A WOK-IN-PROGRESS

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The third in a trilogy of personal documentaries that explore the culinary/cultural experience, A WOK-IN-PROGRESS follows Paul Kwan, a Chinese filmmaker and gourmand who immigrated to the United States from Vietnam, as he explores his twin passions - food and film. Kwan has become a familiar character through his previous works with collaborator Arnold Iger, ANATOMY OF A SPRINGROLL (ITVS, 1994) and PINS AND NOODLES (1997). Kwan and Iger's unusual recipe of storytelling mixes documentary verité, animation, puppetry and theatrical performance. In these works, festival-goers and public television viewers experience a world that is equally particular to Asian Americans and universal to immigrants from around the globe.

In ANATOMY OF A SPRINGROLL we meet Paul and follow him to Vietnam, his childhood homeland, where his pursuit of a family recipe leads him on a search for culture and identity. In PINS AND NOODLES, Paul's quest takes a new turn as he travels to Hong Kong and Taiwan, this time to unlock the secrets of food as medicine. A WOK-IN-PROGRESS brings the trilogy home to America, where Paul turns to food for its lessons about history and memory, while his sister Diana looks at cooking as a key to economic survival in her newly adoptive country.

Paul and his sister form the story's central relationship, which draws upon the double metaphor of food and film as expressions of cultural memory to discover a link between traditions of Asia to present-day Asian Americans - and, ultimately, to the wider American culture.

Paul, an established immigrant, left Vietnam for the United States 25 years ago. Not a native English speaker, he struggled in the early years to make himself understood in his new home until he gained proficiency in English. As the story opens, Paul is recovering from a debilitating stroke, which has affected his memory and speech, and paralyzed his right hand so that, among other things, he must relearn how to use a wok (a large bowl-shaped pan used in cooking Chinese food). For Paul, food offers a language of recovery: through food he can communicate and start "the making of a new self."

Diana, recently widowed, has just arrived from Hong Kong. Needing to carve out a livelihood, she is determined to start a business that makes and markets a chili sauce based on a family recipe. Hers is a familiar American story - like many immigrants with limited language and marketable skills, Diana hopes to convert the resources of family labor (Paul) and traditional recipes into economic opportunity. For Diana, food is not only a bond with her past, but a commodity upon which rests her hopes for future financial independence.

In A WOK-IN-PROGRESS, the ubiquitous Chinese frying pan becomes a symbolic vessel that carries personal and cultural memories of immigrants from their ethnic origins to a new land. It also serves as a crucible where, through the alchemy of cooking, cultures meet and mix to create new hybrids. The title refers to the process by which Paul and Diana attempt to rebuild their lives - and to its video documentation. Along the way, all of the story's characters contribute to the ongoing work of creating the new cultural forms of a multicultural society.