Storytellers of PLNU: Valuing community and networking with filmmaker James Wicks

“Storytellers of PLNU” is a weekly column presented in The Point focused on highlighting faculty and students at Point Loma Nazarene University. The art of storytelling is alive and well among the PLNU community. This column’s purpose is to spotlight the creative works our students and faculty are creating.

James Wicks, professor of media and film studies who has been teaching at PLNU since 2009, grew up in Taiwan and has dedicated much of his work to the community there and his multicultural upbringing.

Last spring semester, Wicks traveled to Taiwan on two separate occasions while on sabbatical. The trips were planned around filmmaking, where he stepped away from his professor role and fully embraced himself as a filmmaker, he said. 

Wicks smiled when reminiscing on what makes him a storyteller. He said he believes everyone is a storyteller, no matter the medium you choose. For Wicks, he prefers to tell his stories through film. 

Taipei, Taiwan was the home base and inspiration for the three documentaries Wicks worked on last semester. Partnering with a Christian film festival, Wicks was able to get his second trip paid for as he is continuously working on a documentary about special needs children surfing in Taiwan, which is set to release in two years, he said. 

“Surfing Taiwan: Past, Present, Future,” an 18-minute documentary that tells three stories of Taiwanese surfers, was shaped on a whim as Wicks’ original plan for the film fell through, he said. 

The original plan, Wicks said, was to create a documentary telling the story of one of his friends in Taiwan but two months before the trip, the friend lost contact and the film’s shape had to change. 

Taipei wasn’t the original spot to film but the change in plans allowed Wicks to create a documentary featuring a number of voices, changing his vision to show the surf scene in Taiwan.

“I had to be flexible on the fly because everything I had planned for nine months didn’t happen. I’m trying to tell a collective story rather than the one I initially planned,” he said.

Despite the change in plans, Wicks said the community in Taipei was helpful with his filmmaking process. During his three weeks there, he got six hours of interviews. 

“When I changed my project, my friend in Taipei said I could live with him for the whole month, and do the project there,” Wicks said. “I just fell in love with that city. And so then, you know, I wanted to show what it looks like.”

The real story Wicks focused on telling through his documentaries was life in Taipei. Different from other surf travel documentaries, Wicks said he didn’t want the story to be lost and he prioritized working with the community there.

Wicks said Ben Cater, PLNU professor of history and associate dean of general education, encouraged him in pursuing his film’s goal. 

“Most surf documentaries are all about the people that travel there,” Wicks said. “And  I wanted to 100% reverse that model. I was talking to Ben, and he said: ‘I don’t even need waves. I don’t even need pictures of people surfing. I just want to see the place.’ The real story is the location.”

During his first trip to Taipei, Wicks scouted out certain locations he wanted to film and skate through for a skating documentary he and his son worked on during the second trip. 

With shots of the two skating through the rural areas of Taipei and the buzzing night life at a night market, the documentary showed the city of Taiwan naturally and authentically, like those watching were right there with them.

Since living in the United States, Wicks said he has returned to Taiwan every two years for academic conferences, but hopes to return in the future to screen films and make more movies. Being deeply connected to his Taiwanese heritage, he said it fostered his appreciation to hold on to this part of his identity, even in San Diego. 

“In San Diego, we have Taiwanese culture,” Wicks said. “There’s a Taiwanese History Association, and I’m friends with Taiwanese colleagues at UCSD; I try to stay current with the Taiwanese community.” 

Three of Wicks’ films will be out in the summer of 2025 with plans to have a pre-screening in February. The hope, Wicks said, is to receive feedback so that he can continue improving them. 

From one storyteller to another, Wicks said his admiration for Rick Rubin’s approach to storytelling inspired his own. Rubin, a successful music producer, describes storytelling as a devotional act.

“I like that idea that I mentioned from Rick Rubin, that, you work on your storytelling in a way that’s suitable for you,” Wicks said. “Maybe that’s journaling, or that’s writing a poem, or maybe it’s playing a song, or posting an Instagram reel – whatever way that you want to express yourself, keep working on it until you want to share it with someone else.” 

Wicks practices organic networking, which he described as a natural way of connecting with the community, and said he uses the skill to build community around the projects he works on.

“When it comes to networking, you don’t need to write your story and then send it to someone who has no idea who you are,” he said. “Just tell your friends, and then tell the friends’ friends and get a community that way.”

Wicks and his friend from college are working on writing music for a section within “Surfing Taiwan: Past, Present, Future,” with the hope of creating an artistic centerpiece – a musical interlude– in the middle of his documentary.

For his future documentaries, Wicks said he wants to continue telling the stories of Taiwanese culture to the community around him and let them evolve naturally, encouraging all storytellers to do the same. 

“You have your voice already,” Wicks said. “I hate the expression, ‘Find your voice’ – you have your voice. So express it in the way that you like and build that circle outward of community as you share and see where it goes.”