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Photo courtesy of Maury Duchamp Second-year M.F.A. student Eli Kaufman acts with Nick Nolte in "Northfolk."

t may sound cheesy, but great filmmaking is Eli Kaufman's middle name. No, really, his middle name, Akira, comes from his father's love of the films of the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Upon asking Kaufman about his favorite filmmakers, Kurosawa ("Seven Samurai," "Ran") is an obvious choice.

"What Kurosawa does is he makes his audience work to understand the picture," said Kaufman. "It's not formulaic, where you know when the bad guy will come in. He describes his characters in subtle ways."

A second-year film directing master's student, Kaufman recently took off a few months from UCLA to intern with the directors Mark and Michael Polish on their new film "Northfolk" in Montana. The Polish brothers are gods among independent filmmakers, having made their previous two films ("Twin Falls Idaho" and "Jackpot") with shoestring budgets and garnered rave reviews.

Through a program called Project Involve (sponsored by Independent Feature Project West), Kaufman became an assistant director to the Polish twins.

To add to the dream-come-true internship, Kaufman may even get his on-screen debut in the film opposite Nick Nolte.

"I thought they were kidding with me when they said I should be in it. The last time I had acted was in the sixth grade. The scene could be on the cutting room floor, but they put me in a scene with Nick Nolte and I have a couple of lines with him," Kaufman said.

Kaufman considers himself an independent filmmaker interested in stories that are personal. For example, his newest film, "Haiku," centers around his interpretation of a 17th-century Japanese haiku and features only four words of dialogue in addition to the haiku.

These types of experimental, non-linear ideas of filmmaking are encouraged at the UCLA School of Film and Television which is known for being an avant-garde institution.

"There's a real effort here at UCLA to create an environment that encourages filmmakers to push the envelope, to try to find the independent voice and create narratives that may not be easy to watch but represent something personal for the filmmaker," Kaufman said.

As his use of a haiku and his love of Kurosawa might suggest, the half-Japanese Kaufman's personal side centers largely around the Japanese culture in which he grew up. Being Asian, he would like to break out of the stereotypical roles male Asian characters are often confined to play in the movie world.

"I'm so tired of seeing Asian males represented as scientists or kung fu artists, but never as romantic leads," said Kaufman.

Certainly, the pool of Asian talent is expanding, yet it is still bleak in terms of genres. Kaufman cites Asian parents disapproving of acting as a profession for their children as a reason for the limited pool of Asian talent in America.

Kaufman himself looks nothing like the stereotypical math or science-oriented Asian nerd. The bald 29-year-old studied trumpet performance at Ohio's Oberlin College and later graduated with a degree in English. After Oberlin, he taught eighth grade English and coached girls soccer at a private school in New Jersey.

To teach literature, he would show film versions of books the class had read. There the discussion often slanted toward filmmaking techniques, which Kaufman loved but hadn't studied formally. Applying to UCLA film school on a dare from his students, he was accepted to the directing program in spite of never having made a film before.

"What's neat about UCLA's graduate film program is that they don't necessarily look for people who are filmmakers already. They look for people who are storytellers, creative, and have had different lives. There are former lawyers and business people in my classes," Kaufman said.

Having won the Motion Picture Association of America's Young Filmmakers Award twice as well as watching the Polish brothers at work with Nick Nolte, Kaufman is brimming with optimism about his newfound connections. With digital cameras and the potential of online video streaming, he hopes to join the Polish brothers in the indie world of high talent and low budgets.

"I got inspired because I got a sense that if I had a story I'm passionate about, it's possible in this day and age to make an independent film with truly talented people," he said. "At UCLA, my job for the next two years is to make films that I care about in a nurturing environment, not a studio which says this film is not going to sell."