For a girl who grew up with John Woo, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies and an admiration for femme fatales like Cynthia Rothrock and Moon Lee, Maria Tran was a natural for the small part of a guerrilla fighter in The Sapphires – not that she makes a habit of working in other people’s movies.
The 28-year-old Brisbane-born actor, filmmaker and community arts trainer with a degree in psychology has made a string of films of her own. A glance at the titles will give you an idea where her interests lie: Downtown Rumble, Maximum Choppage and the work in progress Quest for Jackie Chan. She is currently making Hit Girls, the film with a whole lot of Maria Tran as writer, producer, director and actor. Other films she has made in a prolifically short career have been A Little Dream from a Metro Screen grant and Happy Dent, which she made by accident in Vietnam when she was there on other business, running a series of workshops for kids in a shelter in Saigon. You can tell from some of the titles that Tran is quite the comedian, hence the mockumentary short Hot Bread Shop that was selected for screening in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane at the 2011 Colourfest Film Festival.
