I first got to know John Paul “JP” Su’s work when watching short films from KQED Film School. His short film Pagpag (The Refuse) is one of the most powerful and moving stories I have seen on film, it is incredible what it managed to achieve in just 15 minutes (read about it here). JP’s first feature film TOTO premiered last year and I personally can’t wait to see it.
We asked Paul to share his top Asian films and here are his answers:
Not One Less (Yimou Zhang, 1999)
Raise the Red Lantern (Yimou Zhang, 1991)
Ju Duo (Yimou Zhang, 1990)
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee. 2000)
Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976)
The Man In Her Life (Carlos Siguion-Reyna, 1997)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi, 1997)
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
About John Paul “JP” Su
John Paul “JP” Su is an award-winning Filipino-Chinese-American filmmaker. Born and raised in the Philippines, he moved to the US in 2003 and worked with major media organizations around the world, including BBC World and Google. He is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, having received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film and Television. He won the Directors Guild of America’s Best Asian-American Student Filmmaker Award for his short Pagpag (The Refuse), which is now airing on PBS and its affiliate stations. Pagpag has won awards at festivals worldwide. The Philippine Government bestowed JP the Harvest of Honor Award and named him one of the Outstanding Filipino Artists in the field of Cinema for 2013. JP is currently one of the twelve directors selected to participate in the 2014-2016 Disney/ABC-DGA Directing Program. Toto is his first feature-length film. At the 2015 Metro Manila Film Festival in December, Toto won four awards — including Special Jury Prize and Best Director.
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