Vital Views

Cassandra Taloma 0:31
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of vital views, a podcast by UNLV School of Nursing. My name is Cassandra taloma, and I am the Director of Marketing Communications. Today, we are joined by a very special guest, Miss Michelle huswei,

Michele Josue 0:47
hi, welcome to the show. Well, thanks so much for having me,

Cassandra Taloma 0:50
of course. So Michelle is an Emmy Award winning Filipino filmmaker, a director, lead editor and producer of several films, including her own that have won many awards. Her debut, Matt Shepard, as a friend of mine, won several film festival film festivals worldwide in a 2016 Daytime Emmy. You may also be familiar with her film Happy jail, a Netflix Original Docu series about the world famous Filipino dancing inmates that won a 2021 silver Telly Award. She was also recognized for her film food roots, which follows the Filipino American restaurant tour searching for the recipes of his ancestors. And finally, Nurse unseen, which highlights the culture and stories of Filipino American Nurses and their experiences on the front lines during the pandemic. Quite the mouthful there. Michelle, thank you so much for being here with us and for all the work that you do and have done to highlight Filipinos and their stories.

Michele Josue 1:45
Oh, you're very kind. You're very welcome. Thanks so much for having me, and it's just a privilege to tell those types of stories and to do so through

Cassandra Taloma 1:53
film. Absolutely So later this evening, the School of Nursing will be hosting a screening of nurse unseen followed followed by a panel discussion featuring Michelle, before stopping in Las Vegas. Here today, I know you and your team have been traveling across the country to promote the film with theatrical releases in some of our major cities. What has that been like for you?

Michele Josue 2:16
It's been an incredible whirlwind, but it's been longer than this month, we've actually been on the road with this film for over a year now. We did a really robust Film Festival tour where we screen in several film festivals across the country. We world premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival, which is home to, you know, the Cleveland Clinic. So there's a lot of nursing and healthcare professionals in the area. And then we went on to travel. After the film festival window, we started doing community screenings with hospital groups, employee groups, Filipino American community groups all across the country. And then this October, which was Filipino, American History Month, we did our theatrical release, where we opened in New York on October 4, and then we expanded to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and New Orleans. And it is really quite an honor to be here in Las Vegas to finally share Nourse unseen. And, you know, we have a website, and people write in all the time, and we get a lot of messages from nurses and people from Las Vegas who have been really excited for us to bring nurse unseen here. So I'm really, really stoked to be here. Finally,

Cassandra Taloma 3:36
yes, we are too, and we're super happy to host the Las Vegas Premier. We Yeah, we've seen a huge interest in having the film here too. So we're really excited to have you here today. And I know we talked about this briefly earlier, but it looks like you've recently been working with Joe coy, a Filipino, American comedian, to also bring this film in front of major audiences to spread the word, which is pretty amazing. How did that partnership come together?

Michele Josue 4:03
Well, I'm such a huge fan of Joe coy, and have been for quite some time. I've seen every one of his specials. I've gone to a lot of his shows in Los Angeles and even one in Cebu when I was in the Philippines. I just think he's not only hilarious and talented, but such a good leader for the community, and he's done so much throughout his career to really uplift, you know, Filipinos and the Filipino American experience in the mainstream. And side note me and my sister. She's here actually Anna. We have a side business called parasaya, which is predominantly an online gifting space where we highlight a lot of gifts and things from Filipinos small businesses and artists, and through parasaya, we actually helped make all the Easter Sunday gift boxes for different influencers and VIPs when his. Movie came out. So we've been kind of like on this very, very like edges of rooting Joe coy on over the years. But we have, you know, people in our community in LA who are friends with him and who work with him, specifically one really wonderful woman. Her name is Jennifer Taylor. She's a friend of Joe COys and has become a friend of mine. She's been an ongoing supporter of nurse unseen, and she shared the film with Joe and his family just recently, and they watched it. They They all like had a nice movie night, and they're in their home, and had popcorn, and they watched the film all together, and they really loved it, and it resonated with them, because they have so many nurses in their family. And after that viewing experience, they reached out and said they wanted to buy out one of our Los Angeles screenings specifically for nurses. So they bought out the entire screening, and this was October 31 to close out Filipino American History History Month, and they gave those tickets out for free for our nurses. So that was really lovely. And they also gave out free Joe coy merch. So it was just like such a amazing, wonderful day. And I really, really applaud and appreciate Joe Coy and his team for doing that, because they honestly didn't have to. I know he's busy on tour, but it was just like such a nice gesture for the community.

