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Meeting Khoa Do

I had the opportunity to listen to Khoa Do (recipient of the Young Australian of the Year Award, 2005) speak at a corporate function I attended tonight. It was a heartfelt and truly inspiring speech he gave which was essentially a brief autobiography. My summary here is certainly not going to do him any justice.

Khoa came to Australia as an infant with his family as refugees from Vietnam. He worked hard and enrolled in an Arts / Law combined program at university. He dropped out of his legal studies to pursue his dreams to be a film maker. He recanted a few amusing moments of his early acting career where he appeared along side Michael Caine and Billy Zane in a couple of movies. He good naturedly told us how fleeting his moments of fame were as his scene with Michael Caine was cut from the movie and the movie starring Billy Zane flopped so badly that it was never distributed in Australia.

Coming back from his lack than spectacular flirt with fame, he started volunteer work with a youth center in Sydney to help disadvantaged young people. He was asked to run a film making course at the center for these young people. He seized on the opportunity to instead merely teaching them film making, he decided to make a film with them.

I spoke with Khoa after his speech and I asked him how he broke the barrier between himself and the group of kids in his care. He said that the kids were enrolled with the center because they wanted a way to break out of their cycle of poverty. He told me that when he asked the kids how long the film should be (and he was expecting a 20 to 30 minute film), the kids responded that they wanted to be involved in a feature length film - at least 90 minutes.

This was a daunting task for Khoa considering that he had no budget whatsover to do this type of project. He didn't let the kids down. He took out an advertisement in the local newspaper bringing to the community's attention his film project and he asked for assistance. He said that he was swamped with offers of help from the community. A truck driver volunteered his time and equipment to drive Khoa and his "film crew" to various locations and the local pub owner instantly became the executive producer with a $5000 contribution. It was very heartening to see the community respond so immediately and generously. And this was not an affluent suburb in Sydney.

The fruits of their labour is the film The Finished People. According to Khoa, his film exceeded all expectations with the small budget he had and an untrained production crew and "actors". The film was shown around the world at various film festivals. The film brought Khoa many accolades from the industry.

I have not seen the film yet but I'm very motivated to watching it after hearing Khoa's story. He is currently working on a mainstream film project called Footy Legend which he describes as a human interest story along the veins of Billy Elliot and Bend It Like Beckham. The film will be distributed by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions and will hit cinemas next Easter (2006).

Reviews of The Finished People :

- Sydney Morning Herald
- The Age
- The Movie Show

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