THE YEARNING TABLE
Los Angeles, California | Film Feature
Documentary
A meditation on cultural identity through intimate portrayals of Korean-Mexicans from Mérida, Oaxaca, and Mexico City, “The Yearning Table”explores underrepresented stories of diaspora. Your support gets us to Mexico City to film ⅔ of our production. Help us get that much closer to the finish line!
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This campaign raised $15,269 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
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A meditation on cultural identity through intimate portrayals of Korean-Mexicans from Mérida, Oaxaca, and Mexico City, “The Yearning Table”explores underrepresented stories of diaspora. Your support gets us to Mexico City to film ⅔ of our production. Help us get that much closer to the finish line!
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
THE STORY
Moving between Oaxaca, Mérida, and Mexico City, we follow the stories of Shin Gya, Don Ulises, and Yunuen Rhi.
In Mérida we explore the history and legacy of the Korean-Yucatecs, a community of 1000 Koreans that immigrated to the Yucatán in 1905 as henequen laborers. This anomalous group has developed a Mayan-Korean culture over 4 generations unlike any other in the world, in large part due to the timing of their immigration before the Japanese occupation from 1910-1945.
The elders in this community, including Don Ulises are the last to have a living memory of the forced labor and abuse their families suffered in the early years of their immigration. The documentary further explores how the children of this immigration, such as Yunuen Rhi, use their diasporic identity as both anchoring and freeing.
In Oaxaca, we move to an intimate and personal portrait of Shin Gya, a Korean artist who has carved out her own interpretation of Korean identity through adversity and isolation.
All these stories echo their details in food. Whether the small Korean restaurant operated by Shin Gya and her son, or the resourceful culinary adaptions in Korean-Yucatec cuisine, or the alchemy of ritualistic foods by Yunuen Rhi; “The Yearning Table” examines questions of collective and personal identity through the adaptation of cuisine and tradition.
THE CHARACTERS
OAXACA - OAXACA - A woman both gracefully and fiercely carving her own path, we move to an intimate and personal portrait of shin gya, a korean artist and cook living in San Agustín, Etla.
A dancer by practice, she’s created a life for herself and her son Govinda as they run a small Korean restaurant.
MÉRIDA- An elder and leader in his community, Don Ulises is one of the few remaining members of this community that can speak to the early years of struggle and adaptation of the Korean-Yucatecs, a community of 1000 Koreans that immigrated to the Yucatán in 1905 as laborers under slave-like conditions.
Don Ulises is a life-long advocate for preserving his Korean heritage and is a community organizer actively trying to connect the Korean-Yucatec story to their ancestry in Korea.
CDMX / MÉRIDA - A descendent of the original Korean-Yucatecs, Yunuen Rhi is a non-binary Xicana-Korean applied anthropologist, martial movement instructor, performance artist, and healer. As a descendent of the Korean-Yucatecs, Yunuen gives us unique insight into the future of this disappearing community.
In our upcoming shoot we collaborate with Yunuen in a Jesa ritual in memory of her Korean ancestors who first came to Mexico.
WHAT IS THE YEARNING TABLE?
Throughout the film we return to The Yearning Table as both a visual and poetic device. We understand The Yearning Table as the intersection of many personal journeys expressed in food. The most flattened version of this cuisine has been called fusion but in this documentary we look beyond flavors and read ingredients like histories and recipes like genealogies. Our table evokes the yearning we feel for taste memory generations deep, the cravings we feel for foods our ancestors ate. Food connects us to our personal histories in the most visceral ways. We crave the foods of our childhood for a reason, we yearn for nostalgia we can taste.
IMPACT STATEMENT
Our documentary engages and builds beyond the screen, supported by a series of communal dinners highlighting the diasporic recipes we encounter along our journey. We understand that the most tangible and immediate way to empathize in experience is to taste the food of the diaspora, to understand how flavors express hardship, history, and migration.
With 15 years of experience in creating food experiences we will activate communal dinners that also serve as screenings to share the work and engage participants in the growing of the yearning table. Through these food based dinners we hope to make the experience of sharing diaspora to be multi-dimensional and beyond the passive act of watching a film.
WHY NOW?
Our mission is to bring visibility to isolated Korean diasporic communities in Mexico, broadening the scope of Korean diaspora. The community of Korean Mexicans are aging out, but their stories have yet to be documented with a focus on culinary and ritual traditions.
