American filmmaking husband and wife team Julia Morrison and James E. Duff’s debut film Hank and Asha was the toast of the indie film festival circuit in 2014. Described as “uniquely captivating” by the Los Angeles Times and “charming” and “winsome” by the New York Times, the film is an endearing intercultural romantic comedy about the burgeoning relationship between an Indian woman in Prague and a white New Yorker who communicate via video letters.
Produced through their film and video production company Paper Chain Productions, Morrison and Duff are no strangers to their craft. Morrison has produced historical documentaries for the prestigious PBS series, American Experience (Dolley Madison; Alexander Hamilton), and was an associate producer on the Emmy-award winning PBS mini-series, Benjamin Franklin. She also spent four years producing for New York Times Television. China Rises: Getting Rich, a co-production of New York Times Television, CBC, and ZDF, received the Canada’s Gemini award.
Her husband Duff has over ten years experience of directing film and theatre. His shorts have been screened in over 40 festivals around the world. His first documentary, The Cycle Also Rises, was broadcast on PBS. James spent two years in West Africa directing development and human rights documentaries and has instructed filmmaking in Kenya and to Saharan refugees. Both also teach at Prague Film School – Morrison in documentary production and Duff directing.
With numerous best feature and audience awards under their belt for Hank and Asha, Morrison and Duff are now working on their second film. They tell Joy Francis about the challenges of getting a film made and seen, why their collaboration works and what made them create a film with an Indian female lead.
You run your own production company, Paper Chain Productions. What made you decide to work together and what is the division of creative labour?
James: We have similar concerns about life, art and taste. I’m a director and Julia came from the producing side which helps with the division of labour. We are both writers so we co-wrote and co-produced Hank and Asha. Julia is an editor as well, so it has worked out really well as there is no real competitiveness between us as she doesn’t want to direct, and I don’t want to edit.
Julia: The name of the company was actually inspired by our wedding. We decorated the venue for our wedding with paper chains. Shortly after we got married we decided to embark on our first collaborative project together, so it all came together organically. There are things that we do together and things that we do separately. We are a good team.
You both teach film. How do you juggle teaching and filmmaking?
James: Life is about trying to get the right balance. I find it very inspiring in that you can’t direct everyday but you can teach every day. We are more productive when we have less time. We shot the film during a three week teaching break.
Julia: It is the same for me. One of the things I remember when we were editing is that we had been struggling with some structural question at the same time we were teaching structure in class. Our teaching benefits from the work we are doing and making a film benefits from the teaching.
Hank and Asha is a charming, unconventional love story featuring an intercultural relationship across different countries via video letters. What made you decide to make this your first feature?
James: We were in Prague teaching film and we were feeling lonely and isolated. We both thought about the times in our lives when we were overseas and felt like this and how we connected with people by writing letters. A friend said he courted his now wife through video letters and he would address her via the camera as if she was there. We thought this would be a cool idea for a film.
Star crossed lovers: Mahira Kakkar (Asha) and Andrew Pastides (Hank).
Julia: Looking back on the filmmaking process we realised how the experiences in the film resonated with us. We both spent time abroad in our early 20s: I lived in Japan and James lived in Senegal. We had the experience of being abroad, being lonely and trying to navigate a different culture. We connected with Asha in that way, and with Hank as we moved to NYC where there are eight million people. It is easy to feel isolated there.
The film is very character driven. To have two believable characters required solid casting. Thankfully Mahira Kakkar and Andrew Pastides are both fabulous in the film. Was it difficult to cast?
James: We worked with a great casting director who Julia had contact with. When he agreed to take us on it was the green light for us to go ahead with the project. As a casting director he knew all the up and coming actors which made our job easier. As a former theatre director myself, I was looking for actors who could improvise. Mahira was the first Indian actor invited into Juilliard Drama School. We did our auditions largely through improvisation as that was our approach to the film. When Mahira walked in she was nothing like Asha, but once the tape rolled, she just clicked. Andrew is a great storyteller and knocked our socks off with his improv.
Julia: We wanted the mood of this production to be collaborative and needed actors who were great storytellers. With Asha we wanted someone who had a deep personal understanding of that character and could fill in the blanks that we didn’t have as much insight into. When we met the two actors during the auditions we knew we could collaborate with them.
Mahira and Andrew didn’t meet at all during the filming, I believe, yet they somehow manage to convince us they were falling in love, long distance, via video messages. James, how did you direct them to infuse staring at a screen with such emotionality?
James: No, they never met. Each scene was a separate video letter. As a director it is about empathy and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Every time you write a letter to someone, you have an objective you want that letter to accomplish emotionally, and you project that onto the other person, in terms of what you want them to feel when they read the letter. We didn’t really rehearse as we wanted it to be awkward for them like meeting for the first time. They had to feel comfortable with me and the camerawoman as we were a small crew.
Julia: When you are casting for a typical romantic film you would do a screen test for chemistry. We didn’t do that because they weren’t spending any time on screen with each other. It was more about if they had chemistry with us, the crew. We all needed to have chemistry, including the camerawoman Bianca Butti.
The film touches on cultural differences and challenges, including arranged marriages and racism, with Asha feeling isolated as an Asian woman studying film in Prague. What were your concerns about making it authentic to both an Asian and non-Asian audience?
Julia: We wanted the film to represent the truth of that character as best we could. Some of the inspiration for the Asha character came from a few of our students, and the experiences they shared with us. Also a lot of the input for the specificity of that character came from working with Mahira. It is also important to say that we didn’t have an agenda. There wasn’t any particular point we were trying to make about Hank and Asha’s cultural differences other than wanting to explore it and to do our best to get it right.
What is happening with the film now? Is it still doing the festival circuit?
Julia: We are very grateful that we have toured with the film on the festival circuit for two years. In the spring of 2014 the film was theatrically release in the US and is now available on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Fandor, DVD and other online platforms. It is difficult for a film on this scale to reach a mass audience with unknown movie stars. We are grateful for the outcome that we have had with the film given the micro size of the production.
Hank and Asha garnered numerous awards on the festival circuit.
What next for you both?
Julia: We are working on the script for our next film. That’s all we can we say about it at this stage. It’s thematically similar to Hank and Asha but is very different. We are hoping to shoot it this summer.
Any advice for budding filmmakers?
James: Persistence pays, people drop like flies. And if you aren’t passionate about the project, it will be too hard.
Julia: Make the movie you would want to see. It is a challenging environment, but anyone can make a movie and there is an audience out there for everything. Make work that is authentic to who you are and make the kind of work you are passionate about, rather than making a film somebody else wants.
Website: www.hankandasha.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hankandasha
Twitter: @HankandAsha