This was the unveiling of our documentary The Foodist Monk: Sichuan in Chengdu to the international community. The jurors of this competition for the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival were Jennifer Chen, VP of Acquisitions and Programming, Channel Zero; Michael Fukushima, EP, English Program Animation Studio, NFB; Stephen Gong, Executive Director of Center for Asian American Media.
This festival is one of the foremost Asian Film festivals on the continent. And what an honour to be selected as a finalist. Through weeks of preparation, this was the big time. And we pitched our hearts out. It was well received, and many commented on how we were able to make them hungry with our imagery.
And as we waited with bated breath at Toronto’s Momofuku Shoto restaurant, we mingled with the other filmmakers and film festival elite. Now that we had pitched, we were ready to be festival goers.
In the end, we weren’t awarded the prize. But the exploration process that we have gone through is immeasurable. We have honed our focus on this documentary and anticipate future successes as we celebrate our new exposure to the world stage.
And of course we were able to partake in the most important part of this afternoon – the food…
Namaste
the foodist monk 