Working with Korean-Yucatecs in Mérida, we want to record the living memories of the elders in this community before this history becomes lost to time. While the community itself has done much work to connect to preserve their culture, we hope to aid in not only creating bridges with other Korean communities, but to connect to their heritage in Korea. We are currently seeking ways to trace family connections in Korea for the Korean-Yucatecs who in many cases lost ways to find their families before immigration.
WHY US?
I've worked as a writer, chef, and artist for the last 15 years . My work uses food to explore cultural and diasporic heritage through multiple mediums including food writing, food distribution advocacy, and currently “The Yearning Table”.
First conceived as a project during my residency at Pocoapoco in 2019, I've been building a relationship to this story and to our subjects for the last 6 years. the connections in this project are not manufactured, they’ve unfolded and grown through happenstance and genuine care.
The many ways my work has manifested boils down simply to the belief that sharing a meal is an act of empathy, and empathy is an act of healing. My work has always understood food as art and art as community building.“The Yearning Table” is the act of engaging in this belief and creating work that nourishes.
WHAT'S NEXT
To date the project has received grants from GYOPO to complete two unique development shoots in Mérida and Oaxaca to determine our primary participants and build relationships within the community.
We have currently filmed ⅓ of our production in Oaxaca and with your support will have completed ⅔ of our production by the end of Fall 2025. We plan to complete production in Spring 2026.
Throughout production and post-production we plan to host 4 events every season engaging our community in the process.
WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP
We are relying on your support to help us finish our 2nd leg of production. This upcoming shoot with Yunuen Rhi vital to help us complete this documentary. We may never get another chance to film a ritual like this again. We need to raise 80% of our fundraising goal or we lose all contributions (money will be refunded if this is the unfortunate case). These funds make or break the next leg of our journey and will go directly to funding our crew, providing accommodations, permits, and equipment.
KEEP FOLLOWING OUR WORK
Keep updated by signing up for our newsletter on our new website and follow our journey on our instagram.
We'll also be hosting a dinner on September 27th in Los Angeles. We'll be serving a special meal along with a Makgeoli workshop. Find out more here.
credits:
Producer: Vanessa Elliott
DP: Matthew Nauser
Editor: Sam Andre
Additional footage of Yunuen Rhi courtesy of Yunuen Rhi and Zen Cohen
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
FLIGHTS & ACCOMMODATIONS FOR OUR CREW
Costs $6,000
Help get us there! While we will use local crew whenever possible but our principle crew needs to travel to our locations in Mexico.
PERMITS & FEES
Costs $4,000
Help us pay for location fees, equipment permits, and international filming permits
FLIGHT & ACCOMMODATIONS FOR OUR SUBJECTS
Costs $3,000
Our subjects are generously donating their time. We want to make sure they aren't going out of pocket to tell their stories
FOOD COSTS FOR THE YEARNING TABLE
Costs $2,000
As much as we wish it was free to host moveable feasts, it still costs money to host our communal dinner. Help us pay for ingredients!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
SAEHEE CHO : DIRECTOR
Saehee Cho is a Korean-American artist and cook, has spent the last 6 years traveling throughout Mexico searching for diverse examples of Korean diaspora among relatively undocumented communities in Oaxaca and Mérida.
After 16 years of serving narrative food in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico, feeding 1000+ dinner guests, Saehee is embarking on a personal journey to understand the meaning of food through the lens of diaspora outside of her Korean-American experience.
Using food as an act of translation between cultural, generational, and language barriers, Saehee weaves disparate stories into shared meals around The Yearning Table. These moveable feasts become both symbolically and tangibly a space to find joy in the complexity of identity.
VANESSA ELLIOTT : PRODUCER
Vanessa Elliott is a Filipino American producer based in Los Angeles (Tongva territory) with over 15 years of experience bringing powerful stories to life across documentary, narrative shorts, and commercials. Standout credits include ANGEL CITY (HBO MAX, 2023), both seasons of SONG EXPLODER (Netflix, 2020), and THE MORTIFIED GUIDE (Netflix, Sundance premiere, 2018). Vanessa’s short films have screened internationally, earning awards at top-tier festivals such as SXSW, Cannes Court Métrage, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Fantastic Fest, and the Oscar-qualifying Warsaw International Film Festival. She is currently producing a much-anticipated Olivia Newton-John feature documentary for Netflix.
