The Grace Lee Project

Growing up in Missouri, Grace Lee developed a strong sense of her uniqueness. There weren't many Asians, particularly Koreans, in her town and that was reflected in a comparable absence of media images.

Lee eventually wound up studying film at UCLA and work took her to San Francisco and New York where she wasn't so much in the minority. In fact, she began to meet people who grew up with, went to school or had a neighbor named Grace Lee. It developed into a bizarre running gag. It was as if destiny or another unseen force had decreed that anyone sharing her name was nice, studious and played the violin.

"It was a little strange that people seemed to be describing the same person," she says. "But despite the fact that all these people were well liked, no one seemed to know what happened to them. It was as if they existed for a short period of time and then disappeared. I started to fantasize about them and spin these strange scenarios in my head. But it was more amusement than obsession. I was curious about what we shared and what made us different."

In 2002 she directed the fiction short Barrier Device that starred Sandra Oh. The acclaim and attention it received opened a lot of doors and opportunities. And whenever one of her projects got bogged down in the development process she would joke that she was going to go off and do a film about all those Grace Lees she had heard about rather than wait around for financing or casting.

In fact, she had kicked around that idea as far back as 2000. But the diminutive filmmaker seemed to regard it as a slim gag without much to sustain more than a vignette. The very prospect of such a personal documentary seemed narcissistic to a degree that filled her with dread.

"It just wouldn't go away. The idea haunted me and when you have this kernel of an idea in your mind that long, you start to see it develop in a lot of different ways," she observes. "I thought this is about identity. Who am I and who are all these people that share the same name? They can't all be brilliant and forgettable. Some of them have got to be losers."

She credits Grace Lee Boggs; an Asian activist working in the African American community as the person that finally inspired her to make The Grace Lee Project. She began combing through telephone directories and putting out searches on the Internet. It didn't take long for her namesakes to make their presence felt. She'd go out on weekends and film one of the numerous Grace Lees and the process went on for more than a year while she balanced it with work for hire.

Though she interviewed a Mexican American Grace Lee, eventually she chose to focus exclusively on Asians. Several dozen are featured in the film and while they resemble the stereotype on the surface, digging just a little bit uncovered their individuality.

While the process of making and shaping the film obviously provided the filmmaker with some answers and an entertaining and informative film, it wasn't exactly a cathartic experience.

"I think I can move on," she says with a laugh. "This is something that can be discussed endlessly. There was a point where I realized I'd taken it as far as I could and that's when I decided to stop. I knew this had to be told with humor or the points would never come across and if someone wants to pick it up from there I feel the film succeeded."

- by Leonard Klady