Lee Isaac Chung Quotes

Lee Isaac Chung

Profession : Director

Birth : October 19, 1978

I was a little bit anti-industry, anti-Hollywood.

Lee Isaac Chung

But for me, at one point I was like, 'Why do I want to make films that people want to walk out of?' What if I actually want people to engage and have a good time?

Lee Isaac Chung

It's always about agency - that's the goal, always, to give agency to people. I think that's always got to be the priority.

Lee Isaac Chung

I felt like I was growing up with two different churches, in a sense. And that's always stayed with me - not just the religion of it - but the day-to-day understanding that these beliefs, that faith itself, is something that I need as something to sustain me.

Lee Isaac Chung

'Minari' was only eligible for the best foreign language film category due to the HFPA rules on language, so the film was submitted to meet these rules; there was no choice involved in the matter.

Lee Isaac Chung

Part of the fabric of America is that we have people from different countries who've come here and they are American, and yet they embrace their home ancestral culture. And this is their new home. And that's part of what makes this country unique in the history of human beings on this earth.

Lee Isaac Chung

Any time there is a film in a 'foreign language,' in Spanish or Korean or whatever language, it's usually not an American film. It's usually from another country.

Lee Isaac Chung

I remember when I told my parents that I wanted to be a filmmaker, and no longer was I planning to be a doctor, one of the first things my mom said to my dad was: 'This is your fault. You watched too many movies.'

Lee Isaac Chung

There are a lot of Korean films that will show marital strife, but I'm not sure I've seen so many that will show it in the interest of showing a real marriage - one that ultimately succeeds.

Lee Isaac Chung

I didn't grow up breathing cinema. I had to figure it all out in public.

Lee Isaac Chung

I took time off and realized that what I was lacking was the discipline in trying to write a script.

Lee Isaac Chung

I had to stop taking myself and the craft that seriously. Somehow I saw the bigger context of life. It's just a movie. What I wanted was to entertain and delight and put the audience on a nice ride.

Lee Isaac Chung

Even my parents felt like, 'My son finally made it working with Youn Yuh-jung.'

Lee Isaac Chung

I grew up watching films of predominantly white families speaking in English, and that this represented the American experience.

Lee Isaac Chung

I went to Rwanda with my wife who had been going for the past three summers. She is an art therapist who works with survivors of the genocide. I decided to become a volunteer also, and to teach filmmaking. But thinking about how to approach a class, it made sense to start making a movie there, with the kids.

Lee Isaac Chung

We grew up in rural Arkansas without any Koreans close by, and when I go to Korea feel out of place.

Lee Isaac Chung

The single most eye-opening experience for me and what propelled me to become a filmmaker was that I started to see films from other countries.

Lee Isaac Chung

Growing up, the question of faith and the question of God, specifically with Christianity, has been something that's informed me quite a lot, but it's also very loaded. The way that it's often expressed in America is very different from the way that I view things.

Lee Isaac Chung

Most of my friends were white. I grew up really the only minority in my school, along with my sister.

Lee Isaac Chung