Cassandra Taloma 6:23
That's amazing. I didn't know that he had paid for all those tickets for all the nurses to come in. That's really wonderful. Yeah, and I love that he's so supportive too, of I think a lot of other Filipino American entrepreneurs and other people who are in the limelight, I know he's super supportive of their work. Yes,

Michele Josue 6:40
I am. I've met him just I mean, he wouldn't know me, but I've met him over the years, like at his various meet and greets and had little like photo ops and stuff. But I've always, like, admired him from afar, how giving he is with his time, and how engaged he is with the community, and to see that. You know, inexperience with Nourse unseen is really, really quite meaningful,

Cassandra Taloma 7:04
absolutely. Well, I want to get into a few questions to learn more about you in the film. How did you get into filmmaking and documentaries?

Michele Josue 7:12
Well, I've always wanted to be in the arts and storytelling. So even growing up as a kid, you know, we have our own little plays and things, and I had a camcorder and would run around and tape things with my sister with my friends. That was just something that I always was interested in doing. And then in high school, well, actually, middle school and high school, I got into acting, and I tried to get into every school play that I could. I just caught that bug I really enjoyed, just the, not only the aspect of storytelling, but that the collaborative art of storytelling, working with other people to create something like bigger than yourself. So that bug kind of evolved into me thinking that I could actually make a living, you know, doing something, whether it's, you know, in theater or film. I was like, this is something that I really want to explore, you know, into my adulthood. So I thought about going into film, and applied to Emerson College in Boston, and got in, which was amazing. And I went there and I learned about, you know, filmmaking, and met a lot of amazing people, you know. And at first I really was interested in script writing and doing narrative films, but then my old high school actually went to boarding school in Switzerland. Oh, wow. When I was visiting the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year, I went to visit, and they were in need of someone to come in and create, like a document, a short documentary about the history, the 50 year history of the school. And I really wanted the opportunity to do something like that, but I've never, I had never done documentary before, but I was like, I can do it. So I kind of bluffed my way into that job, but really ended up falling in love with documentary in that genre, and just speaking with real life people and, you know, and filming what they had to say, and working with that real life material and creating something beautiful from from all of that footage. And then after that experience, I was kind of just hooked, and I just wanted to explore making more and more documentaries. You know, I just really love the connection with people, and just listening to what they had to say, listening to their real life experiences. And while these people you know, haven't been asked about their stories before, and I always find that, you know, really fascinating. Absolutely,

Cassandra Taloma 9:52
that's a really beautiful journey into the arts, and it kind of ties into, you know, what? Were so curious on how you weave these stories together, and really, what inspired you to what inspired you to start nursing?

