We recently connected with Madison Lin and have shared our conversation below.
Madison, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I’ve been really lucky, I’ve been involved in a lot of meaningful projects so it’s impossible for me to pick a story about one. But I can speak in broad strokes about meaningful projects. Ideally, you’re picking projects that serve a dual-purpose: allowing you to express yourself and allowing you to be of service. And when I say that, I feel super preachy but it’s true. What makes art resonance is when you speak to a feeling that you know all four walls of and someone recognises that feeling. It’s your job to put a feeling on screen and hopefully someone recognises it, because that feeling lives in them too. And that intersection is a connection between a filmmaker and the audience, between you and someone you’ve never met. That’s f*cking magic. Not to be super cheesy but I’m almost certain that’s what the real “movie magic” is. Not Steven Speilberg bringing dinosaurs back from extinction in Jurassic Park, not Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane, but when a movie speaks to an emotion that reminds us that we all bleed from the same place.
Madison, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
In terms of brand, I’m definitely focusing on working in the narrative, magical realism space. I’ve been really interested in coming of age stories for a long time, but more recently I’m interested in coming of age specifically in the context of family. I think that one of the most integral parts of getting older is figuring out how you fit into your family (the family you were born into or the family you’ve found and made) while still exploring and defining your individual values. The push and pull of being your own person in the context of a community is something we all wrestle with and I think addressing it in the context of family allows you to zero in on community at one of its most fundamental building blocks.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The best thing that we do, as a society sure, but more importantly as individuals – is to be open minded and really give new art a fair shake. It’s like Anton Ego says in Ratatouille, “the world is often unkind to new talent, new creations – the new needs friends”.
You gotta chase anything that sparks your interest. For example, this week, I’m going to see 44 – the unofficial unsanctioned Obama musical! That was just something that came up on my feed and it sounded different so I went and bought tickets. When you do that, you support new artists. You support different and occasionally weird ideas, but all great art was at some point different and weird. So go out and be a friend to the new. That’s the best thing we can do.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
The best video essay I’ve seen is The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It definitely promotes entrepreneurial thinking but moreover, it helps you look inwards and figure out what your goals are and why they’re important to you. Absolutely recommend that to literally everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.enigmafilms.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madison.e.lin/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madison.lin.96
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-lin-46b641123/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Water_Mel_Lin