Top 6 Quotes & Sayings by Jennifer Phang

Explore popular quotes and sayings by Jennifer Phang.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Jennifer Phang

Jennifer Phang is an American filmmaker, most known for her feature films Advantageous (2015) and Half-Life (2008). Advantageous premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, and was based on her award-winning short film of the same name. Half-Life premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won "Best Film" awards at a number of film festivals including the Gen Art Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as well an "Emerging Director Award" at the Asian American International Film Festival.

I love films that test cynicism and inspire you to do better in your dealings with your family and with strangers. — © Jennifer Phang
I love films that test cynicism and inspire you to do better in your dealings with your family and with strangers.
When you have your chance to make a film, don't focus on pleasing everyone. I think the goal is to live in that sweet spot where you focus on making a good film and you have fun with your collaborators, but you don't waste your energy chasing approval every which way. When you have a vision and a good story and you've managed to raise funding, it is your approval as a director that everyone should be seeking. It's very simple.
I am committed to creating a vision of the world that reflects how I believe it is: diverse. It is not an effort to diversify media representation, but rather, it comes out of the world I have grown up in.
The reason I'm interested in alternative worlds and near-future settings is that it allows us to look at our own limitations in our worldviews. These settings allow me to explore how our world might evolve if we allow individualistic kinds of success to remain our primary value. I'm not trying to be overly bleak, and I don't feel bleak or sad about our world. I want empowered and educated people who understand a lot about the world's challenges to strive to be noble, rather than cynical. I think we still need more champions out there.
Women can be pressured to be perfect in many ways. And in our efforts to be "responsible" in every way, you might lose time and energy. If you truly want to direct [a film], you may have to let go of pleasing everyone on a consistent basis.
Female directors really do need to support each other. Too many times I've been led to believe that my direct competition was other women, as if there can be only a handful of successful female filmmakers a year. That conversation, that perception, needs to change. Women are the people who have helped me make films I love, and I want to be that kind of strength to other women.
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