Support Andy Doan's Thesis Film About Finding Home in LA

My name is Andy Doan. I was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and I say I came of age in San Jose, California. Now Los Angeles is the place I call home. This project is my senior thesis as an undergraduate at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

In my time at UCLA, I’ve become aware of how we often exist in isolated pockets within the city, especially as students. I’ve personally experienced the dualities between Westwood, where I study, and South Gate, where my girlfriend, an urban planner born and raised there, lives. Navigating between these two worlds, I’ve come to know Los Angeles intimately — from driving through its streets to taking public transit. In falling in love with my girlfriend, I found myself also falling in love with the city. Love is an expansion of space.

STRAY CATS ON CENTRAL is an expression of that love. It explores how people migrate, how people move through space, how that shapes our lives, and, most of all, the city’s dynamic, disparate, and diverse parts. Victor and Steph, the two characters at the heart of this story, reflect the two sides of my own journey between San Jose and Los Angeles.

This film takes cues from the L.A. Rebellion, the film movement that sprouted from a diverse group of African American students at UCLA Film in the 1960s-1980s who thought critically and made films about their own communities in the city. It’s within this lineage that I — and the film that I am making — want to live within as a UCLA filmmaker. Researching about the culturally rich and historically significant Central Avenue Corridor and in learning about the contemporary issues of South Gate (and Southeast LA as a whole), the film is an ode to these communities that live with the scars of history and the fears of the future, in terms of change. I especially want to embed this film in the communities in which it is depicting — both in the ways I work with cast and crew from the Bay or Los Angeles and the ways I would like to work with several nonprofit organizations that operate within South Los Angeles.

Ultimately, the film is a statement of presence — that these communities have been here, that they are here, and that they will always be here. Film codifies and immortalizes their existence — the cats of Central Avenue, the cats of South Gate, and everything in between. Los Angeles is often misunderstood as a collection of disconnected neighborhoods. But, to me, it’s more like a jazz ensemble: people from different backgrounds and different places, coming together to create something beautiful. The film, much like the city it’s set in, is about finding home through music. The two sides of San Jose and Los Angeles finding home in place called Central.