Mar 2008: "My Eating Team..." won the Most Honorable Mention award at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival!!!

Feb 2008: "My Eating Team..." is now available as a Special Edition DVD! Send email if you would like to order. Sales from the DVD will support Zheng's future filmmaking as well as Hot Sake's team operation.

Oct 2007: "My Eating Team..." was screened at the Tacoma Film Festival on Sat Oct 6! The movie was among the seven "Top Picks" of the festival by Exit133. Read the first media review for the movie.

Synopsis

Dragon boating is a fast-growing team sport all around the world, even though you may have never heard of it. Why is dragon boating so addictive? And specifically, what made this particular Seattle team, Hot Sake, thrive over five years and become an extended family for everyone who is willing to join in? This documentary tells the story of Hot Sake through the eyes of Zheng Wang, a Seattle “transplant” who is far away from his homeland of China. Once boggled down with the so-called Quarter-Life Crisis, Zheng has found his home away from home in Hot Sake. Featuring an array of colorful personalities, this is a story about friendship, community, fun, camaraderie, as well as fast bonds formed through food sharing, car sharing, and bed sharing.

Technical Notes

Filmed on mini-DV and edited using Final Cut Pro on a Mac G4.

About the Filmmaker

Zheng Wang was born and raised in Shandong, China, which is about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai, and across the ocean from South Korea. Growing up, he was introduced to the world of media production through his father, who worked first at a radio station and then at a TV station, producing programs ranging from newsmagazines to entertainment events to commercials. Not surprisingly, Zheng picked up an interest in photography and video, although he did not really consider it as a career option.

After obtaining his Bachelor degree in 1994, Zheng moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the computer science graduate program at Harvard University. While there, he stepped into the world of filmmaking through an extracurricular program at Dudley House, the graduate school student center. During his last a few years at Harvard, he made several short films that were well-received at the Dudley Digital Film Festival.

After obtaining his Ph.D. degree in 2001, Zheng moved to Seattle area to work for Microsoft. He knew he wanted to do a feature-length project at some point. However, it took several years before he zeroed in on a perfect topic: Since his dragon boat team Hot Sake represented such a huge part of his life, why not make a documentary about it? After all, he was already known for following his teammates around with a camcorder... Following a year of filming and a long, arduous editing process, Zheng proudly presented version 1.0 of the documentary to his teammates, friends and fellow dragon boaters on April 1, 2007. The final version has been screened at two film festivals so far: Tacoma Film Festival in October 2007, and Buffalo Niagara Film Festival in March 2008, where the movie was enthusiastically received by an industry-heavy audience and took home the "Most Honorable Mention" award.

Zheng is currently doing research for his next major project, a documentary about the elementary school education system in the U.S.  He is very excited about this project, and he welcomes your comments and ideas!

©2007 W.H.E. Productions

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