Johnny Ma
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Parting Shot: Johnny Ma
“I didn’t want to make a poverty porn,” says Shanghai-born, Vancouver-residing filmmaker Johnny Ma about his first feature, Old Stone, released this fall by Zeitgeist. “I felt if I can’t bring myself to really understand what it is like to live in this town and environment, then I don’t deserve to make this film.” That extra degree of empathy and social insight was especially needed for Old Stone, which thrusts viewers into a contemporary China where motorists are faced with a stunning dilemma. Drivers who strike pedestrians are forced to shoulder these pedestrians’ related lifetime medical expenses. If the pedestrian […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Johnny Ma at the Sundance Directors Lab, Part 2
[Johnny Ma’s first blog post can be found here.] The day after the Sundance Labs ended, a group of fellows, advisers, and Sundance staff all walked off the plane together at LAX. Instinctively, we kept close to each other as we edged toward baggage claim, as if trying to stay together a little longer before the real world pulled us apart. It felt strangely like reaching land after using sea legs for so long, but the big discovery being that the sea is actually our natural habitat. Walking through the airport, we couldn’t help but look around at the faces […]
by Johnny Ma on Jul 3, 2014 -
Johnny Ma at the Sundance Directors Lab
It’s Sunday morning, a rare day off during the Sundance Directors Lab to sleep in. Yet once again as the sunlight fills my room at the crack of dawn, I’m wide awake and my mind is ready to go. Back home, whether it is LA, NY, or Shanghai, I am rarely up before 10 am unless it’s a shoot day or I have to meet someone in the real world. However, up here on the mountain, I found a version of myself that didn’t need to check my emails and Facebook or keep up with the latest Buzzfeed post to […]
by Johnny Ma on Jun 18, 2014