MATTHEW NAUSER : DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Matthew Nauser is an award-winning visual artist and cinematographer of film and TV, including Crows Are White (2022)—whose practice merges narrative techniques with documentary form to expand the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling.
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Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
THE STORY
Moving between Oaxaca, Mérida, and Mexico City, we follow the stories of Shin Gya, Don Ulises, and Yunuen Rhi.
In Mérida we explore the history and legacy of the Korean-Yucatecs, a community of 1000 Koreans that immigrated to the Yucatán in 1905 as henequen laborers. This anomalous group has developed a Mayan-Korean culture over 4 generations unlike any other in the world, in large part due to the timing of their immigration before the Japanese occupation from 1910-1945.
The elders in this community, including Don Ulises are the last to have a living memory of the forced labor and abuse their families suffered in the early years of their immigration. The documentary further explores how the children of this immigration, such as Yunuen Rhi, use their diasporic identity as both anchoring and freeing.
In Oaxaca, we move to an intimate and personal portrait of Shin Gya, a Korean artist who has carved out her own interpretation of Korean identity through adversity and isolation.
All these stories echo their details in food. Whether the small Korean restaurant operated by Shin Gya and her son, or the resourceful culinary adaptions in Korean-Yucatec cuisine, or the alchemy of ritualistic foods by Yunuen Rhi; “The Yearning Table” examines questions of collective and personal identity through the adaptation of cuisine and tradition.
THE CHARACTERS
OAXACA - OAXACA - A woman both gracefully and fiercely carving her own path, we move to an intimate and personal portrait of shin gya, a korean artist and cook living in San Agustín, Etla.
A dancer by practice, she’s created a life for herself and her son Govinda as they run a small Korean restaurant.
MÉRIDA- An elder and leader in his community, Don Ulises is one of the few remaining members of this community that can speak to the early years of struggle and adaptation of the Korean-Yucatecs, a community of 1000 Koreans that immigrated to the Yucatán in 1905 as laborers under slave-like conditions.
Don Ulises is a life-long advocate for preserving his Korean heritage and is a community organizer actively trying to connect the Korean-Yucatec story to their ancestry in Korea.
CDMX / MÉRIDA - A descendent of the original Korean-Yucatecs, Yunuen Rhi is a non-binary Xicana-Korean applied anthropologist, martial movement instructor, performance artist, and healer. As a descendent of the Korean-Yucatecs, Yunuen gives us unique insight into the future of this disappearing community.
In our upcoming shoot we collaborate with Yunuen in a Jesa ritual in memory of her Korean ancestors who first came to Mexico.
WHAT IS THE YEARNING TABLE?
Throughout the film we return to The Yearning Table as both a visual and poetic device. We understand The Yearning Table as the intersection of many personal journeys expressed in food. The most flattened version of this cuisine has been called fusion but in this documentary we look beyond flavors and read ingredients like histories and recipes like genealogies. Our table evokes the yearning we feel for taste memory generations deep, the cravings we feel for foods our ancestors ate. Food connects us to our personal histories in the most visceral ways. We crave the foods of our childhood for a reason, we yearn for nostalgia we can taste.
IMPACT STATEMENT
Our documentary engages and builds beyond the screen, supported by a series of communal dinners highlighting the diasporic recipes we encounter along our journey. We understand that the most tangible and immediate way to empathize in experience is to taste the food of the diaspora, to understand how flavors express hardship, history, and migration.
With 15 years of experience in creating food experiences we will activate communal dinners that also serve as screenings to share the work and engage participants in the growing of the yearning table. Through these food based dinners we hope to make the experience of sharing diaspora to be multi-dimensional and beyond the passive act of watching a film.
WHY NOW?
Our mission is to bring visibility to isolated Korean diasporic communities in Mexico, broadening the scope of Korean diaspora. The community of Korean Mexicans are aging out, but their stories have yet to be documented with a focus on culinary and ritual traditions.
Working with Korean-Yucatecs in Mérida, we want to record the living memories of the elders in this community before this history becomes lost to time. While the community itself has done much work to connect to preserve their culture, we hope to aid in not only creating bridges with other Korean communities, but to connect to their heritage in Korea. We are currently seeking ways to trace family connections in Korea for the Korean-Yucatecs who in many cases lost ways to find their families before immigration.
