Lemon Crush was an idea for a script that you mentioned last time Dimsum spoke to you. Can you tell me how the idea for it came about?

The film's about a young Chinese waiter who bumps into his high-school sweetheart on her way to a date with her French teacher one Friday night in London's Chinatown. When she returns later stood-up, they go for coffee and an old friendship flickers back to life... It's probably the easiest thing I've ever written - the result of wandering through Chinatown countless evenings people-watching. I lived in Japan for two years, travelled in Hong Kong and China and love South East Asian film, so this was a world I felt I could recreate but at the same time, I wanted to write a quite simple love-story set over the course of one evening that a wide audience could understand. Match the particular atmosphere of Chinatown to a bittersweet romantic tone, fairly quirky performances and hopefully some funny lines and that was the basic idea.

How do you think your idea evolved through its transition to final film?

I'm very pleased with the end-result - the film's a good reflection of the original script. The main issues were casting and shooting for five long nights in Soho and Chinatown in cold but thankfully not wet November. David Tan, the Chinese Community Liaison Officer helped us with locations and we distributed bilingual fliers in Chinatown telling the community what we'd be doing. Once people realised it wasn't a gangster film but a love-story with a positive spin on Chinatown, they really got behind us and the staff at Sun Luen Cafe/Bakery, Poons and the back-door of Young Cheng where we filmed were fantastic. Casting was the other concern but Paul Courteney Hyu at Mulan was very helpful and things gradually fell into place. We cast Carl Wu as the young Chinese waiter Ken but were still looking for an older waiter to match him up with. Carl said his dad did a bit of acting and might be interested and he turned out to be Richard Ng! He's now living in London and this was his first British film, so that was a wonderfully unexpected experience.

You originally wanted a Chinese actress - how did this change?

As we were casting from a fairly small pool, we didn't want to be too rigid in who we saw. We initially thought of the two leads Ken and Mai as being from Hong Kong, so the whole film would be in Cantonese. But then the actress we thought most suitable was French-Vietnamese, so we adapted the script and shot Ken and Mai's dialogue in English, with other conversations in the film in Cantonese, French and Vietnamese.

Does this short film remain part of the series 'Songs for a Summer night?'

Yes. 'Songs for a Summer Night' is now called 'Weekend' and is a feature film set over one weekend in London made up of three interwoven stories about the Chinese waiter in 'Lemon Crush', a Senegalese minicab-driver and an Irish rasta. 'Lemon Crush' is essentially the first half of the Chinese waiter story and has been a really useful 'trailer' for financing the feature which we hope to shoot next Summer.

How do you find that your films are received by British and South east Asian audiences?

The response to 'Lemon Crush' has been great so far. It's been shown on Channel 4 and the Curzon Soho hope to schedule it before a feature just across the road from Chinatown in the next few months, so I'm looking forward to hearing the response to the screening in Glasgow as well.

Do you have any future plans to make more British Chinese films in the future?

The feature film 'Weekend' will continue on the Ken-Mai story from 'Lemon Crush' but that's the only project at the moment. After that, I'll do a film in Ireland.

How do you feel about participating in the Overseas Chinese Film festival?

I'm very honoured the film's been invited to screen. The British Chinese community were so generous to us in the making of the film and I hope that warmth and special atmosphere of Chinatown comes through on the screen.