Girl, Interpreted - Joys and Pain of Bilingualism
A beautiful article by Shu-ling Chua interviewing writer/director Grace Feng of Girl, Interpreted.
“Girl, Interpreted was inspired by Feng’s own experiences. She grew up in Guangdong, China, and moved to Melbourne in 2006 to study film and television production at RMIT University. After graduating, she worked as a Mandarin and Cantonese interpreter. While she felt frustratingly removed from the screen industry, the experience provided her with a wealth of material – “lots of confrontation, cultural clashes, misunderstandings, and sometimes experiencing racism firsthand”.
When Feng started writing Girl, Interpreted, she envisioned a TV series about a group of interpreters. “Lillian has an Indonesian interpreter friend and they hang out, talking crap about agencies and complaining about their customers,” she laughs. “Like Seinfeld.” Over time, this was pared back to focus on Lillian, with each five-minute episode focusing on a different assignment. After years of patiently revising the screenplay, Feng decided to take the project more seriously. “What kept me going was a tiny, vague flame, saying: ‘You do have a voice. You do have a story to tell…”