Storytelling

In Anatomy of A Springroll, Kwan returns to his boyhood home in Vietnam. Threaded throughout the story is Kwan's search to understand how the food of his culture enables him to connect his past and present lives.

The second video, Pins and Noodles, deals with the notion of food as medicine in the Chinese tradition. It's also cinematic diary of Kwan's journey, from San Francisco's Chinatown to Saigon, Taiwan and Hong-Kong, to find a cure for his food allergies.

Midway through the production, however, Kwan, like his father and older brother before him, suffered a debilitating stroke, which turned his odyssey into a dramatic, life-saving quest. This piece is narrated by Genny Lim who acts as Kwan's surrogate voice. As a result of the stroke Kwan developed aphasia and was unable to fullfil his speaking role.

In A Wok in Progress, Kwan and Iger turn their video camera on the ubiquitous "Chinese frying pan" and again use food as a context to explore culture, health issues and family life. As in the previous videos, the filmmakers, who have worked together for fifteen years, blend a basis cinema verite s style with animation, Asian legends, puppets and poetry to tell Kwan's personal story and express his pan-Pacific worldview. (Insert storyboards). In this part of the trilogy Kwan has recovered enough from the stroke to use his voice to narrate.