“I think anyone from the Asian diaspora, or any diaspora, we float between worlds and the sense of belonging. “This recognition that he’s a construct of Asian-ness, that he doesn’t have any real memories, I can relate to that,” Kogonada said via Zoom, backed by shelves full of Criterion Collection Blu-rays and a copy of Dana Stevens’ Camera Man. (In the story, when Yang abruptly shuts down and sends the family into a panic as they try to get him repaired, he drops face-first into a bowl of cereal in the movie, the camera cuts away as if it can’t bear to look.) But as a first-generation immigrant, he connected deeply with Yang’s placelessness. The story’s tone is vastly different from the movie’s, brash and knowing where the film is restrained and mysterious. He was born in Seoul and raised in the Midwest, but he has generally declined to provide details beyond that, explaining that he’s “ never identified much with my American name.” But he did find traces of himself in Alexander Weinstein’s short story “ Saying Goodbye to Yang,” which loosely provided the basis for the movie’s script.
A critic and video essayist who turned narrative filmmaker with 2017’s lyrical Columbus, he identifies himself only as Kogonada, a pseudonym adapted from the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent screenwriting partner, Kogo Noda.
After Yang’s writer-director is surrounded by plenty of questions himself.
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