Greater Philadelphia Film Office

BEAUTIFUL STORIES – Short Film Series Casting Call

Looking for Korean Talent – and more.
Must speak Korean fluently where indicated – and can perform period-specific and regional accents.

Producer: Erica Cho, Ted Passon (All Ages Productions)
Director: Erica Cho
Writer: Erica Cho
Cinematographer: Yoni Brook (Menashe, Valley of Saints)

When: Start Date – December 2019 and/or March 2020
Where: Philadelphia

Erica Cho is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Cho’s experimental film and animation projects have screened at film festivals and museums worldwide. Their most recent film Golden Golden was a Golden Reel Award nominee at the Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival. In 2018-19, they won a Hellman Foundation Fellowship Award to write and direct Beautiful Stories – a series of narrative short films inspired by South Korean nurse emigration to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

LEAD ACTORS

[SHIN-JA PARK] (24-35, Female, Korean) **MUST SPEAK/READ KOREAN FLUENTLY
Serious, sorrowful, and beautiful. Shin-ja is a young nurse who has migrated on her own from South Korea to the United States. She’s left her family, friends, lover – her whole world behind. Across the three episodes, she moves from living in a nurse dormitory in Philly to married life in the suburbs. A sense of loss pervades across the years, even as a young person. She could have been a doctor; she could have been a writer; she could have had another life…

[RAE-MIN PARK] (3-4, Female Child, Korean/Asian)
Shin-ja’s first-born. Precocious. She takes care of herself. She wears androgynous clothing – not quite girl, not quite boy.

SUPPORTING ACTORS

[NANI] (24-34, Female, Korean) **MUST SPEAK/READ KOREAN FLUENTLY
Pretty, garrulous, flirty. Punchy humor. Nani, like her friend Shin-ja, is a young immigrant nurse. She has a goal to succeed in the US but wants to look cute while doing it. She doesn’t come from much money, but it doesn’t stop her. She’ll go down fighting if she has to — and no one, not even her best friend, will drag her down.

[BYONG PARK] (30s) **MUST SPEAK/READ KOREAN FLUENTLY
A young, resident doctor and Shin-ja’s husband. Out in the world, a really nice guy. A kind doctor with a friendly face, who smiles often. At home, another story. Mounting bills. Lack of sleep. Haunted by the memories of war. The hours and stress at work are killing him. Nothing seems to be working.

[LORRAINE] (30s, Female, Black/African American)
A playwright. Black and femme, with an androgynous, intelligent face – a potent mix of strength and vulnerability. Had Lorraine Hansberry lived to the late sixties – would she have looked like our Lorraine?

[THALMA] (30s-40s, Female, Black)
A musician. A singer. Tall, with a chin-up posture, she commands the room. All eyes on Thalma, always.

SUPPORTING ACTORS (CONT’D)

[ZEKE] (30s-40s, Male, Black/African American)
Writer and intellectual. Playful, gay, witty… Super fuckin’ sharp and therefore sexy.

[DOROTHY] (50s, Female, White American)
A chip on her shoulder. Her resentment of immigrants comes from deep-seated self-loathing.

BACKGROUND ACTORS WITH DIALOGUE

[WHITE DORM SUPERVISOR] (40s, Female, White American)

[FILIPINX NURSE] (20s, Female, Filipinx)

THE PROJECT
Beautiful Stories is comprised of three short films (NURSE, I LOVE YOU, and LABOR DAY RETREAT). Each impressionistic, historical vignette is a standalone film; together they comprise a series about the intimate, inter-generational struggles of Korean American experience as impacted by war and militarism, global diaspora, and cross-racial solidarities in the late-Civil Rights movement. The project also highlights an overlooked chapter of international labor history: the influx of Asian medical nurses and doctors into the US workforce in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of census-changing immigration legislation. ***Finalist for the 2018 Barbara Hammer Award and Recipient of the 2018-19 Hellman Foundation Fellowship****

***Please Add Email Subject Heading: Beautiful Stories Casting Call – Name of Role***
Contact Attn: Casting Director
Contact Email: beautifulstoriesfilm@gmail.com