| netribution > features > interview with shane o'sullivan > page one |  | | iShane O'Sullivan has written, directed, produced and distributed a feature film entirely off his own back. "Crazy talk!" I hear you all cry. Well its true, sorry. Second Generation was shot on digital for £27,000, it stars Japanese pop star, Hanayo and a supporting role is played marvellously by the inimitable Asian screen icon, Saeed Jaffrey. Shane, what's it all about? "The story follows a young Japanese detective GO in his search for LILI, a Chinese girl who runs away from an arranged marriage in Hong Kong and comes to London in search of rock-idol Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream." Thanks Shane.
ps - Shane managed to get this shown for a whole week at the ABC in Piccadilly from Friday the 17th November, we believe this is the first independent, digital film to do this, a fine lesson to you all. Contact details for this tireless enigma follow the interview. | | | 
| | by tom fogg |
| photos from the film|
| in london | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What's your film background?
I began film-making when I arrived in London five years ago after two years teaching in Japan. I'd written and directed plays at college and decided film was the best medium for my ideas. So I did a one-year 16mm Practical course, made a short and a 52-minute drama, 'A to Zen', which played the Edinburgh NBX in 1997.
What was the genesis of Second Generation?
I wrote the script three years ago when I'd just moved to the East End. It was optioned and developed by an established producer but a proper budget never materialised. In April, 1999, I set out to raise a small shooting budget from private investors. Three people put in £25,000 between them, a post-production house gave us £15,000 of editing time and we were off. We shot for three weeks that August.
Pitch it to us.
A young Japanese detective sets out to find a missing Chinese girl among the Bangladeshi curry-houses of Brick Lane.
This is your directorial debut but you also wrote and produced the film, would you ever recommend that control/workload strategy to another debutante?
At this budget-level, there's usually no option. It's difficult to keep focussed with so many hats on but I think it can unify the cast and crew in a strange way.
What's the Far Eastern cultural connection?
I taught English in Japan for a couple of years before coming to London and I'm now settled here and married to a Japanese. My friends here tend to be immigrants too...Irish, Chinese, Japanese, whatever...So I tend to write about that multicultural world. Also, my favourite filmmakers are Asian (Wong Kar-Wai, Kitano) or have an Asian sensibility (Jim Jarmusch)
How popular is Hanayo in Japan and had she ever acted before?
Hanayo's very well-known on the underground scene. She had a mainstream pop career, trained to be a geisha, fronted a punk band and now tours her photographs and caterwauls on German techno. So she's a pop-star in the widest sense of the term. She'd done a bit of anarchist theatre in Berlin but not film. She's very unpredictable on camera. I hope we captured some of that magic. | | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
