A review copied from IMDb.
What is the "Hollywood Dream"? Is it different for a person that was born under the assumption that we know exactly what this phrase means and a student that knows the American culture only through learning and marginal experience? How does trying to discover this impossible idea change who we are as people? Who we are as a not individuals, but groups with different cultural identities? This is the most basic concept behind "Drifting in Los Angeles", a documentary by Zhāo Lewis Liú, as it examines the lives of several Chinese students attending film school in Los Angeles, California.
Money, equality, social opinion, and happiness are among a few of the subjects touched upon in this film, as well as techniques and tools of the trade that shape every young film major into what they hope to become. For me, one of the most interesting arcs of the film is the general idea of how they're experience in America has impacted these students in the way in which they not only view the film industry, but how they view themselves. Some of the students interviewed straightforwardly admitted to wanting to go back to China instead of trying to stay and try to work in America. Here, not only do some of the students feel that they are discriminated against, but they feel as though the film industry is pushing towards taught conformity and ideals, only the truly great able and willing to stand out and go against the grain. As an American, I had not thought of this before. Is what we consider the film industry merely a byproduct of what a few intellectuals want us to believe? These experiences have become a time in these students lives in which they find pieces of themselves in how others react and respond to them in a different culture.
But, by far, the thing that interested me the most was that this film did not merely reflect upon how these students feel that they are outcasts, but the near epiphany of the director that most of the students he spoke to felt hindered, handicapped, in the American society because of where they came from and how others treat them for this. Throughout the film there are splices of works from the students interviewed, powerful and beautiful original pieces of film that reflect this differential treatment and the impact it has on these students. As the director himself so aptly puts: " (the short films of the students) all featured a character with a disability or severe illness. This shared theme reveals their collective experience of being a Chinese in America, an alien ethnic minority excluded from the mainstream." Thoughtful and interesting, I enjoyed this short film. As a lover of both American and International films, after watching "Drifting in Los Angeles" I cannot help but to wonder what the concept of "Hollywood" has made on foreign film workers. Is it just an idea that they are reflecting upon when they try to reproduce our iconic images, or are they reflecting upon their own personal experiences here in America and how it has changed their beliefs of what "Hollywood" and cinema, beneath the stars and glittering lights, truly is?
