with years ago on my first feature, generously agreed to volunteer or work for lower rates. Everyone I worked with was, in some way, gifting me a favor, and I’m deeply grateful for that. Current and past students of mine joined, as did friends from different walks of life. We were able to foster a supportive community, which made long shoot days and early call times bearable. Of course, caffeine also helped.
Out of limited time and a need to bond with the actors, we rehearsed over Zoom as much as we could before production. We’d record these sessions, and I’d edit together highlight reels of what I thought worked and provided notes. As a result, the actors were able to quickly get into character on shoot days.
Securing locations, especially for a low budget short, proved challenging. We were lucky because of the regions we shot in — the New York State Capital Region, the Hudson River Valley, the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, and Atlanta. Most people we called, whether business owners or private residences, were receptive about allowing us to film, and at affordable rates. There was a refreshing informality and humanity in a lot of those interactions.
Finally, I’d say that in theory, shooting at dawn and dusk with natural light sounds romantic. But in practice it’s a nightmare, though much funnier in hindsight.
10. “You have experience teaching film and media at various universities. How has your academic background influenced your approach to filmmaking, and vice versa? What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?”
It’s a privilege to be able to study great films in detail, repeatedly. We can forget to do this when we’re too busy making films.
Academics often have less commercial pressure, so we can engage with the artform quite differently. The profession keeps me connected to great filmmakers of different eras and current audiences. I’m able to spend years thinking about whether the classics endure for good reasons. I think it’s important to acknowledge what doesn’t age well, while still recognizing merits. It makes me want to transmit the spirit of art films to new audiences in my own work.
I’m generally cautious with giving advice, but I think it’s critically important to know if you’d still make films without the promise of commercial success.
Official website of Dien Vo –
http://www.dienvo.info/portfolio/an-occurrence/
“An Occurrence” – Teaser from Dien Vo on Vimeo.
