Director/producer/scriptwriter: Kal Ng

– Diary by: Janice Lee

1989: Architecture degree in hand, University of Oregon graduate Kal Ng moves to Toronto to join his family who recently immigrated from Hong Kong. Unable to find work in his chosen profession, Ng directs his energies elsewhere. He begins to write a film script based on an essay he wrote when he first came to Toronto about what it is like to be a foreigner in the New World.

The script, Stories of Chide the Wind – The Soul Investigator, is ‘a modern Chinese experience’ for a transcultural film that attempts to create an identity that is uniquely Chinese despite the fact that the Chinese community in Canada is undergoing a cultural transformation.

It is the story of a Chinese-Canadian ‘salary man’ who develops a wound, a physical manifestation of a spiritual sickness, that will not heal. In an attempt to cure himself, the salary man embarks on a journey that leads him to the Soul Investigator who tells him three riddles of the soul.

Spring 1991: The Racial Equity Fund gives a $10,000 production grant to Ng’s short film, to be paid in three installments. Cinematographer Derek Rogers reads about Ng’s project in a lift newsletter and thinks it is something he would like to be involved with. He contacts Ng and a partnership is formed.

Ng perfects the script.

December 1991: Principal photography begins on Stories of Chide. All the actors, friends of Ng, work gratis. Ng, too, will pick up an acting credit as Chide the Wind. Most of the filming is done on weekends; during the week, Ng is working full-time at a photo lab.

January 1992: The Canada Council’s Explorations Program commits $16,000. Ng gets the first of two $8,000 installments.

March 1992: The First Film Pilot Project, through the Ontario Arts Council, kicks in $5,000.

April 1992: Lead actor Patrick Cho is called back to Hong Kong unexpectedly and for an indefinite period of time. Rogers has to go out of town. Shooting stops.

Ng decides to redesign the story, incorporating the old footage of Cho into a longer, feature-length version of the story. Edwin Cheung comes on board as the new salary man.

Since the project is no longer considered a short, Ng is concerned that Stories of Chide will no longer be eligible for the grant from the Racial Equity Fund. Fortunately, the fund makes allowances for special circumstances.

lift grants Ng $2,000.

May 1992: Filming resumes.

December 1992: Principal photography wraps.

January 1993: Ng gets the remaining $8,000 from the Explorations Program grant. He begins shooting pickup photography.

June 1993: Ng is right in the middle of editing Stories of Chide but gives a video copy of what he has cut so far to Perspective Canada programmer Cameron Bailey anyway. Bailey comments on its length – two hours, too long – and says he would like to see the film version when it is done.

July 1993: Ng shows what he has cut to the oac. They like it – a lot – and pitch in another $30,000.

April 1994: The film is completed and Ng is out of money. Taking Bailey up on his offer, Ng screens the finished product, now 82 minutes, for Bailey, who likes what he sees and invites Stories of Chide to participate in the festival.

July 1994: The oac grants Ng $5,000 more for prints.

September 1994: Stories of Chide the Wind – The Soul Investigator has its Canadian premiere as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Perspective Canada lineup. Ng is in the midst of developing a strategy to market Stories of Chide and waits to hear back from the Ontario Film Development Corporation on a treatment he has written for E-Life and the Master of Time, a feature-length project which explores the theme of transculturalism.