VMA Prof’s New Film, ‘Red Card’ Coming to Criterion

Visual & Media Arts Associate Professor Ougie Pak new drama, Red Card, is part of a three-film package of his that will be streaming on the Criterian Channel starting June 1.

The Criterion Channel, a competitor of Netflix and Hulu, focuses on arthouse, foreign, and classic films.

Pak spoke to Emerson Today about the movie, inspired by a true story, and how his experiences as an indie filmmaker make him a better professor.

Red Card recently reached a distribution offer from the Criterion Channel. What was that process like?

Pak: When I had my last film, Clytaemnestra, released by Mubi, I had been in talks with Criterion. They said they would like a couple of films to package together. I told them about [Red Card]. They said, ‘We’ll buy all three.’ I’m very grateful and honored to have all three (including Sunrise/Sunset) on Criterion.

How will going through the process of navigating a distribution deal help you as an educator?

Pak: I’ve been kind of lucky, and haven’t had to find a distributor. There’s a community of all art house film companies in New York, and I’m on the radar of certain programmers. I’ve been very fortunate [in that] I don’t need to shop around for distribution. Some distributors just take your content and [don’t promote it well]. [Criterion and Mubi] care about your release. That is a huge benefit just to be distributed by Mubi and Criterion.

My analogy is that I can’t really be teaching filmmaking and not be in the ring myself. I can’t get … lazy, I will always be working harder than anyone. I’m always going to be making stuff to the day I die. I know the process, the landscape of being an indie filmmaker, and I’m not talking about stuff I did 20 years go. …I say to all my students, ‘I’m you, I’m just older.’

How do you make films with small budgets?

Pak: Red Card was my first movie [for which] I got outside investors. My others have been financed by Emerson or self-financed.

Do you talk about budgeting with students?

Pak: I have a class I developed about making the micro budget feature film. It’s the culmination of 10 years of my learning in practice. How can you practice the most expensive art form in the world, but do it using minimal resources and whatever you have at hand? That class started two years ago.

Why is it called Red Card?

Pak: Red Card is a word in Mandarin. This whole film is inspired by the life of the lead actor, Kev Tai. I was working on another project in LA, and I met this actor who came to me, ‘Bro, you’re Ougie from New York. I got stories, I got stories, bro.’ We started talking … and he had this crazy life when he was younger. He was involved in all these things in Southern California. He worked at an Asian hostess bar, with women from Taiwan. It’s a drinking establishment for older business men. He fell in love with one of the women, and they called her the red card. It’s a generic term – the top girl.

What do you like about the movie?

Pak: There’s a lot I like about the movie, especially because the movie was made with a low budget. I think I always look at my movies and see a lot of limitations of them; things you can’t do storytelling-wise, camera-wise, and for what I have to work with, I’m very proud of this movie, and every movie I’ve made.

Red Card was completed with support from Emerson College’s School of the Arts, the Provost’s Office, and the Faculty Advancement Fund Grant. How has working at Emerson impacted your filmmaking?

Pak: I would say I literally couldn’t have made all three movies going on Criterion without Emerson. They were all made with made from grant money from Emerson. They also supported me with equipment. I’m so grateful for all the help that Emerson provided.

What else would you like people to know about yourself, Red Card, your work at Emerson?

Pak: I’m very grateful to have this life. When I was graduating grad school a little more than 10 years ago, I just wanted a sustainable life as a filmmaker. You never know if you’re going to get to make movies. These are movies that shouldn’t exist. They’re not the movies you can develop. No stars are in them. [When you have a very low budget] you look at what you have — a fridge, a pot.

The good thing about that is that you’re never waiting. Filmmaking will drive you crazy. It’s been democratized enough that if you want to do it bad enough, anyone can make film. You don’t need a lot of money to make films, some of it is the sheer force of will.

What advice do you have for Emerson students looking to make their films?

Pak: There are some students who want to work in TV or a writers’ room, or be an industry sound person. That’s a career path.

Some just want to be filmmakers and directors. It’s like saying, ‘I want to be a singer-songwriter, I want to be an artist.’ Those are the people that need their number one thing is to be a sheer force of will, an unstoppable force of nature. Life is hard as an artist. It’s not like you wake up and become a filmmaker. Every day, you’ve got to train like a black belt in jujitsu.