Michele Josue 10:09
Well, I tend to make films that are very, very personal, and when you make documentaries, you know they're opposite from narrative films. You know narrative films, you have a script, and it's kind of your road map, and you shoot it, and you have, like a very set production time, and then you go into the edit and you put it together that way. But with documentary, you know you're working with real life, real life experiences, real life stories, so you don't really know what will happen. So I say all that because, you know, when you do documentaries, just know that it takes so much out of so many years and so much time out of your life. So that's why I tend to gravitate towards material and stories that are deeply personal to me. So my first film, Matt Shepard, is a friend of mine, was about one of my best friends from high school, Matthew Shepard, who was murdered 26 years ago in Laramie Wyoming because he was gay. And when that happened, I was a sophomore at Emerson College doing film, and I, you know, instantly remembered how we would be in plays together in high school. We'd run around with his camcorder and try to make these little short films and things, and I was watching what was happening to him over the news, and I just was seeing how he was being robbed of his humanity, and his story just centered completely around the horrific way in which he died, and the bigotry that you know, that murdered him. And he was so much more than that. So I said to myself at that point, you know, as one of his close friends and knowing who he was, that I wanted to create a film that would really honor who he actually was as a person. And having gone through the process of making that film and seeing how his story, his genuine story, was touching people's lives, you know, touching audiences all across the US. I knew I wanted to keep on that trajectory and continue making films that were deeply personal and were meaningful to other people. So after that film, I thought to myself, well, what other types of things in my life deserve that type of attention, and me being Filipino and Filipino American, I instantly thought about that experience and how that's not really shown or explored on the big screen, like growing up, one of my favorite movies was Wayne's World with Tia Carrera. And I love that because I was like, oh my god, I think that's the first person I've ever that I'm seeing on TV or on the big screen that kind of looks like me, and it turns out she she is Filipino. And I just remember being so inspired by that. So anyway, I wanted to make films that really genuinely explored what it was like to be Filipino American. So then I moved towards wanting to do this film, which ended up being a series about the dancing inmates in Cebu, because it was really fascinating to me. And that became happy jail for Netflix, which is amazing. And then after that, I really wanted to continue again on this path of telling Filipino and Filipino American centered stories. So I looked inside myself and thought about the stories of my family and what brought me to the United States. And I thought about my auntie. I thought about Tita Dodo, and she was essentially our second mom. She lived with us, you know, all the way till I left for boarding school. She was such a huge influence on my life, and she was an oncology nurse at a children's hospital in Washington, DC, and she devoted her whole life to nursing. And I never stopped to really, she's passed many, many years ago. So sadly, she hasn't seen she will never see the film. But I never asked. I was never curious enough to stop and ask her about her life, like, why did she choose to go into nursing? Why did she choose to leave our family in the Philippines and start a whole brand new life here in the United States? So I wanted to make this film, initially, to be a tribute to her nurses like her. So that started in 2019 me just kind of researching more about my family, more about my auntie. I discovered Dr Katherine suniza Choi's seminal work, Empire of care, just really researching and just learning more about nursing, the Filipino experience of nursing in the United States. But then, you know, we got into 2020, which, of course, was COVID and the pandemic. And I was just sitting in my house watching TV relentlessly and just seeing how our healthcare workers were up there in the front lines, really saving us. And all of you know so many of the frontline workers are our Filipinos. Nurses and a lot of our Titas were coming out of retirement to help. And I just automatically thought about my auntie, thought about, you know, the people that she graduated nursing school with being there on the front lines, just essentially sacrificing themselves sometimes, you know, just to care for our country. And I thought, Okay, well, maybe this is the shape this film needs to go. You know, Nurse unseen can now be about, you know, both my teachers that raised me in that history, but also looking at how that history has contributed to where we are today in, you know, the era of of COVID and what was happening to our community. So that's a very long winded way of saying that's how nurse unseen came about. We were very lucky in that, you know, we were in a clubhouse room, and I reconnected with some colleagues in the filmmaking community in Los Angeles who are also nurses, and they were talking to me about how they wanted to create a film about, you know, our Filipino nurses on the front lines, very similar to what I was envisioning. So after discussions with them, we just decided it was in the best interest of our community and our films to just join forces. So having two nurses on the producing team, you know, plus myself and, you know, my team. It just, it just made sense. And then we just went with it. And then as soon as we were vaccinated in april 2021, we started filming.

Cassandra Taloma 16:32
That's really amazing. I think it's a beautiful tribute to your to your aunt as well. And I love you know how much detail is going into this. I know, of course, this film is heavily rooted in culture and history, but it's also very research based. And I know you have mentioned before, and it's in the film as well that our perception, especially, you know Filipino Americans, is that so many Filipinos are nurses, but actually only 4% of Filipinos make up the wider nursing population, but we did have the majority of the deaths during COVID. Were there anything else that you discovered about our culture or about the profession while filming this?

