IN THE MEDIA: Living legend tribute

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SYDNEY filmmaker and martial arts fanatic Maria Tran was at Sunnybank last week to recruit helpers for a documentary she is making about Jackie Chan.

Quest for Jackie Chan follows the 25-year-old’s journey across the country as she leaves no stone unturned in her search to find out all there is to know about the martial arts star and his links to Australia.

From filming part of his 1996 movie First Strike in Brisbane, to stories of him working alongside former prime minister Kevin Rudd on construction sites in the 1980s, Ms Tran said that she had already uncovered a few surprises.

“The idea of the movie was to pay homage to Jackie Chan but ... it’s starting to become more about the journey,” she said.

Day 4 - Quest for Jackie Chan in Brisbane - Last Day

Today was the last day of my Brisbane Q4JC trip and it began with the farewell of my cousin and the wonderful hospitality they provided on my journey.

I then made my way to the Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre (BEMAC) to run my newly designed workshop “Ideas to Realities” with 6 local participants for the next 3 hours. I was intrigued to see the light bulbs of this small intimate group begin to brighten up as start reclaiming their sense of direction and capacities in life.

Even though it was an early Saturday morning, these 6 step outside their comfort zones to develop their ways of thinking as a part of the workshop. Shout out to Daniel Crosland, Colin Fong, Connie Mc Laran, Amy Wang, Wei Jian Kong and Gladys Miles whoa rea all on the road to be potentially amongst Australia’s creative producers.

Next stop was a quick lunch at the Fish Bar down the road in Kangaroo Point, before stopping over to the different locations to grab the cut aways of the bright and sunny Brisbane CBD.

By 2.30pm, myself and Colin headed to Spring Hill to meet up with Raamon Varcarro and his Urban Action mob for a quick fight choreography experimental session. These guys were fun to hang with and I got the chance to muck around with my action camera grip and develop my cinematography skills.
We wrapped up by 4.30pm and I suddenly discovered that I lost my car hire keys! I never felt so screwed up in my life and the “Quest” was definitely in the midst of being compromised. Fortunately for me, I had Mr calm, cool and collected Raamon (also “Jerds”) who took the reins and problem solved the situation.

RACQ came by at 6.30pm (my flight was at 8.30pm) and got me out of the dilemma.
But my problems didn’t end there. I found out along the way that my GPS road maps were outdated and kept sending me off track and so I spent the next 40 minutes lost in trying to locate Brisbane Airport.

At the same time, I was busting to go to the loo; I began doubting whether or not I’ll make it to my next destination.

I eventually got there at 8pm (close call) and quickly returned the car hire and off I went from Brisbane to Darwin (3 hours).

Day 2 - Quest for Jackie Chan in Brisbane

Day 2 started with a 9.45am meeting at Fortitude Valley where Brisbane's Chinatown lives. Here, a work colleague at Chinahouse Resturant tells the story of Jackie Chan's fondness for the resturant and his Australian bum chum Dave Chen.

I got a chance to really have a look at the carpark and also the surroundings of where the set of "First Strike" in Australia was based. Could you imagine what it would have been like seeing the film shoot in 1997? I know Colin & Andrew Leavold may have witnessed a bit of Jackie Chan's back of the head of kind of story.

Then I prompted right over to the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) where I interviewed one of the curators of the APT5 event that headlined featured Jackie Chan as a part of the selection of works.

The day continued also with the dramatic lost of my iphone (home to those valuable Jackie Chan contacts) that otherwised would have made my trip a living hell. Of course, both my mum and dad found out about it as the library lady dialled "mum" and dobbed me in.

Day 1 - Quest for Jackie Chan in Brisbane

Oh dear, after two nights of sleeplessness in Western Sydney, I dragged my coffeed up body to the airport at an early 4am. I was feeling it. Its was happening, "The Quest" that I dreamt up and now being a mover and shaker had to embark on it. Amongst me were all these other suited business people, all either heading home or to work and all leering me as I strutt around the air port with all camera gear and all.

The first meeting was with Colin Fong, a film student from QUT who found out about the quest via his university noticeboard and wanted to also join in the fun. We had a newspaper photoshoot with the Southern Star and that was good fun as the photographer kept snapping to find the seller shot. He was pressed on about having a Jackie Chan picture in the background so poor Colin had to rummage through his house for a couple of old school JC DVDs to blue tack to the wall.

Our first meeting was with Andrew Leavold from Trash Video (Australia's largest cult video store) and as much as he is a little wacky, he a really cool and retold his journey on "The Search for Weng Weng" (A Filipino midget martial artist) and shared his pain of how mainstream networks don't get these kinds of personal stories.

Then we had a meeting with Shilpa from the Ethnic Communities Council Queensland who spoke about the culturally diverse and their representation in mainstream Australian media.

Colin then had a lecture at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) before we head for our last meeting for the day at 8pm with the Urban Action Parkour group.

Woah...big first day....I got home at 11pm...and seriously crashed...

Check out the clip here.