Independent Lens
Try Harder!
At a prestigious public high school with a majority Asian American student body, high achieving seniors share the dream, and the stress, of getting into a top university.
Seeking Asian Female
An American man and a Chinese woman pursue a marriage brokered by the internet when she moves across the Pacific to start a new life with him.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- May 6, 2013
- Length
- 90 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Open Call
Producer/Director
Debbie Lum
Debbie Lum explored cultural stereotypes in My Tiger Mom and Seeking Asian Female. She made two short docs for Wayne Wang about his films Chan Is Missing and Dim Sum, co-produced and edited Kelly Loves Tony (PBS's POV), and edited To You Sweetheart, Aloha and the Emmy-winning a.k.a. Don Bonus (POV). Lum wrote and directed fictional films Chinese Beauty, A Great Deal! and One April Morning.
- Other ITVS Films
- My Tiger Mom
- Try Harder!
Co-Producer
Ali Sargent
Ali Sargent relocated to San Francisco after over eight years of making documentaries based out of New York City and Vermont. As a director and field producer, Ali has driven across the country, filmed in emergency rooms, lived in a trailer on a circus lot, and interviewed young gang members in Detroit. She field produced Circus, the six-part verité series… Show more
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The Film
Seeking Asian Female follows the surprising romance of Steven and Sandy — an aging white man obsessed with marrying any Asian woman and the young Chinese bride he finds on the internet. Debbie, a Chinese American filmmaker, documents and narrates with healthy doses of humor and reflection, from the early stages of Steven’s search for an Asian bride, through the moment Sandy sets foot in America for the first time, to a year into their precarious union. Global migration, Chinese-American relations and the perennial battle of the sexes, weigh in on the fate of marriage in this eccentric love story.