Michele Josue 17:17
I mean, everything was a discovery, so I really made this film, in large part because this was not a history that was taught to me. I'm ashamed to say, you know, I grew up with nursing being such an indelible part of my family history, why we're even here. And I never stopped to ask why that was, you know, we talked about Joe coy at the top of this interview, he jokes a lot about, you know, the stereotype of Filipinos going into nursing, but there is a reason why. So after discovering this book and doing all of that research, I was like, Well, if I don't know about this history, there is a huge chance that so many others, and definitely others beyond the Filipino community they don't know about. You know these reasons. So I made this film to teach myself, but also to impart that knowledge to others. So it's all of it is really fascinating. And again, we use Dr Catherine suniza Choi's empire of care to really be that sort of foundational basis for our research and kind of the spine of the film, but we really wanted to fill it out with these really compelling personal stories of what these waves and migration and what those eras and Filipino nursing in the United States looked like. But there was a lot of surprising things just even thinking about, well, a not a lot of people know that the Philippines is the US colony, you know, to sort of spell that out is, you know, just that very basic fact. Or a lot of audience members come up to me and they're like, I didn't know that. And the fact that there was all these really deliberate, political and cultural decisions made by both governments that allowed this sort of pipeline, you know, for Filipinos to go into Americanized nursing, you know, they were taught in English in an Americanized curriculum, and then to kind of seamlessly immigrate here into the United States To fill those nursing shortages over the years. I mean, that was all by design, you know. So there are these reasons behind these jokes and these stereotypes, but to flesh it out with that research, that history, but on top of that, you know, the heart of what it really felt like to live in those times, I think, is very, very important, and that's why I'm very privileged to do what I do, because I can learn that myself, and I can share that with others. It's a beautiful it's a beautiful thing. So to you know, in terms of the cast and the people that helped really flesh out Nourse unseen, we really wanted it to feel like a tapestry. I mean, this is over. Trees the like decades and decades of history, that Filipino nursing experience, experience in the US. So I it couldn't be encapsulated by just one voice, one person. So he really set out to make this tapestry of all these voices across all different generations, to tell these stories of a what it was like to immigrate from the Philippines, to flee martial law, to come to the United States, to make a better life for oneself, you know, to learn nursing in a country that's completely foreign, you know, all the way to like the 80s or there was another nursing shortage, and many Filipino nurses stepped up to care for AIDS patients when a lot of the healthcare workers here in the States would not care for them. I mean, there's just this pattern of pattern in our history where Filipino nurses have stepped up to care, but we call it nurse unseen is because it's not really known by the greater community. It's not celebrated in the way that it should. And we just wanted to correct that

Cassandra Taloma 20:59
absolutely, how did you navigate balancing the personal stories of the nurses with the broader systemic issues they face?

Michele Josue 21:10
I think that's a really interesting question. You know, there's always that balance of in terms of film like, how do you, you know, impart that knowledge and that research, but also make sure that you're still making a film that touches people. So, you know, I'm not, I know we're on a podcast. I'm not in the business of making podcasts and just like, just flat out, just sharing knowledge. I want to move people. So I want people to and hopefully people outside of our community. You have no experience with nursing or Filipinos, I want them to have that chance to build empathy for what it's like to be in our shoes. So it was always mostly about telling the story from that humanistic, genuine, sensitive, dignified way. You know, I wanted people to really relate to us as human beings and just try to feel that compassion for our community. So it was, Oh, that was kind of our, our our guiding light. It was always about following the personal and being humanistic about it, and but always having that foundation of research and history, but you know, it was our mission to just move people and impart compassion for our community. Absolutely,

Cassandra Taloma 22:30
and I like, you know, I feel like you're saying a lot of the experience that many of us feel in terms of being a Filipino American, that whenever we see ourselves represented on the big screen, we all immediately are super excited and like, hey, they said she was Filipino. Me too. I never seen anyone like that. And going back into history and learning more about where we come from and our background, we typically only hear a small snippet of during World War Two, during the death march. That's where we really show up in history books, at least in the US. So I love that the film really goes way deeper into what that experience is. And, you know, highlighting that, that shame of not knowing more about us, and you really portraying that light on what we go through and what everyone kind of went through back then, so that's really wonderful.

