Having recently returned from Hawaii where she tried to find time to relax between taking conference calls in the middle of rain forests, independent film producer Karin Chien hesitantly admits that she has a lot going on. With various film projects in different stages of development and distribution, she’s busy enough as it is. Her plate is full as she maintains a producer’s schedule, as well as a post as guest curator at the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) and a series of projects under that title. It is understandable why relaxing in exotic locales doesn’t come particularly easy for her.

Having put herself through Berkeley, the now 32-year-old L.A. native needed to make some money. “I was an English major with no business sense,” she says with a grin. So she started working in a mortgage startup where she “really got thrown into the fire, running the business.” In no time, the business became quite successful and she moved to New York to help open their Wall Street office. Chien then did what any randomly successful English major would do in the same situation. She left the position, became an intern for a small film, and began pushing a broom on sets. “After all,” she says, “I came to New York because I wanted to make movies but I didn’t want to go back to L.A.” She quickly moved up the ranks, next becoming a production accountant, putting to use the fresh experience she had from working in business and later worked as a crew member and as a union production coordinator.

Upon amassing these experiences, she began working on Robot Stories, her first feature as a producer, in 2001. She’s made 5 films since, including The Motel, a movie about an awkward and unsure Chinese tween who works at his parents’ sleazy motel, in 2006. On the horizon, she has one film, Undoing, a gangster-centric neo-noir directed by Chris Chan Lee, coming out early next year. Another film, Jack and Diane, a minimal epic about two lesbians, an all-night kissfest, and werewolves, starring Hard Candy and Juno’s ever-charming Ellen Page, is scheduled for production next year.

Her voice, Chien claims, is finally finding its way into her films. “In terms of Jack and Diane, I like working on films that approach women and take risks narratively and visually. I like films that have something to say about humanity.” She also keeps herself busy acting as curating producer at MoCA. She speaks fondly of the museum, which recently moved from its former space—an old schoolhouse—into a new space with an area six times as large. The museum is trying to bring new audiences to Chinatown—re-imagining the locale as a place to create and experience art. As a part of said imagining, MoCA asked Chien if she had any ideas for new projects, and they came up with a plan for a film exhibition while meeting at a coffee shop one day. Chien proposed a short film exhibit.

“I thought about it after I had seen a short film after 9/11 which showed how Chinese people fared afterward. [The events of September 11th] had affected Chinatown but the mainstream media didn’t cover it. I had also just come back from Paris and Barcelona, and [in those places] Chinatown is considered the hip city. When I came up with the idea, the director of public programs got behind it right away.”

The exhibit is slated to feature “ten established and emerging New York City filmmakers [who] will create short films about what Manhattan’s Chinatown means to them.” The filmmakers involved include Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke and Chain), Sam Pollard (Eyes on the Prize) and Wayne Wang (Joy Luck Club and Smoke). The short film projects, which will premier next year, make up only part of a larger, ambitious, overarching whole. The second part will feature a YouTube site for Chinatown-themed films made all over the world. The third part, even bigger in scale, will feature a selection of ten filmmakers creating Chinatown shorts capturing Chinatowns all over the world (proposed cities include Havana, Sydney, Johannesburg, Paris, and Sao Paulo).

Looking into her future, and into the future of Asian American film, Chien outlines her ambitions. She recently had an idea for a mentoring program for up and coming Asian American filmmakers. “Asian American cinema is very young. It is made up of a small, young network of relationships. Hollywood is based on blood, and nepotism is involved. For Asian Americans, there is no family connection.” With this in mind, she envisions a project that would pair professionals with amateurs, providing the future of the field with career and art stabilizing advice.

“Look at these projects,” says Chien, “and you’ll see what speaks to my interests. I am interested in building and sustaining, creating and reorienting community. I want to see it move forward. It’s something that is hard to do in a film so it’s something I’m also taking up in different arenas.”

Images from The Undoing and Jack and Diane, respectively, both films produced by Chien.