Mina Shum

Mina Shum
Mina Shum with producer Stephen Hegyes
Born	1966 Hong Kong, China
Occupation	Filmmaker, director, writer

Mina Shum (born 1966) is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity both premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival and Double Happiness won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Torino. She was director resident at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. She was also a member of an alternative rock band called Playdoh Republic.

Mina Shum was born in Hong Kong in 1966 and came to Vancouver with her family at the age of one. Her family, who had originally left Maoist China, settled in Vancouver as part of the first wave of Chinese immigration. In her early school years, Shum was interested in acting and theatre, and decided to pursue these interests despite her parents' disapproval. Shum attended the University of British Columbia from 1983–1989, and received a B.A. in theatre as well as a Diploma in Film Production. At the age of 19, Shum decided that she wanted to be a filmmaker after watching a film by Peter Weir titled, Gallipoli. From Gallipoli she discovered that "one, you could make a film that wasn't American-centric as well as find an audience and two, you could marry beautiful visuals with a very intimate story." After receiving her degree, she was briefly part of the director's program at the Canadian Film Centre, in Toronto.

Shum is also close friends with fellow filmmaker, Ann Marie Fleming, whom she met in 1989 while they were both students.

Although she is often pigeonholed as a "Chinese-Canadian woman film director," Shum prefers to be known as an "independent filmmaker", rather than one of national identity. She views this label as one way to get audiences to view her film without prejudice. When discussing her association with feminism and multiculturalism Shum says, "Because I'm a living breathing human being in Vancouver, which is a very multicultural city, and I'm a woman, I tend to get tagged as someone who might write about "issues." But that's not where it starts for me, it starts on a very human level. I use narrative to reveal things that people don't see."