“Sometimes You Abandon a Wrong Idea and It Comes Back to You in the Right Form”: Patrick Wang on His Four-Hour Double Feature A Bread Factory

Patrick Wang (a 25 New Face alum) takes a painstakingly nuanced, intimate approach to delicate subjects, specifically the ways in which we deal with — and don’t deal with — loss and the rippling effects in life after a death. His first feature, the breathtaking, Independent Spirit Award-nominated In the Family, and 2015’s Cannes and SXSW-screening The Grief of Others, which will finally be hitting theaters November 2nd, would make for a great marathon viewing alone. (Provided it came with a big box of Kleenex.)

And now Wang has created a work that is simultaneously lighter in tone, and his most ambitious undertaking yet — the two-part, four-hour, cast of 100 (including Tyne Daly in one of the leads) A Bread Factory, Part One: For the Sake of Gold and Part Two: Walk with Me a While. The film follows Dorothea and Greta, a couple fighting to keep their four-decade old, small town arts center open even as they’re being pushed out by Chinese performance art stars May and Ray (famous for their piece about the “hierarchy of furniture”) at the new FEEL Institute down the street. Not to mention the singing and tap-dancing techies (yes, it’s also part musical, which makes one wonder if Wang is a masochist for logistics) that invade the Bread Factory’s parking lot by the busload (selfie sticks firmly in hand).

Filmmaker had the chance to chat with the director — a Texas-born MIT grad, who is also the son of Taiwanese immigrants — about community, composing music, and the danger of accidentally contributing to the xenophobic viewpoint. A Bread Factory (Part 1 and Part 2) opens in theaters October 26th.

To read my interview with Wang visit Filmmaker magazine.