Dan Chen‘s new Vimeo Staff Pick short documentary, You’re Too Sensitive, is now streaming. He developed his love of film as a Chinese-American teenager growing up in small-town Kansas. He picked up the camera to connect with others, partnering with friends to make elaborate coming-of-age movies, and documenting the moments they’d later be nostalgic for. He studied fine art film photography in college, and graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts focusing on cinematography and directing. His work at Jubilee Media has garnered over 100+ million views, and his films have been featured on Vimeo Staff Picks, Short of the Week, Slamdance Film Festival and most recently the 2021 Tribeca Festival, where he premiered his documentary feature debut, Accepted, to critical acclaim. Accepted follows four high school seniors at the controversial T.M. Landry school as they grapple with college admissions, national scandal, and the pains of growing up. Dan is currently based in Los Angeles, developing new projects as he prepares to direct his first narrative feature film. (Photo by Arielle Zakowski.)
When you are accepted into a film festival, you receive a congratulatory email with a PNG, which is a transparent image file with the festival’s name surrounded by laurels.
You can now use this PNG and put it on your film’s poster, cut it into the film’s trailer, and when your peers see it, they’ll know you were selected. There’s a social currency in having the PNG. When your film happens to acquire several PNGs on its festival tour, people might say, “You’re everywhere right now!” Agents, managers and production companies, grateful for the festival’s vetting, reach out and ask you for a meeting. You hope they will get you money and opportunity. The feeling is mutual. The festival itself, which is always organized by a scrappy army of volunteers and genuine film lovers, is a humbling experience, as you bask in the glow of the big screen and the receptive audience, because outside these walls awaits an indifferent public that is spending the hours of their days scrolling through content on a smartphone. Sometimes it feels like your only contribution to that small screen is to put up a still of your latest film, hopefully with a festival PNG, and add one more notch to the narrative of You – an aspiring filmmaker, or perhaps a professional one – grateful for the opportunity, thankful to your collaborators, elated in your exhibition. Even as the industry shrinks and audiences move on, sliding that PNG into your Photoshop file can make you feel like you’re still making progress.
Until you call home.
PNGs don’t impress my dad. I mentioned to my father that my latest film, You’re Too Sensitive, a short documentary about our family which stars him, my mother and my brother, received a jury mention at the recent AFI Fest. He asked if that meant I got any money (it did not). “You have a daughter now,” he says, “you should earn an income.” It’s a mundane yet convincing argument. The entire system of awards and accolades that make up the independent film world are revealed to me as a hamster wheel for the suicidally creative. Netflix makes money. YouTube makes money. TikTok makes money. They also have audiences. Do I?
You’re Too Sensitive was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek title – something my mom says to me, sitting behind the camera, as she navigates her own emotional tailspin. But it’s absolutely, devastatingly true. My dad’s words burrow into my brain, and I attach onto them decades worth of frustration and self-recrimination. I come to the conclusion that I am a failure, and that I am solely responsible for my failure. Because it’s common storytelling wisdom that audiences favor active characters, protagonists who take action and weather the consequences. We are not only bored by passive characters, we resent them. Blaming my struggles to build a sustainable career on changing audience habits, the invasion of attention-stealing algorithms, or blockheaded executives feels like a weak excuse, and not an entertaining one either. Perhaps if I take a few steps outside of my depression tornado, I could find the whole situation quite funny. Teenage boy discovers love of film, spends the next 21 years pursuing it with single-minded focus. He grows, learns, changes, matures, endures and he would love nothing more, and nothing less ridiculous, than for his door to be knocked down by his breathless manager choking out the words, “Move your car out of the driveway! They saw your short film and they’re backing up the money truck now,” while his father cries with pride and happiness.
At least my mother seemed to like the film. When I screened it for her in my childhood home, she leaned forward, eyes fixed on this home movie made by her Emmy-nominated and underemployed adult son. “That’s real stuff,” she said. Later, when I tell her she’ll be on a 20-foot tall screen at Mann’s Chinese Theater, she bashfully jokes about being “like a movie star.” My mom is a movie star. She reminds me of screen greats like Gena Rowlands and Bette Davis, and like them, she dares to be unsympathetic, unpredictable and unfiltered. I get the sense that she argues because she simply enjoys the fight, which is both funny and tragic when I consider it was probably this quality that proved too much to bear for my rational and reserved father, who survived near starvation as a child in rural China. But he couldn’t survive her.
My mother is the protagonist of You’re Too Sensitive, because she is actively fighting for something. She’s fighting for her dignity, her sense of self-worth, which she’ll never receive from my father. She ruins what’s expected to be the bittersweet yet heartwarming graduation weekend of my younger brother. She takes that script, chews it up and spits it in our faces, because it’s built on a lie. We’re not a family anymore, not an intact one, anyhow, even though we tried to pretend for a day. I walk away with footage that I’ll pore over and splice together, considering the depth of my parents’ pain from their points of view.
Why film your family falling apart? Why edit it into a movie? Why submit it for PNGs? Why post it online? Because my mom is right: I am too sensitive. I’ve chased my feelings for so long, I’ve turned the chase into a career. I expected money for the trouble, but I’ll settle for your attention. You’re Too Sensitive is my latest film, the 69th discrete work in the portfolio of an addict. It’s about three of my favorite people in the world, who happen to be my family. I am grateful for their generosity, thankful to my beloved collaborators, and elated to debut with a rather coveted PNG. Even as the industry shrinks and audiences move on, I’ve found you.