Michele Josue 23:23
Well, thank you. Thanks for saying that. No, I, in fairness, you know, I do say shame that I didn't know that growing up, or we didn't. But in fairness, that was not taught to us. We are erased from the history books. So you know, it's not all the onus isn't all on us, yeah, and then that, that shared feeling of like, oh my god, like that person's a quarter Filipino or that person, yes, that feeling is so universal to our community, because it's so rare, it's so rare to see that representation. So I think what we're all working towards in our various fields, whether it be, you know, nursing or, you know, marketing or fashion or music or film, it's really about just trying to be genuine and and share our experiences for the broader public so that it's all normalized. You know, there's Filipinos everywhere. I actually just learned on one of my travels from a historian, actually, yeah, a historian who was on a panel with me in San Francisco, she said that there are 10 generations of Filipinos here in the United States. That blew my mind. I was like 10, and then we were recently in New Orleans, you know where the first Filipinos came to the United States, in st malo, and that was really cool, too. So it's been a tour of the film, but also like a tour of Filipino history too.

Cassandra Taloma 24:52
Absolutely, I'm super excited to watch the film together with our community and share it with the larger Las Vegas community. Okay, so if our audience aren't able to join us tonight for the screening, how else may they be but they be able to find the movie or watch it? Yes,

Michele Josue 25:08
so you can follow us on social media. We're mostly on Instagram, although we do have, like, a skeletal presence on the other social media channels. We're on Instagram at nurse unseen, Doc and our website, Nourse unseen.com, which we continually update with various screenings as they arise. So you can contact us if you want to host a screening at your organization or your city. We'll try to get back to you right away. But Next up, we have a few more screenings in Los Angeles, November, 11 and 12th. Then I move on to our international premiere, which will be in Vancouver, which is exciting. And then we have a big screening at the it at ITFA, the International Documentary festival in Amsterdam, and that's very cool. And then we'll be in Hawaii, December, 6, seventh and eighth, and hopefully we'll just keep expanding, because this film has really gained a lot of momentum, a lot of ground, and I would love to share that we're actually Oscar eligible, so we're launching this very grassroots Oscars campaign, because I think this film is very powerful. It's beautiful, and it's important. It's important not only for our community, but for everyone to learn about and be inspired by this very heroic group of of people that saved us during not only COVID, but during health crisis across you know, the many decades, that's pretty

Cassandra Taloma 26:37
major. I'm really excited for you and for this film. And I wanted to ask you, I know you and your producer, one of your producers, Carlo, wasn't able to be here, but you both are really passionate about sharing the Filipino American stories. What do you have next if you can share with us? Hmm,

Michele Josue 26:54
well, we're very into setting up nurse unseen so that it a has a fighting chance in terms of, you know, hopefully getting seen and by the Academy branch members. And hopefully we can have a broadcast premiere and a streaming premiere. We have been talking with PBS, so hopefully the film will be available and accessible to people all across the country, but we definitely want to bring it internationally, you know, to different places, in Canada and definitely in the Philippines and wherever there are, you know, significant populations of Filipino nurses. So it's been Nourse unseen, non stop all the time. But we do have other other stories in the works, one that I think would be amazing. But, I mean, this is just, I'm just spit balling an idea, but we would love to tell the history of Jolly B. I think that would be so fun. That

Cassandra Taloma 27:51
would be amazing. And you heard it here that we are looking forward to that that's pretty iconic.

Michele Josue 27:58
Yeah. And I want to learn more, but I, you know, I love a corporate origin story, especially one where they start off as an underdog. You know, I think that'll be really cool, but I'm always on the hunt for really amazing Filipino and Filipino American stories, and to highlight them in the mainstream. That's very important to me, and that's something that will always be important to both Carla and myself throughout our careers. Well, we

Cassandra Taloma 28:23
can't wait to see what you have coming up next. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle for being here with us. You're very welcome. You