BIOS
DIRECTOR / EDITOR
Kenneth Eng is a director, editor and executive producer. After graduating from Boston Latin School, Ken left for New York in 1994 to study film at the School of Visual Arts. His thesis Scratching Windows, a short documentary film about graffiti writers, was broadcast as part of the doc series REEL NY on WNET - NY PBS. In 2001, Ken directed and edited Take Me to The River a feature length documentary about the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India. Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball, his film about the famous Koshien Tournament in Japan was nationally broadcast on PBS as part of POV and continues to play in Japan on NHK-TV. In 2007, Ken was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to launch My Life In China. Recently, he edited Tested for director Curtis Chin, and is currently collaborating with him on a film “Our Chinatown” about the challenges chinatowns across America face. Ken is also involved in "The Great China Baseball Hunt" a film about the rise of baseball in China.
WRITER / PRODUCER
Ehren Parks is a writer and producer that has worked for ESPN, Fox Sports, TruTV, IMAX, the Baseball Hall of Fame, The Gates Foundation, and Wildlife Media. He also produced the horror movie Fields of the Dead, worked as a documentary programmer for Slamdance and LAFF, and taught Writing for Documentaries at the New York Film Academy. Ehren holds a BJ in Broadcasting from Nebraska-Lincoln, an MFA in Fiction Writing from the New School, and an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA -- where he won the Screenwriters' Showcase and produced Lily Amirpour's short film Six and a Half.
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jack Lam is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a concentration in Cinematography where he was nominated for the A.S.C. John Alonzo Student Cinematographer Award. He then attended a cinematography master class at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. Jack’s body of work encompasses a wide range of genres and styles. His music videos have appeared on MTV. He shot the 35mm feature Polycarp and the documentary series Ocean's Away for China Central TV. He lives and works in Hong Kong.
PRODUCER
Melanie Blair started her career as a writer and producer on a political talk radio show at Bloomberg News. After graduating with an MFA from the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC, Melanie then worked as post production coordinator on Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D, an IMAX film produced by Tom Hanks. She then worked as production researcher and post production coordinator for another large format, 3D film, National Geographic’s Sea Monsters. In between productions, she produced the short film Joburg, in South Africa, which was featured in the UCLA Directors Spotlight and the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. She continues to produce independent films and owns Maxx City BBQ in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles.
WRITER / PRODUCER
Meng Xie was born in Beijing, China. He moved to New York in 2006 to get his MA in media and filmmaking at The New School. After graduating, he worked for CCTV (China Central Television) as an assistant director. He's worked on the documentary series Oceans Away as an Assistant Producer and the P.O.V. film High Tech, Low Life as a field producer. He lives in Beijing and works as a curator at an art gallery while continuing to pursue freelance productions.
Welcome to the Crew Bios page for My Life In China, a Chinese American Documentary directed by Kenneth Eng. An expression of artistic personal filmmaking, the film begs the question: What does it mean to be both Chinese and American?