Bonding with family can be hard for anybody, especially when your family members are older than you, with decades of life and experience between you and them. And for children of immigrant families, not only is age a barrier, but language and culture are as well. And so, the question is: How do you connect with family when encountering these sociocultural circumstances? 

Amy Pham, a senior majoring in media arts and practice, filmed her senior thesis project — a narrative-driven music video — in an attempt to answer this question, with the solution centering around the silly, disarming and comedically vulnerable effects of weed. 

“In a quirky, heartfelt journey sparked by accidental edibles, three generations of women come together in one night,” Pham said about the project. 

Cannabis is the catalyst for a daughter, mother and grandmother to get to know one another. This opens an amusing path for the rest of the story to unfold, as well as to lightheartedly challenge the stigma of recreational drugs in the Asian American community.

“Recreational drugs in California are legal, but are kind of taboo in Asia — especially my family views it as that,” Pham said. “Cannabis is a nice way to break the barrier between these generations of women in a fun way … It’s definitely not going to be the main focus. It’s just a starting point.”

Pham subverts a variety of different expectations with “Echoes”: the negative stigmas against weed within the Asian American community, the barriers between different generations of Asian women and the perceived role of women within Asian American culture. 

“The story has two different sides once the music starts. The grandma takes the edible and she has this lucid dream about her aspirations and her life in general,” Pham said. “The second part is the relationship between a mother and a daughter and about how food can bridge them together.”

To make the film culturally authentic and emotionally genuine, Pham looked toward her own family for inspiration and guidance — especially her grandmother.

“I interviewed my grandparents. I interviewed my mom and women in my life,” Pham said. “I feel really sad thinking that a lot of women like my grandmother had to immigrate and find a better life for her children and make those plans ahead. Once people get older, simple aspirations where you’re not going to be the best of anything is super looked down upon.” 

Pham focused her film on the experiences of not just her own role as a daughter, but also her grandmother and mother, looking not to summarize but to emphasize.

“I definitely want to encourage [my grandma] to still share her biggest dreams. Most women in general as they get older, that stigmatization about how they can’t have the same aspirations, I don’t agree with that,” Pham said. “People will be surprised there’s so much of an older woman [in the film] because I feel people assume the younger version would be shined on more, but I definitely want the spotlight to be on my mom and grandma.”

“Echoes” uniquely and vehemently focuses on Vietnamese women. Not only is the Vietnamese community often overlooked in the Asian ethnic diaspora, but women especially in many Asian American environments are underestimated and overlooked.

“Being able to represent Southeast Asians and show light to my Vietnamese community was really fun and something I wish to do throughout my career,” Pham said.

“Echoes” is accessible to different generations of people, but also different families as a whole. Familial relationships are always complex and deeply emotional, and for the Asian American filmgoer, seeing what they’ve grown up with helps them make peace and find love with themselves, and their family. 

“[The film] comes from Amy’s desire to explore themes of intergenerational trauma but also unconventional ways of bonding,” said Matt Oflas, the producer for “Echoes” and a USC alum. “You wouldn’t really expect a very traditional Vietnamese grandmother to trip on edibles, so it’s a fun way to explore intergenerational trauma and those familial bonds.”

“Echoes” is also structured as a narrative-driven music video. The film begins with a bit of dialogue, but slips into an original song written by Pham, in collaboration with Theo Pleasure-Park, a junior majoring in media arts and practice as well as popular music performance. 

“My roles were, one, listening to Amy’s musical influences and trying to make the music part of that, which is where I’m more efficient,” Pleasure-Park said. “And then the second one was helping Amy write lyrics for the song that would tie to the theme of the short film, which ended up being the most fun process. It was a nice challenge to write from a more imagery- and memory-based place and learning to tie moments in time to larger emotions.”

Since the song is part of a thesis project, it is another manifestation of Pham’s creative passion and storytelling voice.

“I’ve always had a music background,” Pham said. “I wanted to pay homage to my roots in terms of my music and being able to create something that was completely mine, which is the whole point of a thesis.”

Overall, “Echoes” is a film that will shed some light onto the complicated — and oftentimes bewildering — relationships between ourselves and our families. Viewers will come out of the film being more open and understanding than before. More than anything though, “Echoes” is built to teach its audience the importance of taking joy in appreciating different experiences, no matter how varied and even between people as close as family. 

“There is so much light in really difficult conversations and difficult experiences and so, being able to be silly and bring your walls down, you never know what connections you can make with people you deem difficult to be around,” Pham said.