30 Day Promise

Salute to Asian Canadian Filmmakers

Screening Time
Sunday, May 30, 1:00pm

Film Trailer

Experimental / Canada / 2009 / 8 minutes
Screenwriter/Producer: Vincent Ternida
Director/Producer/ Cinematographer/ Editor: Xia Lee
Starring: Vincent Ternida
Language: Tagalog w/ English subtitles

The only person you find at the end of every journey is yourself.

As a director, Xia Lee desperately wanted to make a film. He called Vincent Ternida one November evening to shoot a film with no script. The night they shot 30 Day Promise, Xia Lee gave Vincent three directions: 1, he would shoot him at a variety of locations in downtown Vancouver; 2, There would be no dialogue as he planned to tell the story through voice acting; 3, Vincent had to “look sad” because this was the tone that I wanted for the film. In spite of this very limited direction, Vincent is an incredibly intuitive actor and gave exactly what the character needed in the film.

Thus comes this very stylized film with Vincent as the only actor telling a story about a disgruntled immigrant who comes to terms with his painful memories of heartbreak one autumn evening.

Festival Entries
Shaw Multicultural Channel New Filmmakers Day (2009)
San Diego Asian Film Festival (2009)
Vancouver Asian Film Festival (2009)

About Xia Lee
Born in Lanzhou, China and raised in Ottawa, Canada, Xia studied film theory and criticism at the University of British Columbia on scholarship. He has written, produced, directed, shot, and edited some 20 productions. He is currently developing a feature-length documentary on the matriarch of Chinese Traditional Dance, Professor Hsu Shu Ying.

About Vincent Ternida
Actor-Screenwriter-Filmmaker Vincent Ternida started his career in the film industry as an acquisitions coordinator in the Philippines’ largest TV network ABSCBN. Moving to Canada, he decided to pursue his dreams of making films and worked on independent crew sets in Vancouver as well as Toronto. He has shifted his focus on screenwriting with 30 Day Promise being a first of many projects to be released.