Bowling Bao is a film about women taking up space in sports, just because they can.
Set in the late 80’s in Chinatown, Vancouver Canada, one smoke-filled and lively bowling alley in Vancouver became the weekly meet up spot for the enclave of Asian immigrants. We meet Mei, a newly immigrated young woman from Shenzhen, China, whom is surprisingly really good at the sport–not to mention also really competitive. After ruffling some feathers she compulsively enters her and her friend, Grace to a match against Brian, an English speaking Hong Kong expat, and his friend.
Will Mei be able to push Grace into victory or will she end up losing more than just the bowling match?
Bowling Bao recently won Gold in 2023 at the Young Director Award in the Dreampitch: Short Film category. The film is partnering up with screenwriter, Tiffany Shaw Ho, whom has worked on DEBRIS and THE NIGHT AGENT. She was also apart of the Verge program and the CAPE New Writers Fellowship.
This project is inspired by old photographs of my parents when they were new immigrants to Vancouver in the 80’s. This project is a way to connect with my family and dive into understanding what it was really like to move to a whole new country with nothing but the promise of a “better future”.
Before I was born, my dad would routinely go bowling with a group of his friends. They had their own bowling balls and corresponding bags for those balls–the whole set up. I’ve always romanticized a life for him and my mom where their responsibilities as young parents and new business owners didn’t catch up to them.
This film is also about friendship and community. Being obsessed with long distance running myself, I understand how it feels to fall in love with a sport that renders you an outlier because you’re a female, you’re an ethnic minority, or you’re straight-up just not that good. Finding a community of like-minded outliers has only made me love my sport even more and want to make it more inclusive for the next generation.