Kai-Duc Luong

Prior to pursuing his video-artist-filmmaking career full-time, Kai-Duc Luong served as a technical manager for Motorola Inc. This 10-year tenure in the corporate environment allowed him to gain the experience and rigor, as well as technical, managerial and interpersonal skills required in pushing through large-scale projects across the world, embracing his trilingual skills (French, English and Chinese).

Born in 1975, Phnom-Penh, 44 days before the Khmer Rouge took over the capital city of Cambodia and the genocide started, Kai’s mother and three infant sons managed to survive hardship through their exile from Cambodia to Vietnam to France, which started on April 17th 1975, and concluded with his father’s death in May 1976, and their arrival in France a month later.

And while always cherishing an artistic career in his heart, Kai had to confront the realities of an immigrant’s life, working at his mother’s grocery store at an early age, pursuing a more conventional career path in engineering and science. He completed his engineering degree at a Grande Ecole nearby Paris and a master’s degree in electrical engineering at IIT in Chicago, in 1998.

Nevertheless, throughout this journey, Kai continued perfecting his edge for cinematography which started at age 13 documenting his family gatherings using a Hi8 video camera, purchased with his hard-earned pocket money.

As a cinema lover, Kai used to watch all movie genres, and was most moved by early 40’s-50’s movies in the likes of Lubitsch or Preminger, and later on enjoyed watching the new wave genre from Godard to Resnais, while finally being influenced by filmmakers like Kieslowski, Wong Kar-Wai or Gondry in modern days.

It was not until age 25 that Kai was able to assemble his first crew and co-direct his first short movie in the US. His second short followed shortly after and received praise from the Chicago Reader newspaper, which compared the film to Demy, Carax and Kieslowski’s works. Kai received the audience award at the Chicago Asian American showcase, short film category, for his third short.

Influenced by contemporary art, photography and modern dance, Kai also pursued a video-artist career creating a series of works exhibited at galleries across the city of Chicago.
Between 2005 and 2007, Kai created visuals for indie singer-songwriters with his unique style, blending rhythm and visuals in a textural and quasi-mnemonic fashion, including “The frogs” (2007, music by Damien) music video for the Recordmakers’ label based in Paris, as well as videos for Marissa Nadler’s cover of Radiohead’s “No surprises” and up-and-coming Capitol record signed French pop singer Chat.

Kai just completed his first feature film, “Someplace else” (2008, 70 min), a documentary on the modern experience of blues music through the poetic cross-portrayal of two characters coming from   distinctive walks of life: the filmmaker, in his thirties, an expatriate living in Chicago tired of his 'passionless' corporate job, and Vance 'guitar' Kelly, in his fifties, leader of the blues group “Vance Kelly and his backstreet blues band” from the South side of Chicago. As Vance takes his fellow musicians across the bars of the city, blues connoisseurs, tourists, and students from the neighboring universities enjoy his 'funky soul blues'. 'Someplace else' draws the audience to a personal journey on the filmmaker's existential questionings, evoking love and the grind of daily work, blending in contemporary visuals with the music and lives of the characters in the movie, as the filmmaker attempts to shed some light on what makes life fulfilling.

Kai’s next projects will involve writing his second screenplay (a fiction), a book on his family’s experience of the Cambodian genocide and creating audio-visuals for film, musicians and art galleries.

List of showcased works:
2008    “Someplace Else” (70 min, DV/HDV), musical documentary film (Chicago, USA)
2007    “No Surprises” (5 min, HD), music video for singer Marissa Nadler (Chicago, USA)
    “Mademoiselle, entretien” (3 min, HD), video-interview for singer Chat (Paris, France)
    “The frogs” (3 min, HD), music video for label Recordmakers / singer Damien (Paris, France)
2005    “Untold” (6 min, DV), video installation for LIPA Gallery (Chicago, USA)
2004    “777vacant” (6 min, DV), video installation for l'Alliance Francaise (Chicago, USA)
    “Vacant” (6 min, DV), short for Asian American Showcase (Chicago, USA)
2003    “The texture of time” (18 min, DV), short for Asian American Showcase (Chicago, USA)
2002    “Lightmare” (4 min, DV), short for Hallofest at Congress Theater (Chicago, USA)
    “Sami and Binx” (30 min, DV), short for Asian American Showcase (Chicago, USA)
2001    “A good fall” (8 min, DV), short for l'Alliance Francaise (Chicago, USA)