Project Involve Deep Dive: ‘Lonely Blue Night’
We are rolling out some of our past Project Involve shorts to view online! These Project Involve shorts can now be seen on our Film Independent YouTube channel and are featured here on the blog with exclusive talks with the filmmakers. Applications for next year’s Project Involve are now open. This week we’re featuring Lonely Blue Night, written and directed by 2019 Project Involve Fellow Johnson Cheng.
What if your child’s best chance at success was to send them to live with another family?
Johnson Cheng, 2019 Project Involve Writing/Directing Fellow and writer/director of the short film Lonely Blue Night, thoughtfully approaches the consequences of a dilemma faced by many parents.
Lonely Blue Night follows a Chinese family on the night they reunite with their daughter in California after sending her to live with an American homestay family.
As the night progresses and tensions rise, the film becomes a stirring, raw and emotional exploration of cultural expectation, love and regret, the ‘American Dream,’ and the meaning of family.
Johnson Cheng is a Chinese American writer/director hailing from the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. His short film, Iron Hands, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, and his films have collectively screened at over 100 international film festivals, including Tribeca, TIFF Kids, Reykjavík, Nashville, and Palm Springs. He is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award (Cary Grant Film Award) and an alumnus of the NYFF Artist Academy, Telluride Student Symposium, Reykjavík Transatlantic Talent Lab, and VC’s Armed With a Camera Fellowship.
Being from the San Gabriel Valley, Cheng felt particularly connected with the material of Lonely Blue Night.
“This was the first time I got to make something in my hometown—we shot in a restaurant, Top Island Seafood, in this plaza that I had grown up going to as a kid. It felt like I was making a film in my own living room, and a lot of the film grew out of my memories and observations in this space,” Cheng says in reflection.
His goal with the film was simple: “I think I was still very early in sorting out my own cinematic language and was trying so hard to define it in some small way through making of this film,” he said.
“But now, years later, I feel like I’ve changed so much, and so has my relationship with cinema. Now, when I look back at this film, I can just see it from a distance as a little time capsule—a small snow globe of what this corner of the San Gabriel Valley felt like before the pandemic.”
Cheng applied to Project Involve while finishing film school in New York. “I knew that I would be going back home to L.A. after graduating, and wanted to build more community there as I had spent the past few years on the East Coast.”
He was also motivated by the program’s strong reputation, reflecting, “so many filmmakers that I’ve admired over the years, like Andrew Ahn, came out of Project Involve, so I knew it was a special place.”
Reflecting on his time in the program, Cheng highlights the collaborative community of Project Involve and its ability to create lasting connections.
“Working with the producing team—Apoorva Charan, Steve Kim, and our EP, Sydney Lowe—taught me so much about how to be a good collaborator. I’ll always remember their kindness and generosity as I was figuring myself out as a director,” he said. “My cinematographer, Carlo Canlas Mendoza, shot my next short, Only the Moon Stands Still. He is a dear friend, and I look forward to our next collaborations!”
Lonely Blue Night went on to have a successful festival run—it was selected for the HBO APA Visionaries program and screened at AFI FEST in 2020, where it won the Audience Award.
“As far as short films go, it had some legs — we were streaming on HBO for a couple of years, and after that run, we were able to premiere online as a Vimeo Staff Pick.”
Since his time in Project Involve in 2019, Cheng has kept busy.
“I can 100% say that I have a directing career because of Project Involve—Lonely Blue Night was seen by Destin Daniel Cretton, who became a mentor, and eventually led to the opportunity to direct on American Born Chinese. From there, I joined the DGA and continue directing television to this day.”
The most recent episode Cheng directed for The Chi premiered this past month on Paramount+ SHOWTIME. He has also been developing two features. “I am in a race to see which one will get made first!”
Applications for the 2026 Project Involve program for both live-action and stop-motion animation are now open with the Members Deadline on have until July 28th. Learn more about Project Involve here, and apply today. If you are not a member, you can join here today!
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