WHY US?
I've worked as a writer, chef, and artist for the last 15 years . My work uses food to explore cultural and diasporic heritage through multiple mediums including food writing, food distribution advocacy, and currently “The Yearning Table”.
First conceived as a project during my residency at Pocoapoco in 2019, I've been building a relationship to this story and to our subjects for the last 6 years. the connections in this project are not manufactured, they’ve unfolded and grown through happenstance and genuine care.
The many ways my work has manifested boils down simply to the belief that sharing a meal is an act of empathy, and empathy is an act of healing. My work has always understood food as art and art as community building.“The Yearning Table” is the act of engaging in this belief and creating work that nourishes.
WHAT'S NEXT
To date the project has received grants from GYOPO to complete two unique development shoots in Mérida and Oaxaca to determine our primary participants and build relationships within the community.
We have currently filmed ⅓ of our production in Oaxaca and with your support will have completed ⅔ of our production by the end of Fall 2025. We plan to complete production in Spring 2026.
Throughout production and post-production we plan to host 4 events every season engaging our community in the process.
WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP
We are relying on your support to help us finish our 2nd leg of production. This upcoming shoot with Yunuen Rhi vital to help us complete this documentary. We may never get another chance to film a ritual like this again. We need to raise 80% of our fundraising goal or we lose all contributions (money will be refunded if this is the unfortunate case). These funds make or break the next leg of our journey and will go directly to funding our crew, providing accommodations, permits, and equipment.
KEEP FOLLOWING OUR WORK
Keep updated by signing up for our newsletter on our new website and follow our journey on our instagram.
We'll also be hosting a dinner on September 27th in Los Angeles. We'll be serving a special meal along with a Makgeoli workshop. Find out more here.
credits:
Producer: Vanessa Elliott
DP: Matthew Nauser
Editor: Sam Andre
Additional footage of Yunuen Rhi courtesy of Yunuen Rhi and Zen Cohen
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
FLIGHTS & ACCOMMODATIONS FOR OUR CREW
Costs $6,000
Help get us there! While we will use local crew whenever possible but our principle crew needs to travel to our locations in Mexico.
PERMITS & FEES
Costs $4,000
Help us pay for location fees, equipment permits, and international filming permits
FLIGHT & ACCOMMODATIONS FOR OUR SUBJECTS
Costs $3,000
Our subjects are generously donating their time. We want to make sure they aren't going out of pocket to tell their stories
FOOD COSTS FOR THE YEARNING TABLE
Costs $2,000
As much as we wish it was free to host moveable feasts, it still costs money to host our communal dinner. Help us pay for ingredients!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
SAEHEE CHO : DIRECTOR
Saehee Cho is a Korean-American artist and cook, has spent the last 6 years traveling throughout Mexico searching for diverse examples of Korean diaspora among relatively undocumented communities in Oaxaca and Mérida.
After 16 years of serving narrative food in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico, feeding 1000+ dinner guests, Saehee is embarking on a personal journey to understand the meaning of food through the lens of diaspora outside of her Korean-American experience.
Using food as an act of translation between cultural, generational, and language barriers, Saehee weaves disparate stories into shared meals around The Yearning Table. These moveable feasts become both symbolically and tangibly a space to find joy in the complexity of identity.
VANESSA ELLIOTT : PRODUCER
Vanessa Elliott is a Filipino American producer based in Los Angeles (Tongva territory) with over 15 years of experience bringing powerful stories to life across documentary, narrative shorts, and commercials. Standout credits include ANGEL CITY (HBO MAX, 2023), both seasons of SONG EXPLODER (Netflix, 2020), and THE MORTIFIED GUIDE (Netflix, Sundance premiere, 2018). Vanessa’s short films have screened internationally, earning awards at top-tier festivals such as SXSW, Cannes Court Métrage, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Fantastic Fest, and the Oscar-qualifying Warsaw International Film Festival. She is currently producing a much-anticipated Olivia Newton-John feature documentary for Netflix.
MATTHEW NAUSER : DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Matthew Nauser is an award-winning visual artist and cinematographer of film and TV, including Crows Are White (2022)—whose practice merges narrative techniques with documentary form to expand the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling.