This piece was commissioned by TACLA, in response to a collaborative program co-hosted with rarara at Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and In the Mood Magazine.

Pathetic fallacy is alive and well in Toronto. On my way to VOICE OVER: Performances In Response To Films, I refresh the weather map under my umbrella. There may or may not be a tornado brewing in Lake Ontario. There are certainly summer squalls. The air quality is still dubious. Already, I have been thoroughly soaked by a passing car.

By the time In The Mood Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Gabrielle Marceau scans my ticket, I am passably damp and the worst of the warnings have passed. In The Mood’s managing editor, Sennah Yee, thanks us for braving the elements. Because we are safe, the moody confluence of weather outside the theatre now feels apt. In The Mood, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival’s rarara special projects, and TACLA dreamed up this screening late last winter. Today, the projectionist will screen a series of four short, experimental films from the Reel Asian archives. Immediately after each film, musician Jaz Tsui will improvise a ten-minute sonic response. While Jaz plays, a local film critic will be hard at work, drafting their immediate response in a brief, self-contained piece. When Jaz is finished the critic will take the mic and read us their piece. Throughout, Rogue Benjamin and Adele Lee will provide ASL interpretation. To dissuade any preparation from our performers, the films have been kept secret until this afternoon. They, like us, have no idea what they’re about to see.

1.

In Lesley Loksi Chan’s Curse Cures (2009), the story of the narrator’s mother, a garment worker, and her colleagues is told through arrangements of plastic transparencies. Sentences are laid out on screen and shuffled like fridge magnets; images overlap. The silhouette of a sewing machine descends as hands push translucent seams across the screen, simulating the seamstresses’ work. One woman stitches a curse into every pair of jeans. The other women don’t know why she does it; they only know the curses work.

2.

Jaz Tsui begins the musical interpretation. Before them on the table, they have only as many tools as they could carry on their person: a pocket piano, a melodica, a drum kit, bone china. The melody is jagged, prone to frenetic distortion. Over the noise, they crush and crunch large ceramic shards in their hands: the same motion of Lesley Loksi Chan’s transparencies crumpling in on themselves. Afterwards, Jaz shows me the shards. There’s a dainty robin, the severed head of Prince Charles. They were instructed to buy bone china by a music instructor, who assured them that the china “never breaks.” The china did break, but music persists! The cure for curses may well be improvisation, ingenuity.

3.

Furqan Mohamed, the first critic of the evening, takes the mic. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she says before reading a gorgeous, roving scene. It’s not traditional, evaluative criticism but a series of questions posed by child interlocutors. “You should have a baby,” one child decides at the piece’s end. This is the judgment passed upon the narrator. “You should create,” is what I hear.

Between screenings, the critics are huddled together on the floor among bean bag chairs and cushions. “I was scared shitless,” Alexander Mooney confesses later. While note-taking during the first film, his comments were more appraising, the genre of observations he might make while on deadline for The Globe and Mail or Reverse Shot. “But then Furqan started reading and I went, ‘Oh, of course.’” This afternoon, the writers are working within the ekphrastic tradition, crafting descriptive responses that evoke the audience’s emotions. Personal meditation is welcome. Furqan Mohamed’s creative response extends an expansive sense of freedom to the subsequent performers. Respond laterally; respond emotively; respond imaginatively. There are no expectations, and so there are also no rules.

4.

Constant Yen’s LOOK (2002) is an astounding kaleidoscope of metamorphoses through medium, shape, and size. The film has a dreamy logic. Claymation letters become blinking eyes. Hand-drawn cartoons rotate onto frame and kiss stars onto one another’s heads. Their 2D hands produce 3D shells, which they ring like bells — before they’re snatched up by the grey hands of larger clay beings. A leaf turns itself over and reveals itself to be the shell, now with eyes and a jaunty smile. LOOK is an assemblage of free associations guided by an emotive, extraterrestrial soundtrack. As its title intonates, it demands to be seen.

5.

Jaz riffs on LOOK’s orbital melodies. The synths come out. They blow into the melodica’s long, goose-like neck. The melodica is the manticore of instruments, part-piano, part-harmonica, part-accordion, part-tube. For ten more minutes, we are suspended in a surreal soundscape.

6.

EJ Kneifel retrieves a tiny notebook from their pocket. They have a practice of recording tiny thoughts and small lists, and so are attuned to LOOK’s daintiest creatures. “POV you’re a gnome in the grass,” Kneifel reads. The piece is playful, an ode to friendship. “Let’s be small together!” the speaker urges. Let’s be bugs in the grass, stars that fit into the palms of our hands, shells in the sky.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Yen tells me after. Like most of the artists present, VOICE OVER is a completely new method of engagement. Yen is awed. They weren’t expecting the linkages between their film and its sonic and linguistic interpretations to be so clear — and so similar to their own practice. “I really like that EJ brought up the grocery list. That felt really similar to how I made LOOK. Making lists, collaging, experimenting.”

Everyone in the room has an interpretation. The critics and I are not the only ones balancing notebooks on our lap, scribbling notes. VOICE OVER’s programmers have equipped the entire audience with scrap paper and pencils. Friends to either side of me are polishing thoughtful sentences. Other attendees are drawing their responses. There are lists and more lists. The fun is in sharing these observations, witnessing the quantity and diversity of thoughts these short films inspire. As we moved through this trio of performances, I was fixated on their shared and mischievous tone. But it makes complete sense that Yen, an omnivorous artist, would be tracking the shared sense of form. I run through my notes again, reconsidering my instincts.

6.5.

The screen flickers. French Exit starts halfway through. Stops. “Don’t look!” Khanh Tudo, Reel Asian’s shorts programmer yells from the other room. We dutifully and joyfully avert our eyes.

Reel Asian’s special projects programmer, Jasmine Gui, frames the event itself as the programming equivalent of jazz. They’re experimenting as much as the performers are. “I was thinking of jazz as in free improvisation but also call and response,” says Gui. “I think in committing to highlighting the experimental works in the Reel Asian archive, my point of departure was to reanimate old material that doesn’t always fit canonically into more ‘serious’ or ‘classical’ discourse on Asian Canadian media history. The reanimation would emerge through direct contact with contemporary writers, voices, and language — this wasn’t limited to race either — and would be guided by expansion and encounter. What can these films do to other people?”

But the co-programmers didn’t want these points of contact to feel pretentious or inhibited. “In my conversations with Sennah,” Gui continues, “we talked about the desire for more play, and for less burdensome or weighty modes of programming.” The work of cultural programming can be steeped in seriousness. There are contexts and lineages to be traced. There are months and weeks of thoughtful preparation. The goal of VOICE OVER was to reintroduce pockets of spontaneity into all of this rigour and to prioritize the moment of engagement. “The role of ephemeral sound and performer-audience presence was key to this. We then chose not to archive the performance in order to think about how archival exclusions are not always about loss. The responses to archive material can be many, varied, and of specific consequence but not beyond that.”

7.

If LOOK is a kaleidoscope, Oliver Husain’s French Exit (2018) is an optical illusion. Initially centred on the image of a revolving door, the film features three dancers, often in strange geometric clothing. As the film progresses, it becomes a sort of live lenticular print. Two shots play out simultaneously in alternating strips. The revolving door revolves on itself. The dancers move over the revolving door. They dance with themselves, with each other. The timing is meticulous. We are watching magic trick after magic trick, as the bodies extend through time and space and perspective, always erring on the perfect edge of coherency.

8.

The sounds of a spaceship. The sounds of light, filtered through rotating glass. The sounds of a door’s bottom rail sweeping over the threshold again and again and again.

9.

“This is a series of speculative captions for what I saw,” Dhvani Ramanujam prefaces. Her piece is attuned to the negative spaces in Husain’s alternating strips of movement. She delights in the way the film speaks through gesture and invents ways to speak back. Ramanujam performs a series of poetic invocations to a ghost that moves among the dancers, the doors, the light. “Come towards me, ghost. / Time melts all into noise. / If you press your feet towards the ground, I’m sure you can hear God.”

“I can’t believe I’ve never seen that technique before,” a friend of a friend says of French Exit. We are baffled by its scrupulous construction. We are moved by its movements. We are, Ramanujam is right, haunted by its singularity.

In conversation, Ramanujam professes a deep interest in “returning cinema to the embodied.” Crucial to embodiment is the ability to be present in the moment, however bisecting or dissecting that moment may be. As Ramanujam speaks eloquently on embodiment, I think of another live venue for Toronto film criticism: Saffron Maeve’s quarterly Crit Salon, where a curated list of critics is invited to read their long-form work. Film critics are no stranger to dashing off quick reviews for publication or posting daily missives from bustling festivals. One of Crit Salon’s impetuses was to be the contrast and complement to that necessary rhythm of work: longer pieces, more laboured thought, and the analyses and risks that can only come from watching and rewatching the film. VOICE OVER serves as an equally complementary counterbalance. Instead of the quick evaluation or the loving long thought, VOICE OVER invites its critics to share their most instinctive creative impulses. We get a flash of their perspectives and interests, the axis around which all their work orbits.

10.

Shot on a handheld camcorder, Meesoo Lee’s A Bad Hair Day (2004) is an unpretentious comedic tour du force. Meesoo records a conversation between himself and his parents in a Korean hair salon. Meesoo’s father is getting a perm. Both parents implore Meesoo to amend his hairstyle, a choppy, asymmetrical cut that causes them distress. “I cannot say this is my son… Weird looking haircut… looks filthy, penniless,” they opine. They ignore Meesoo’s gentle defenses of his style. They implore him to think of their comfort, to do this small thing for them. Meesoo gives in. At home, his freshly-permed father praises how his son has been transformed from “beggar to gentleman,” but the film cuts off before Meesoo shows us this coerced cut. After the three preceding films, each of which eschewed dialogue, Meesoo’s parents’ stubborn, and rather blatant, bids at manipulation are all the more hilarious and the placating capitulation that much more devastating.

11.

Even Jaz’s musical response is chatty. The melodica and the drumset engage in disharmonious debate. A Bad Hair Day prompts Jaz to employ a new instrument: their voice. They set down the melodica. “But it would look better!” they exclaim. We laugh again.

12.

Alexander Mooney reads to us a small scene. A lover is just out of frame while their partner FaceTimes their parents. They have both recently shaved their heads, but the parents don’t yet know it was an act of intimacy. For now, the lover eavesdrops, tracking the fusions of pain, loyalty, and love. Mooney gives us another angle into the discordance of watching someone be present, as best they can, with their family — and the world that might exist quietly, just outside the frame.

Applause. The lights come back on, but the audience lingers, mills, socializes. We have so many slips of paper to compare. We are feeling generous and energized, animated by that particular awareness that making things is distinctly, attainably possible. VOICE OVER is not only a successful exercise in improvisation, but also a showcase of what one can do with simple technology, with modest budgets, with a single instant. In five or ten minutes, you can think together laterally, creatively, and imperfectly. What better way to spend a Saturday squall?

Rebecca Peng is a fiction writer and critic based in Toronto. Her criticism has appeared in The Toronto Review and Rungh Magazine, among others. She exists online at rebeccapeng.ca.

Recapturing Voice Over: Performances in Response to Films was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Mina Wang Zhou

This piece is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative VI, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 29th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

[One of violence’s most insidious effects is its multitudinous creep over personal identity. Causing fatigue to its targets, it shakes up understandings of self and the world at large.] To experience violence is to make sense of where distortions begin and end, trying desperately to find an exit, only to run in circles instead. The overt, aggressive violence of excess and its undercurrent of silence work hand-in-hand to fragment one’s perception of time, interpersonal relations, and emotional recollection, thereby creating a vacuum where there is no space for pause, only a relentless repetition of sensory overload followed by isolation and depletion.

In Tony Nguyen’s YEAR OF THE CAT, the obvious violences named are the large-scale impositions of American imperialism and the effects of the Vietnam War, intertwined with the personal effects of Nguyen’s mother being sexually assaulted. In Min Sook Lee’s THERE ARE NO WORDS, these obvious violences are war, the Korean military dictatorship (which Lee’s father participates in as an actor of violence), Japanese occupation, US imperialism, communist hunting, and the COVID pandemic. On an individual scale, violence overtly shows in Lee and her friend witnessing Lee’s mother’s body after her suicide, Lee’s father physically assaulting Lee’s mother, and Lee’s father’s involvement with the military dictatorship’s violence towards citizens, such as spying in Hwasun on communists.

[It is impossible to disentangle instances of violence on/in a nation from violence in the family.] The individuals who commit violence weaponize the traumas of their nation as an explanation for why they act out their personal atrocities, thereby shielding themselves through their own claim to political victimhood. What further muddies these waters is that these are not full-out lies; there is truth injected into such statements. This intertwining of truth and lie functions as a twofold manipulative tactic: it prevents critical questioning of the perpetrator, and legitimizes the lie, making fabrication a devious violence. The nuance that humanizes an individual as complex is thus also used to silence others. “You must understand” — — — — this demand for empathy by the perpetrator of violence toward their victim comes across as a plea for either forgiveness or forward relational and personal progression. Wrapped in the veneer of good intention, this obscuring of accountability makes it impossible for the victim to have a clear boundary of violence’s contours in space, and prevents a chronological understanding of violence’s time.

[Working concurrently as the silent underbelly of this psychological decay is the element of quiet violence: violence created through negative spaces and lack.] This is a violence of neglect and exclusion: the withholding of facts, DNA, words, family records, parental affection, spousal safety, and emotional validation.

In YEAR OF THE CAT, silence is violent because it is abandonment wearing the guise of self-protection and the protection of a family’s reputation. In response to the silent violence of his mother withholding the truth of his father’s identity, Nguyen moves through a series of more (then less) socially acceptable options of paternity-digging, such as the “official” route of Ancestry.com records, along with directly interrogating his mother (which breaks social norm, because Nguyen presses on her regarding her sexual history and assault). While he recruits a previously unknown cousin, Z, through Ancestry.com into his search for a while, she and her parents end up cutting off contact with Nguyen, abandoning him with the rationale that it’s distressing their family dynamics. In response, Nguyen decides to cold-approach Z’s family house in hopes that confronting them face-to-face will humanize him as a fellow family member instead of an online statistic, and convince them to continue aiding his paternity search.

[When Nguyen announces his presence from the other side of the door, it is a metaphor for the physical borders which deny his identity and search for said identity.] While there are signs of people at home, his calls remain unanswered. After escalating in his despair and trying again, he returns to the car in defeat. This closed door on Nguyen’s face functions as rejection, an admonishment of who the insiders to the world he wishes to access are, and his own barring from access. This withholding of information and retaining of power in the name of self-protection and clean linearity parallels Lee’s father changing Lee’s family tree under the selfish guise of unity as a family head for the sake of family order.

Nguyen reclaims his agency through documentary work by responding to this silence with the mischievous and brazen on-the-nose recreation of Z’s voice. His fabrication animates Z into an integral firsthand character of his story, inserting Z’s genetic and physical involvement into his paternity search. Where Z and her family shut their door literally and metaphorically on Nguyen, Nguyen places their complicity back in the documentary medium as an alternate exploration of opening their door for himself — consequently restoring his voice, and creating a world where they are accountable for their interactions with him.

[While a viewer’s initial reaction may be that Nguyen’s fabrication of Z’s voice is unethical, it is no worse than the fabricated histories of lineage Nguyen has been forced to live within his whole life.] After all, documentary work is biased retelling — not neutral fact.

In THERE ARE NO WORDS, the violence of exclusion and silence is permeating and pervasive: it is seen in how Lee’s mother was erased from the public narrative of their jokbo so that her own biological children were listed as the first wife’s children instead; in Lee’s father never speaking of her mother unless during the controlled ritual environment of their yearly jesa; in Lee’s trauma erasing her memories of what happened; in Lee’s mother being unhappy and distant toward Lee during her formative years as a child; and in Lee’s father laughing about and normalizing his abuse of his wife. Lee uses the documentary format to armour herself with public witness. Similar to Nguyen inserting Z’s voice into his film, Lee highlights her mother’s visibility in cinematic form to rectify her father’s nonconsensual erasing of her mother’s jokbo. This protects and immortalizes her mother’s familial claim into a preserved temporality. [By strategically inverting her father’s weaponization of documentation as a shield for his own dominion, Lee repurposes documentary work as her own tool to push through and break apart the canon her father has legitimized through storytelling and official state records.]

While violence is most obviously associated with the masculine-connoting outbursts and aggression enacted on others in patriarchal society, silence also manifests in the toxic traditional form of emotional unavailability. This includes withholding information for the supposed protection of those labelled subordinate and incapable of properly handling information without causing strife; in stoicism; in the refusal to discuss serious incidents without deflection or triggering another outburst; and in the power dynamic involved when any emotional reaction is seen as weakness, even and especially when the abuser does something to purposefully cause an emotional reaction in the victim. [Silence and explosive violence coexist as the overcurrent and undercurrents of violence to create a gag order on the terrorized individual.]

Silent violence is insidious because it works in tandem with other forms of violence as an unanticipated and oftentimes invisible peak in a chain of peaks, where varying forms of violence are used as weapons in combination as warfare in its different definitions. Its insidiousness lies in the fact that it functions so subtly that the common mistake is to think only the standalone form of overt violence exists. [This false singularity is dangerous because it downplays silent violence through the false correlation of harm/visibility, where a violent act is only as harmful as long and as much as it is visible.] The reality is that quiet violence often persists longer than overt outbursts of violence, which have a clearer timestamp in the beginning and ending of the abusive outburst. [Silent violence instead is liquid, slipping in, out, and through these explosive outbursts, lodging insecurity and a power dynamic wherein the deprived party remains in a state of lack, an imprisoned unknowing.

Both Lee and Nguyen’s films are defined by this lack.] Illusionistically, both films rely on the directors’ narrations of their journeys to excavate their heritage. For Lee, it is her mother’s experience of abuse, suicide, and then physical and emotional absence from her life. Tracing the gaps in her own memory through a cast of reliable and unreliable characters, she parses the truth for herself like temperature-checking the thermometer: she asks for descriptions of her mother and her mother’s relationship with her father from community members who would see her mother around, from her friend who witnessed her mother’s suicide, and from her father. The more she speaks of this unspeakable event and figure in her life, the more she hopes to strengthen her own truths and agency in her family dynamics. For Nguyen, it is his father’s unknown identity and the void he has felt from this missing piece of biological information for himself, both in his own identity and that of his mother. The logic is that if Nguyen knows who exactly his father was and the nature of his parents’ relationship, he might be more able to understand why she could not fulfill him in the ways he emotionally and physically needed as a child, son, and adult. In one scene, he confronts his mother while his relative acts as linguistic and emotional translator. His mother cries over how much the wartime violence of her homeland and the sexual violence of an individual man caused her deep pain, while Nguyen cries over how his mother failed to provide him with the safety and affirmation he needed as a child. [It is striking that they are crying over very different things that directly inform their misalignment in communication.] Nguyen’s hope, then, in learning more concretely about his paternity, is to explain what his mother cannot fix in the present with her words, because they carry the scars of her repeated lies to Nguyen from the past. When words and family trust fail, Nguyen’s next step is to rely on what feels like a fact he can ground in — biological data such as DNA linkages, or the horseshoe theory that a cousin sourced from Ancestry.com is low stakes enough to give him upfront information without tampering the truth for personal gain. [In the absence of maternal trust and paternal physicality, it makes sense that these facts offer the illusion of steady footing, a bridge which can give him access to closing the gap he so viscerally fixates on, between the history of the nation his mother left behind, and his own distance from Vietnam.]

In both YEAR OF THE CAT and THERE ARE NO WORDS, two simultaneous stories are told: the overt literal material being shown, and the undertow revealed through the foil of the overt. With both Lee’s mother and Nguyen’s father being deceased, there is no way to insert their present-day voices into the narrative; instead, their personhood is communicated through the implication of their impact on the individuals who remain, as well as the ways the living individuals communicate in unreliable narratives. [These inconsistencies in memory, fabrications, and exaggerations reveal a more complex composition of both the living and deceased individuals’ characters.] The directors use their documentaries to show their own narratives of how their parents spill out from the controlled contours of their chosen images. In doing so, Lee and Nguyen maneuver time into asynchronicity for their own benefit through the form of the documentary, resuscitating ignored histories as a form of self-cathartic justice.

In THERE ARE NO WORDS, the surface-level story is that of Lee’s mother: the grief of Lee losing her mother, of Lee demystifying and finally confronting the psychological spectre of her mother through the controlled medium of documentary filmmaking. By grounding her excavations of such a personal and painful experience through the lens of research material for her film, the documentary provides an emotional shield of power and control for Lee to decide when, how, and what to bring to light not only for herself, but for her audience. This functions as a form of seeking linearity in an extremely messy and tangled web of interpersonal dynamics and volatile histories. In real personal life, her father is an uncontrollable figure. To combat this, Lee wields directorial decisions such as splicing her own voice into the information he speaks on video, making final calls on the sequencing of how his stories are projected and comments are shared, and deciding when and how he is being filmed through the camerawork to facilitate a controlled environment. [By crucially intellectualizing through an art form, Lee maintains her emotional command.]

For someone like her father, who relishes in his hold over power, it is most effective for Lee to allow him the veneer of rambling on full control to the camera, taking up screen space and filming material, leaving her the executive decision as director and storyteller to cut him off in the final edits where she sees fit, even as (ironically) she feels conflicted in her tenderness toward her father. [Perhaps the greatest expression of this conflicted tenderness, then, actually comes in the form of doing her father the favour of editing him as his director, her cuts acting as a form of love and protection towards him while still holding the concurrent desire to dole that same conflicted tenderness and practice of faithfulness towards telling her and her mother’s own truths.] The ritual process of documentary-making that negotiates these silent violences of her family is parallel to the jesa her and her father participate in as a controlled acknowledgment through rituality for her mother; in both cases, a structured activity is procured for grief to be processed in a contained environment.

[The reality is that in both films, what distresses the directors is the amorphous state of psychological torture caused by parents obscuring reality with lies and half-truths.] To navigate one’s relationship with one’s parents is to accept that there is no ability to ever reach concise fact: two sides will always be in negotiation and tension with each other, even without further occlusion. But when a parent purposefully hides information and weaponizes it, this tertiary layer of violence is a tense and unstable foundation.

[That which remains undefined through silence hurts the most.] The inability to gain closure (whether the dynamic of violence and control an abusive husband forces onto his wife, or a mother’s refusal to speak on her son’s paternity) creates a toxic feedback loop whereby the individual performs gymnastics, frenetically digging for stable footing to root within. To have to navigate identity without a ground to base from is cruel: it requires magical thinking, hypotheses, and the understanding that at any given point, this identity may be challenged at its core. As a result, the identity one develops must be capable of transmorphing and staying aloft regardless of the circumstances that may disrupt, effectively countering the traditional definition of an identity and its coinciding boundaries in the first place.

Lee’s film is titled THERE ARE NO WORDS, but she guards herself with the safety of language — with theory and the incisive articulation of her voiceover — to protect herself from the emotional disorientation of trauma from her mother’s suicide, its gory visibility, and material tangibility. In the film, this is verbally conjured through her recounting seeing her mother’s body with her childhood friend. The specific sequence of how Lee witnesses her mother’s suicide is an overwhelmingly explicit sensory overload: its impact is upfront and hard both in physicality for the victim — her mother — enacting this jump, and in psychology on its witnesses, who are victims of this jump too. By recounting this incident with her friend in a way that feels rational, clinical, like a belated intake of a witness statement, Lee tries to parse out the knotted rings of her familial violence into a digestible progression. Her voice is soft but measured, slightly distanced. She repeats that large parts of this memory were blocked, and that she doesn’t remember. While her self-awareness and logical description code as an intellectual grasp of this trauma, Lee’s compartmentalization into neatly defined borders functions as a safeguard against having to directly tackle the unsummarizable, messy core of violence’s impact.

Likewise, while Nguyen’s film is titled YEAR OF THE CAT, referencing the 1975 fall of Saigon impacting his mother and the 2023 climax of his paternity search, the landing ground for his viewer is actually in the events between those years which shaped Nguyen’s identity before his discovered paternity, and in where he finds himself after he has completed his journey to find his father and returned to America. Nguyen’s fold back to the daily dynamics of his prior US life contrasts the radical changes he had envisioned adopting upon discovering his missing paternity, such as learning Vietnamese and becoming close to new family members. This crucially confirms that his film and identity were grounded in everything that happened before and after his year of paternity discovery. [Which is to then say: Nguyen had created a whole world and life for himself all the time he had thought he was waiting for the feeling of wholeness to come to him.]

In one’s healing journey from violence, it is overwhelmingly seductive to crutch one’s recovery on the location of a clear diagnosis. The act of naming pinpoints a known entrance and exit for where and how to heal: closure desires the knowledge of where something has begun. In both films, beginnings are fabricated. Lee’s father forges family documents, literal beginnings, and severities of his abuse toward her mother; Nguyen’s mother does not answer him on where his life literally begins, and who it began from. [This is traumatizing because it allows no space for relief.] If an identity is suspended by its consistent threat, one must continuously calibrate wiggle room for safely transforming this identity in response to new information. All space has been occupied. There is no place left for one’s own self and its possibilities. If there is no beginning, how does one forge a middle and an end? This requires the disassembling of temporal and familial constructs; it requires the ability to root in the unknown and continuously transmogrify enough to take one’s identity into one’s own hands and say — — — — “I have not been allowed to remember where I came from to land where I now am, but this will be where I make a home.”

The ground quivers, water rearranges the sediment below one’s two feet, but the centre holds.

Mina Wang Zhou is a writer and artist who grew up along both sides of the Pacific. Her work forages the fissures of desire, exploring their psychosomatic hauntings which linger as the un-cartographical and ever-intimate. She co-runs ERHUA (@erhua.archive), a living sound-text-image archive and workshop series in Toronto. She is currently at work on a poetry collection with funding from the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council, and has previously been published by Asia Art Archive amongst other platforms.

What does beginning look like [when violence has no end]? was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Gilbert Chen

This piece is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative VI, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 29th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

After MONTRÉAL, MA BELLE finished screening, two other members of the YCI cohort and I stood waiting to get autographs from the director, He Xiaodan, and to ask a question or two. We never got to ask those questions, as most of her time was devoted to a group of young Mandarin-speaking moviegoers, who had formed an impromptu Q&A huddle. Frankly, the observations that they made were compelling, and I may have learned more from listening in than if I’d asked questions of my own (it made my own job of thinking about this film a lot easier). Someone in the huddle noted that as soon as the film’s protagonist, Feng Xia, started speaking French, she felt like a different person, which was a great relief, because they’d felt awkward about projecting their own mother onto her until that moment. But beyond just Feng Xia, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this participant was speaking about their own experiences with language and identity. Much of the marketing material surrounding the Reel Asian Film Festival was released in English, so it was presumably through English that these students had navigated there. Yet, given the opportunity to communicate in Mandarin, they’d jumped at the chance to speak the language they presumably knew better (many of them had stated they’d come to Canada from Mainland China), and were visibly excited to do it, as if euphoric at the resurfacing of selves they’d had to tuck away in a majority English-speaking country. Could language truly be so powerful as to completely change how a person acts just by speaking it? And if identity is so linguistically intertwined, then could learning a new language (in all senses of the word “language”) lead to a reinvention of the self?

Stuart Hall posits that culture is defined on two main fronts: similar ways of conceptualizing the world, as well as ways to represent or exchange meanings, i.e., language. Culture, then, is something that is always undergoing a constructive process via communication. To treat culture as a process means that the same culture can exist along a temporal line, yet appear in different, evolving forms, akin to the patterns in a lava lamp. Communication between people tends to be limited off of geographical boundaries (or at least it did before long-distance communication and travel became much more convenient), and a lot of it is also limited behind the ability to communicate, commonly expressed through a standardized system of language. Because of this, it can be quite common to think of culture as being a circle drawn around the people of a certain nation-state (boundaries) or diasporic communities (language).

In MONTRÉAL, MA BELLE, we find Feng Xia in the midst of a life situation common to middle-aged Chinese immigrants like herself. She has a husband (Wang Jun) and two children (Joy and Dong Dong), and in the first sequence, we find that she does not speak French well, requiring her daughter to translate for her. She lives within a patriarchal household, shouldering an unequal share of the housework whilst still working at the convenience store that she and her husband run. Underneath all of this, though, she is secretly queer, harboring a cherished photograph of another girl from her hometown. Seeking to change her life for the first time, she seeks out an affair with Camille, a thirty-year-old Quebecois woman.

Feng Xia’s secret raises an important question: if we treat the heteronormative Chinese culture that Feng Xia exists within as a set of behaviours and beliefs, then does she still belong to the culture despite not fitting into the mold of what is considered positive or desirable within the culture’s conceptual map? In practice, she still counts as being of “the culture,” since she may intuitively understand the conceptual maps that underlie patriarchal, heteronormative aspects of Chinese culture, despite disagreeing with or being in conflict with them. She is also able to communicate effectively within the culture’s language, and their life decisions have conformed closely with the standards of a culture. As for why her life unfolded this way, disagreement expresses itself in a variety of ways and levels of intensity. The personal risk that comes with deviation from a common path might be a great deterrent. Furthermore, deviation can also be met with negative social consequences, and whilst the act of deviating from a set of standards outlined within a culture is not always directly punished, the possibility of punishment manifesting in ways from social to financial and even physical, is enough to discourage those who stray off the path or so much as proclaim a desire to live a life that members of their culture may not accept.

Perhaps this is how Feng Xia’s life and the life that she desires ended up so far apart. Same-sex unions in China have historically not been officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China, and homosexuality was treated as a mental disorder by the Chinese Society of Psychiatry until 2001. While laws do not necessarily reflect general opinions, and trends show that people in China have become more accepting over time, Confucian values are still quite pervasive across China, including the promotion of heterosexual marriage and child-rearing (and would have been even more so by the time that Feng Xia and Wang Jun left). It isn’t a surprise, then, that Feng Xia chose to keep her feelings secret in the face of potential backlash from her peers, as well as increased difficulty in navigating her life, choosing instead, the commonly prescribed life path until this point in her life. This could be further compounded by a fear of physical or social violence (Wang Jun hits her at one point when she comes home from visiting Camille), a lack of financial and social means to build a new life away from the one that she is currently embroiled in, or a f`eeling of duty towards the children that she now has.

If Feng Xia is buried too deep into a life that she doesn’t want, then Camille is her opposite, as she feels completely lost in life, with little to tether her down. She has been avoiding her family for years, and actively expresses a refusal to meet her mother, who has been calling her on her phone. Although Camille has a group of friends, they’re seemingly not close enough for Camille’s purposes, treating relationships incredibly casually. One can say that, in this case, Camille does benefit from a culture that allows for more autonomy, but at the same time, the relatively individualistic Western approach to life and weaker emphasis on deep social ties have left her in a state of suspension. Therefore, both Feng Xia and Camille have, in some way, been constrained by the cultural knowledges that they were born with, and it is only through their relationship in the film that they can create a new sphere of culture that allows both to move forward to living more fulfilling lives.

When Feng Xia and Camille meet, as neither has very much experience with the other’s culture, they are actively participating in a cultural exchange, even if this is not their explicit reason for meeting. The pair are engaging in what Homi Bhabha refers to as an “in-between space,” (Bhabha 1994, 1) a “terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood… that initiate new signs of identity.” This is not necessarily a site of conflict, either, as Bhabha states that “[social differences] are the signs of the emergence of community envisaged as a project.” (Bhabha 1994, 3) After all, both Feng Xia and Camille are in the project of building a relationship, navigating cultural differences to achieve something new. It is here that Feng Xia and Camille can reinvent who they are and learn ways of being from the cultural knowledge embodied by the other. Feng Xia becomes more confident and open with her wants and desires. Camille, too, learns to call Feng Xia for help when she gets sick or requires emotional support. Both of them learn from aspects of each other. We also understand that this relationship is not exactly secure within either cultural sphere. Chinese culture, as Feng Xia’s peers express it at least, would presumably be disapproving of a same-sex relationship and Camille’s lifestyle, whilst Feng Xia feels out of place around Camille’s friends, who immediately point out her foreignness when they meet, as well as display a level of sexual freedom alongside Camille that makes Feng Xia uncomfortable, citing her belief in romantic exclusivity.

Feng Xia and Camille’s relationship can also be understood as a new culture in the sense that cultures are not exclusive spheres of being. In fact, perhaps every relationship one has is, in effect, an individual culture, with some having more similarities with one another. For Feng Xia and Camille, their maps of meaning are expressed through all the information and experiences they share. In terms of language, while it is tempting to just say “French”, the much more important language, by my estimation, is that of presence. Camille’s first test for Feng Xia in their relationship was to simply meet her at her place of work to showcase seriousness. To Camille, this act is something she has communicated to be of significance, whilst to Feng Xia, this act of showing up signals an active choice, a desire to step outside of her initial cultural sphere. This act of showing up and being present is a continuous communicative thread, especially for Feng Xia. We find out early on that Feng Xia and other Chinese women in her dance class are planning a group trip specifically to get away from their husbands, to unpresence themselves. She often returns home at night, almost as if to stay away from the house to which she must return, to reduce her presence around her husband. In a moment where she seeks to console her husband, she sits with him wordlessly. In her relationship with Camille, however, she shows up to bring Camille to the hospital, going as far as to put herself down as an emergency contact, acts as silent emotional support in a difficult encounter for Camille, and goes to Camille’s apartment multiple times throughout the film.

In essence, presence says something to the effect of “I am here for you” and “I want to be here.”

This language of presence is the more important communicative element, too, because it puts both Feng Xia and Camille at the same level of fluency and the same plane of communication, allowing them to build something as equals, rather than creating an exclusive hierarchy of signification through French language fluency.

This fluency hierarchy is demonstrated in Feng Xia’s first French lesson, when the teacher asks the class (full of adult immigrants) why they came to Canada. One student, a Greek man, explains that he left for Canada due to the economic hardships he was facing in Greece. The teacher responds by talking about the natural beauty of the Aegean Sea, almost as if talking past him. Here, Greece becomes a distorted reference point in the shared map of meaning for both people, representing completely different emotions and experiences. The student relates the concept of “Greece” through negative emotion, and the teacher refers to it through the fantastical view of a tourist. The student tries to mediate the difference by explaining that it’s “romantic for tourists,” but the teacher does not respond in kind, saying instead to not lose hope since Greece was once home to the greatest minds in the world. Here, the reference point of Greece continues to be a source of conflict that stalls conversation. Spoken/written language has the great benefit of containing referential systems and a large number of signs for people to use in communication, but the fluency gap between the student and teacher is a communicative roadblock. The presumably harsher reality of the student’s experience with Greece is an important reference point for how he has shaped his life, something that cannot easily be condensed into language, much less a short conversation, which already breeds frustration, but this is exacerbated by the difficulty he has in expressing his viewpoint in French. The teacher, on the other hand, has more ability to express themselves in French, and is more prone to firing back with fast answers and significations that require more effort from the Greek student to push back on. This fluency difference, then, creates an unequal relationship in building a shared conceptual map, leading to the collapse in the conversation and the mutual project of recognition.

To further demonstrate the importance of language fluency as a site of conflict, we can refer to the moment in MONTRÉAL, MA BELLE where Feng Xia and Camille fight over Camille’s friends. In the moment, Feng Xia is grappling with the discomfort of having been treated explicitly as a symbol of foreignness by Camille’s friends, who hound her with questions about China and the state of queer acceptance over there despite Feng Xia not having lived there for many years. She must also confront the status of her relationship with Camille, realizing that they are not exclusively seeing each other. Feng Xia, both nonfluent in French and in an emotionally turbulent state, has difficulty finding the words to express herself, and finally lands on the simple word “dirty” to describe Camille. This word is blunt, communicating more intensity and disgust than she may have intended, leading to an understandable outrage from Camille, who leaves, unpresencing herself in response. The relationship only begins to repair itself when Feng Xia apologizes through the primary language of presence that has gotten the relationship this far, showing up at Camille’s door and giving her the opportunity to choose to allow Feng Xia into her life again.

Through their relationship, Feng Xia and Camille, then, take great care in building out their own cultural sphere. The pair navigate cultural conflict in their relationship via an equitable division of meaning-making, allowing for mutual reinvention, rather than the imposition of one’s ideals directly onto the other.

He Xiaodan demonstrates through MONTRÉAL, MA BELLE the difficulties of navigating outside the cultural sphere one is born into, as well as the path forward. To not only use language, but to build it together, to create a shared pathway for communication between oneself and another is an act that generates new cultural space, wherein the reinvention of the self becomes possible. In the middle of the film, Feng Xia explains the etymology of her name to Camille. Feng (凤) means phoenix, a mythological bird carrying feminine connotations in Chinese mythology as well as its reputation to regenerate in Western mythology. Xia (霞) means dawn, classically a symbol for the start of something new, a turning of the leaf. Through exploring her queerness and meeting Camille, Feng Xia has been reborn, finally gaining the courage to stand up for a life that she actively wants.

Bibliography

Bhabha, Homi Kharshedji. “Locations of Culture.” Introduction. In The Location of Culture. London, England: Routledge, 1994.

Hall, Stuart. “The Work of Representation.” Essay. In Representation — Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997.

Gilbert Chen (he/him) is a writer and filmmaker based in Toronto. He holds great interest in experimental art and its ability to disrupt dominant narratives in the intersections between culture, language, and thought. Currently, he is working on a narrative film based on 井底之蛙 (Frog in the Well) and other Chinese myths/idioms.

Building Together: Relationships as Cultural Reinvention was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Thanh Lieu

This piece is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative VI, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 29th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

“Coppola? I don’t have any special thoughts about him.”
— Huệ Nguyên Chế, a Vietnamese refugee who was a background actor in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW.

There was something agential, emancipatory even, in hearing this statement. A seemingly nonchalant shrug, “Oh, him, Coppola,” somehow generated a seismic sensation in me. Perhaps it is because I, on the contrary, have many special thoughts about Francis Ford Coppola. An undeniable auteur, his legacy ripples through generations of the cinematic world—to study film is to engage with his work in one form or another, whether one is inspired or not. But the way his 1979 APOCALYPSE NOW painted and archived the Vietnam War in American national consciousness became the inflection point at which I took issue with him as a director.

First Viewing

I was sunk deep in my seat, struck and impressed by the Otherworlds shorts programme at the 29th Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival when WE WERE THE SCENERY came up on screen. It quickly became my favourite watch at the festival. Directed by Christopher Radcliffe, the short film features poet Cathy Linh Chế’s parents, Hoa Thị Lê Chế (mother) and Huệ Nguyên Chế (father), who were Vietnamese refugees and also two of the many background actors in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW. The collision between these ideas, relationships and tensions made this film incredibly arresting.

To bring to the foreground the story of two people whose lives had been directly affected by the war, we need to start from where they were just the scenery. The film opens with a familiar segment of stillness; we see a dense grove of coconut trees, leaves faintly wavering in the wind as dense smoke trails slowly drift in from the right. A military helicopter traverses the frame with its too-big, too-heavy, and too-disruptive body. Suddenly, this serene greenery explodes with more history than I could know. This familiar scene is the opening sequence of APOCALYPSE NOW. Instead of “The End” by The Doors playing however, we hear a soft voice, in Vietnamese, filtered with a little laugh, “What does it mean to feel real? Maybe those who weren’t in the film could say that it felt real, but because I was in the movie, it didn’t feel real.”

This is how WE WERE THE SCENERY takes shape — a poignant bricolage of footage capturing Huệ and Hoa in their everyday life, fuzzy clips of APOCALYPSE NOW, and interspersed materials photographing the scenery of Vietnam and the Philippines today. Making sense of everything are the voices of Huệ and Hoa, centrifugal and intimate, guiding us through the film.

Thinking in tandem with the programme’s title, “Otherworlds,” WE WERE THE SCENERY is an otherworld born from Coppola’s imagined otherworld based on historical reality. A film within a film, it is an otherworld within an otherworld in the world of the Vietnam War. The intentional, well-crafted flow of footage capturing today’s scenery transports us to different places from the first-person perspective. We are on the back of a motorbike, weaving through a sea of mopeds, brushing — not against each other — but in the wind, tunnelled by opposing streams of people hastily trying to get somewhere. Somehow in this chaotic milieu where one sound seems to syncopate from the rest: honking, buzzing, two-stroke whine, unintelligible chatter, headlights, and flashing LEDs in English and Vietnamese, a cohesive overture is orchestrated, a chaotic euphony. This soundscape informs us that we are not in America. This soundscape is packed with people in a rush.

We know that in another time, Huệ and Hoa were also in a rush to leave this place. “We looked for many places to leave, many of them,” Hoa tells us. “Your father said he couldn’t stand to lose a single day of his freedom,” she continues. They got on an escape boat to flee Vietnam. Although the montage of contemporary Vietnamese scenery and Huệ and Hoa’s recollection represent different points in time, overlaying them over each other in the short film suspends temporality, blurring the line between past and present. As they continue to recount how they were among the first to leave and that their boat carried eight people–eight lives uprooted by the war and eight bodies, among millions of other bodies, forever inscribed in this history–we see a beautiful sunset cast its purple-hued canvas on a body of water cradling boats. Towering behind them are buildings flickering with lights, perhaps also carrying restless lives inside them.

This beautiful interplay of footage and voiceover, using the contemporary scenery as a canvas where traces of their escape still waft, allows the audience to see both the peaceful present and the rupturing past simultaneously. It is fascinating and wondrous how memory works, each one coating a different paint over a single physical land. Homeland. Motherland. Land. The film allows different coats of paint to cohabitate, where no one layer is nullified by another.

Second Viewing: Disembodied Voices? Disembodied Memories?

Early in the film, Hoa recounts, “South Vietnamese soldiers from far away would come because their mission was to kill Việt Cộng, but they didn’t know that they were also killing everyday people. I’d be scared, so I’d crawl into the basement. But when American soldiers came in, we were even more afraid.” Despite being one of the more visceral, graphic, and violent descriptions of how Hoa remembers the war, this scene prompted a deep exhale of relief in me.

The visuals accompanying this narration create enough distance for the audience to not be fully bathed in terror and the embodied memories of Hoa and Huệ. In this scene, Radcliff places the camera far away from Hoa, as if we are peeking into the kitchen from the doorway separating her space and the living room. Hoa is cooking, and only her side profile and body are visible. We do not see how her emotions manifest on her face as she recounts this memory, and we are left wondering. The long shot is prolonged as the camera slowly pans away from Hoa to the living room where Huệ stands just a metre away from the TV, its glow reflected in his glasses as he examines a videotape. Taking up Hoa’s stories, Huệ talks about his friends’ deaths and how he remembers ammunition filling the air. Again, only his side profile is visible.

In fact, the film does not include any talking head sections. If their eyes contemplate, if they reach for tissues to wipe their tears, if they shake their heads, if they divert their gaze, if their fists clench or relax, if they seem okay talking about these traumatic events — we never know. I think about how one’s face is imprinted with history, ancestry, and movement through the world, smile lines, wrinkles, and beauty marks that reflect these stories and express emotions. With that said, this lack of camera proximity to the subjects’ faces, audio diverted by other visual material, detaches the audience from fully bearing witness to embodied memory.

But why no talking heads? This question pulsated through my mind in this second viewing. Just like the interplay of contemporary footage and voiceover creates a common ground for multiple narratives to co-exist, the detachment between face and words thins out the weight of a traumatic memory, not necessarily because it is weightless, but because the function of the film is to replay a personal story morphed and shaped by a historical event. This replay is not interested in re-traumatization, and to be fair, not all talking heads create an affective response. But when one’s history is this vast, painful, and visceral, even the visual of their soft blinks or their still body processing words in silence can stir the audience.

The film’s divorce from sentimentalization is informed by scenes that give glimpses into who Huệ and Hoa are as people who have built a life in America now. Hoa, in her floral sunhat, picks fruit in the garden. She cooks. She sews. She is a funny person who endearingly makes out-of-pocket comments. She does not like films that are too sad, “Whenever I watch films, I can see how fake they are.” Huệ is a sharp man, interested in physics and the way the world moves. This enabled him, as he remembers, to precisely predict how long it would take their escape boat to reach the refugee camp in the Philippines, “There were people who were in the navy who couldn’t figure it out!” He does not think Coppola was all that; the man was just fine.

To them, APOCALYPSE NOW was underwhelming, never mind how horrible the production process was or the accolades it later received. My impression was that, the representational stakes were not high for these two people, simply extras in Coppola’s films. This indifference, coupled with intimate shots of their everyday rites of passage, moved me.

Third Viewing: Can We Talk Back?

In my third viewing, my original love for WE WERE THE SCENERY turned rocky. After all, talking about WE WERE THE SCENERY was impossible without engaging APOCALYPSE NOW. Two Vietnamese refugees whose lives were directly uprooted by violence and displacement found themselves re-rooted in the cinematic American re-imagination of the Vietnam War as peripheral subjects. Two watches in, the short grew slippery is in its lack of critical commentary on APOCALYPSE NOW (a film I detest). I do not think this absence works to re-center Huệ and Hoa’s experiences. It only neutralizes the problematic legacy of Coppola’s film.

APOCALYPSE NOW claims to tell us how bad the war was, and how the U.S. intervention in Vietnam was simultaneously a failed ideological war and the U.S. empire’s most vivid modern-day manifestation of its disillusionment with hegemony and power. But it problematically falls flat in its one-dimensional interest in the eerie silence, boredom, and banality felt and experienced by American soldiers in Vietnam/on Vietnamese soil. This alienates the audience from feeling and hearing from those most affected by the war—Vietnamese people and their experiences of the massacres, bombardments, displacement and persistent intergenerational trauma. We never get to hear and think through their experiences; we only see what was inflicted on their silenced bodies. APOCALYPSE NOW tells us how bad the war was through the logic that Americans suffered a great loss, that America’s own people suffered.

The film’s opening scene is telling, the image I described earlier of coconut tree groves, disrupted by the pulsating chops of helicopter blades, set on fire: bright orange, engulfing flames. We then see the fading in of a white man’s face, Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen), woken from his sleep by these visceral images roaring in his mind. His eyes open wide as the background continues to fog his head with more fire and ammunition dropping from the sky. The remainder of the film revolves around his and other fellow soldiers’ deployment to Vietnam, the trauma and visceral images of the violence of war spiralling their vision, morality and state of mind.

The smoke and fire re-enact the U.S military’s napalm bomb drops during the war in Vietnam. In real life, the film was shot in the Philippines, where Coppola and his production team doused local tree groves with 1,200 gallons of gasoline, setting them ablaze with explosions for maximum visual effect to induce the psychedelic view of how these American soldiers remembered the war. The intention was to bring the audience to Vietnam. In an interview, Coppola said, “There aren’t too many places in the world where you could do it. They’d never let you in the US; the environmentalists would kill you.” His claim that production essentially got a pass for dousing tree groves with gasoline for the sake of making his war movie mirrors the impunity of the American empire inscribing itself everywhere. Let us not forget that the U.S. occupied the Philippines from 1898 to 1946.

There are too many places in the world the U.S. has intervened, occupied, exploited and left detrimental impacts on. They did it first in North America with Native Americans and Black people. The violence was now just being couriered elsewhere. This great American export found its way to Vietnam and the Philippines. Given this loaded and problematic history of APOCALYPSE NOW and the implications of it becoming one of Coppola’s most popular works, not addressing or condemning it in WE WERE THE SCENERY makes the film evasive. To me, it diluted the filmmakers’ intention to give voice to the parents’ stories.

Centrepiecing the film is a long scene of Huệ and Hoa rewatching APOCALYPSE NOW on television with the camera cutting back and forth between their fixed gaze and footage of Coppola’s film. There are times when I desperately wait for them to do something other than closing up in Huệ and Hoa’s glasses, which reflected the visuals of bombs and fires, or merely zooming in on these clips of the Vietnamese background actors that only the parents could name. Even though I understand the attempt to give life, humanity, and story to an individual who was simply the background of the film, and whose presence was treated as just a peripheral entity, I couldn’t help but want more.

At one point, as Huệ starts speaking, the frame of APOCALYPSE NOW freezes and zooms into a small figure running away from rounds of bullets American soldiers gunned down upon civilians. Only Huệ and Hoa could make out this figure, “That’s Đàm. She was pregnant, but her belly was still small.” Hoa playfully interrupts, “She hadn’t told anyone!” Whether this information exchanged between them is true is besides the point, that Huệ and Hoa had a personal connection with Đàm, close enough to know such an intimate detail, shows how, even in the cinematic marginalization of their presence in APOCALYPSE NOW, they found among themselves a community. In another scene, Huệ and Hoa describe themselves whenever they see each other pop up on screen. Hoa points out, “That might be me! That could actually be me.” I would not describe their voice as augmented with excitement or enthusiasm, but there is a lot of life; their attention is sharp.

What I deeply sought, however, was mutilation, subversion, and laceration, if not, at least a strong criticism of APOCALYPSE NOW. If not from Huệ and Hoa, then somehow, from the filmmakers.

In his speech at the premiere of APOCALYPSE NOW at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, Coppola said, “My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money. Too much equipment. And little by little, we went insane.”

In his 1985 book, No More Vietnams, former U.S. President Richard Nixon writes, “Many of our leaders have shrunk from any use of power because they feared it would bring another disaster like the one in Vietnam. Thus did our Vietnam defeat tarnish our ideals, weaken our spirit, cripple our will, and turn us into a military giant and a diplomatic dwarf in a world in which the steadfast exercise of American power was needed more than ever before” (pp. 13).

My desire for an active and literal countering of these clips stems from the undeniable influence of APOCALYPSE NOW in archiving this history in American national consciousness, despite its problematic legacy in what scholar Sylvia Shin Huey Chong calls the “Vietnam syndrome” or the “spectre of Vietnam.” Placing Nixon and Coppola’s words side-by-side, we can trace a shared desire to deflect accountability and render this American involvement in the war, be it politically and physically or cinematically, passive plunder. Chong writes that the “Vietnam syndrome” not only imagines the U.S. nation-state “as wounded like the soldiers it sent to war,” but also calls upon “the discourses of forgiveness and redemption to heal the nation of its psychological malaise” (pp. 2).

Both Coppola and Nixon speak of the war in this state of national amnesia, forever haunting, forever spectering, forever deflecting accountability. Coppola’s indulgent ambition to examine the psychological impact of war on American soldiers compromised Vietnamese voices, bodies, and their presence in the war as peripheral, and unworthy of cinematic attention.

As I think through these tensions, I had hoped WE WERE THE SCENERY had the potential to shake off this amnesia because it stands independently of the nation-state narrative, and (maybe) of the Hollywood machine as an independent film. But this lack of a confrontation with a film that has contributed to the U.S. amnesia of its own wounds only gives credence to this fever dream, one that dreams of Huệ, Hoa, and other Vietnamese as just the scenery.

Fourth Viewing

I took a long gap between my third and fourth viewing of WE WERE THE SCENERY— about a month or so. This time, to my surprise, puncturing through my frustration at the lack of commentary about APOCALYPSE NOW (although still brimming) was the endearing presence and incorporation of Huệ and Hoa’s family videos captured on their camcorder to bookend the film.

“I never wanted to be a filmmaker, I just enjoyed recording you when you were little,” Huệ tells Cathy Linh Chế, referring to himself as ba (dad) and addressing his daughter as con (child). This time, something about how they address one another feels beautiful and nostalgic, for the Vietnamese language has a dolce intonation to it, softening the hardwired impressions from previous viewings. Huệ has a calmness to him, and his inflections are more muted. Vietnamese is my mother tongue, yet it is not until my fourth viewing that I am consciously registering the film’s language in my mind. Perhaps, because it is so familiar, so close, so comfortable, it had subsided into the background while other ideas and readings surfaced first.

Overlaying the voiceover is a home-taped video of Huệ as a younger man, setting up the camera with children clinging to his shoulders, his arms caressing a baby. We then see three different clips of a similar setup, Huệ and Hoa trying to make the children look into the lens and nudging a little smile in them. This montage disarms me, as this direct state of address of con (child), puts us (the viewers) in the position of Chế or any of Huệ’s children. Although we do not see how the camera is set up, I imagine it mounted to a high chair, shelf, or tripod. When Huệ clicks “record,” he gathers his children as best as he can to fit squarely into the frame. Flash a smile! He then puts the little ones down to run towards the camera and end the recording.

Tantamount to the impact of these home videos are intimate shots of Huệ and Hoa’s home, its memorabilia, and how they archive and preserve memory, ancestry, and their journey traversing waters. In an early montage, we see a frame of smaller pictures collaged together, photographs of children in black and white and colour, some in áo dài. I assume these are a combination of photos of either Huệ and Hoa when they were younger or their ancestors; of extended families and relatives with a quantity so large they spill out of the frame; of Huệ and Hoa holding their children in their arms. It is clear that in these moments, the camera is not an oppressive apparatus seeking to minimize their presence like Coppola’s camera in APOCALYPSE NOW.

Instead, the camera pockets different points in their life into mobile pieces of memorabilia. Coppola’s magnum opus is just another memory in a messy archive of how they have lived.

APOCALYPSE NOW is just the scenery.

Cốp-pô-la. Mỹ. A-póc-cô-líp. Ba. Má. Việt Nam.

Outro

Zombie Apocalypse Now: The Making Of
By Cathy Linh Che

Thanh Lieu is a journalist and writer born and raised in Vietnam, whose works focus on grounding cinema and art in the ongoing cultural, political, and social contexts. As the founder of The Produced Media, a space dedicated to conversations with filmmakers, artists, and scholars, she has interviewed influential figures in cinema, including Clare Denis, Kamal Aljafari, and Darlene Naponse, as well as covering festivals such as TIFF, VIFF, Tribeca, InsideOut, and more.

sealing and shelving that American fever dream was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The living spaces of a recorded request

by gulzar

This piece is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative VI, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 29th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

It’s November, and my heart pivots from cold to tender quite frequently. I blame it on the month–we’re deep into short winter days and long indoor nights. It’s been 5 months since I moved back to my home city. It’s also the first time I’ve settled back in with my family, bringing no plans of moving out in the near future. Uncomfortable familiarity resounds. Since moving, I sometimes feel my body reach out to the teenage version of myself–they knew best how and where to store angst, anger and boredom. I tell myself that the programming at Reel Asian will be the antidote to this mix of seasonal depression and failed coping. Because #community, right??!

During Reel Asian’s 29th annual film festival, I attended the Unsung Voices showcase. Unsung Voices is a four-month filmmaking program designed for beginner & emerging filmmakers across Canada. The curriculum facilitates skill-building for pre-production, production, and post-production. By the end of the program, six mentees direct a short of their own to premiere during the festival.

One short film in particular catches my attention. The logline for Calvin Liu’s MOTEL GRAND PRÉ reads:

In Gaspésie in rural Quebec, a quirky Chinese motel owner navigates his quiet routine between fixing rooms and casting lines into the sea — until his filmmaker son visits for a week.

The short documentary begins with various cuts from one area of the motel to another. We are invited to patiently watch an older East Asian man tend to a quiet reception lobby, uncut lawns, and mysterious yellow stains on white bedsheets. He’s skinny with a slight hunch. He looks tired, but his grit makes me second-guess myself. I’m reminded of my dad, a balding crown to match. Through a voice-over, we hear a simple introduction, “My name is Liu Changqing. I’m 58 years old. I’m running a motel right now. Something like that. I’m married and have two kids.” Fast-paced jazz music fades in, overpowering the sound of a turn signal. In the following shot, the camera sits in the passenger seat of a car. We face up towards the driver and see a shadowy silhouette—it’s Liu.

Liu’s short documentary is shot on 16mm film. Blue, greens and various shades of brown fill the spaces of the motel. The motel’s monotony is disrupted by Liu’s visit and his accompanying camera. While first introduced as a documentary about his father’s life running a motel, the heart of the story lies in the tender relationship between Liu and his father. Within conversations of unacknowledged past conflict, unknown yet much-needed terrain is created. Across the span of 15 minutes, Liu’s father reveals his old desires for Liu’s career. Liu as well, confesses his abandoned attempts at affection.

Within the climax of the film, while using fishing location tips from another motel visitor, Liu and his father go fishing… at night. Through images of wobbly dark silhouettes and a moonlit body of water, we’re asked to focus on the conversation at hand. Liu asks his father, “Do you remember? Maybe mom told you. Once, I was hiking in the Yunnan Mountains, and I got drunk. I sent mom a voice message.” The image cuts to a warm portrait shot of his dad. The colours are the complete opposite of the previous frame. Liu’s father sits on a couch with the late afternoon sun beaming directly on his face. He squints his eyes from the bright light but faces his body towards the camera anyway, or maybe just beyond it, to where Liu is. “I told mom, but I never told you. So I want to tell you now.” A pause. “I love you, Dad.” The camera stays pointed at him and lingers. Liu’s father meditates on his son’s words. “I..” He struggles to find a response, mouth open, ready for the moment his words come out. Instead, he settles with a nod that says, received.

I’m fascinated by what is regurgitated only through the presence of a camera. In many Asian diasporic experiences, there exists a common thread where we grew up with limited or even a complete lack of verbal communication amongst our loved ones, especially amidst the idea that it is more important to save face than to risk disrupting the ‘peace’. In a medium like documentary that serves to creatively represent and confront a truth (or multiple truths), the Asian Canadian diasporic filmmaker turns to non-fiction form to address the unaddressed. With Liu, this documentary form becomes a site for words left unsaid and sentiments left unexpressed to have a second life. Does the documentary form break these cultural restrictions for intimacy? Can the generational ‘Asian parents only express love through sacrifice’ curse finally be broken???

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a film by an Asian Canadian filmmaker that approaches the short documentary form through a similar request. I’m reminded of Carol Nguyen’s notable, NO CRYING AT THE DINNER TABLE—a short documentary I consider an older sibling to MOTEL GRAND PRÉ. The documentary follows a fascinating structure. Nguyen separately interviews her mother, father and sister regarding their relationship to loss and loneliness. In the third act, we watch them collectively listen to their interviews back. What unravels is a collection of buried reflections; a meditation on the hopes for expressing familial intimacy, and the remorse for the missed opportunities to have once done so. Nguyen’s mother talks about her relationship with her late parents. She starts by saying, “I’ve only ever kissed my mother once.” The only time she had was when her mother was ill. She regrets never expressing such affection to either her mother or father since then, and admits to never revealing this before.

Another similar film comes to mind: Lina Li’s film, FLOCK. I watched FLOCK at the Image Arts Film Festival (IMAFF [now known as the Toronto Metropolitan Film Festival, or TMFF]) back in 2022. IMAFF, the Film Studies program’s year-end showcase, highlighted the thesis works of the graduating class. FLOCK candidly captures the relationship between Li and her father, and is an honest representation of intergenerational conflict. The film takes place in Li’s home–Li and her father sit on their living room couch as Li guides the conversation. She vocalizes the hurt and confusion that had come out of their relationship; a request for validation and clarity lies at the foundation of her voice (and heart). At one point, she asks her dad why he is often strict with her. He explains that working as a boss who manages employees means maintaining strict boundaries and holding certain expectations. He reveals that he often brings this work culture back home to Li. He says, “as a parent, I didn’t do as well as some other parents […], some even put all their focus on the next generation. This is something I didn’t do.”

Ouch, ouch, ouch!

This is the request from the diasporic Asian Canadian young adult to their parent(s): can we find what is missing? This documentary format lays the groundwork for shunned conversations to come into play, and the presence of a camera becomes the instigator. The power of documentary for the filmmaker is in large part its promise to a witness. The camera tells the filmmaker: There will be an audience. You won’t be alone. I think the significance of an audience here is less related to who is watching, but the feeling and value granted through an imagined, yet fortified, support team. Within Asian households that struggle to facilitate a space for intimacy and vulnerability, the turn to the documentary form is trusted on the promise for retrieval.

It is fascinating to create and indulge in a world in which we, the Asian Canadian children, act from a standpoint of selfishness and perversiveness — that is, acting from a place of personal need (how dare we!!). We live in an age where mental wellness is well-discussed, alongside a conscious concern for self-actualization. We are a generation that wants to talk about our emotions!!! In the spaces of the unknown, the unsaid, and the uncomfortable, we search. To instigate a space for connection and potential internal healing (albeit that these premeditated documentary worlds exist at varying emotional intensities) is self-serving. However, it’s important to note that the emotions surfacing from said instigation are not automatically dishonest. Nor do I believe the search for emotional engagement comes from a place of malice.

Rather, this is a reflection of what is still needed for many of the diasporic pan-Asian folk of immigrant parents living in the West.

But what about our parents? To investigate our troubled feelings so deeply is a privilege that most of our parents didn’t/don’t have. The Asian Canadian filmmaker involves their parents in the search for what they feel is missing, and in turn, demands that their parents be emotionally invested. Does the attempt at manufacturing a world to engage intimacy become a space of opportunity for our parents to vocalize what has always been rendered private? The world in which the filmmaker creates through the camera must become a slight alternative to their reality for such vulnerability to rise to the surface. The major difference in this ‘new’ world is the approach to the Asian Canadian parent/child relationship dynamic. When certain expectations and limits to expressing intimacy are established and collectively understood within an Asian household, the ‘new’ questions and revises the status quo. Liu, Nguyen, and Li all request such alternatives from their parents; each parent vocalizes what normally stays private. In a scene within MOTEL GRAND PRÉ, Liu records him and his father collectively cleaning, fishing, and eating. A voice-over plays in parallel — Liu’s dad talking about his life growing up in China. There was a year when he had no job and relied on his friend and their restaurant as a place of refuge and resource. “I am very strict with myself,” he consequently says. “There aren’t a lot of things that can make me happy. When you are very strict with yourself, you can’t let go.” He tells his son that the circumstances he grew up with are the very reason why he may often find his dad very serious. My heart softens, what a vulnerable reflection. When Asian parents are too concerned with strictly maintaining their responsibilities as a “Parent”, this genre of filmmaking, and the lives existing within the camera become a space to see what lies beyond.

The filmmaker, in calling for an intentional engagement for intimacy, creatively re-imagines the spaces that already exist. The three filmmakers each take different approaches to their visual language. Nguyen and Li’s films use a more traditional narrative structure to the documentary medium, where talking head shots take precedence (an interview format where the camera frames waist-up on the subject as they provide their testimonials; the subject often speaks directly to the camera or to the interviewer just beyond it). For Nguyen’s NO CRYING AT THE DINNER TABLE, her parents and sister sit at a kitchen table and talk to Nguyen who stands behind the camera, and whose voice is occasionally heard off-screen. With Li’s FLOCK, the majority of her film takes place in the family living room. Li and her dad sit across from each other on their couch, and the camera faces them head-on. In both films, the cameras are direct, known, and not shy. The filmmaker’s search for answers are quite literally found in the subject’s voice. I’m reminded of the call-and-response activity I used to have to engage with (lol) in the Catholic elementary school I attended as a kid. The priest calls: God is good. The congregation responds: All the time. In order to express this full sentiment, both parties require an engagement with one another. This form of documentary seeks out parents’ responses as answers to the filmmaker’s call. However, within MOTEL GRAND PRÉ, instead of explicitly searching for answers from his father, I believe Liu uses the camera and structure of his film to answer some of his own inquiries and searching. He is in conversation with the viewer through his camera, as much as he is directly communicating with his father. A lot of his internal dialogue happens within the parameters of a 4:3 screen. In one scene, Liu’s father tells him about his sleep schedule. We hear his assertive yet calm tone through a voice-over, “Even if the world ends, you must sleep at 11 PM and wake up at 6 AM…” We cut to a shot of a dark hallway with a room at the end. Liu emerges from behind the camera and carefully makes his way to the room’s open entrance. A shotgun mic in hand. As he gets closer, the sound of snoring grows louder and clearer. Liu hovers the mic to his left, getting as close as he can to his dad without waking him up.

I love love love this scene. It feels inherently wrong. Yet, another (large) part of me reads it as earnest. I picture a little child tiptoeing to their parent’s room in the middle of the night. A request sits at the tip of their tongue, but they stay careful in their movement, an ironic gesture as to not wake their guardian up. This scene, while simple, tells me more about Liu than his father. Liu’s approach to answer-finding is expressed through these acts of doing. If the attempt is to search for what is missing in our relationship with our parents, should we meet them in their preferred love language? I chuckle as I write this.

In another scene, Liu joins his father in his routine of motel maintenance and daily rituals. They rearrange office chairs, clean the motel pool, eat, and fish together. This scene comes after Liu’s father reflects on Liu’s once existing ‘adolescent crisis’: a time in Liu’s life when he didn’t have a job and wasn’t attending school. In parental anxiety, Liu’s father had encouraged him to take over the motel business. Years later, Liu now literally follows his father’s footsteps… literally. In one exterior shot, Liu’s dad wheels an office chair from one end of the frame to the other. Just tailing behind is Liu with his own office chair in hand, slowly catching up. In this sequence, Liu shows up for his dad in a way that he had once wanted him to. As opposed to Nguyen and Li’s film, I don’t think Liu’s main reason for making this film was to search for definitive answers. As established earlier, if this form of filmmaking requires the construction of a space for an intimacy that struggles to exist otherwise, Liu really pushes his picture of the ‘imagined,’ creating a narrative-like structure as a space for chance. He really leans into the engagement of world-building — his mission being to create an ‘answer’ instead of requesting one be directly revealed by his father. At the end of the film, Liu’s momentary visit to rural Quebec takes on the image of a permanent stay. The film concludes with various wide shots of the peninsula’s landscape. The wind is strong — pushing the weight of the waters of the Chaleurs Bay and the long strands of grass that greet it. Muted greens, light blues, and a slight peach hue fill the frame. Liu and his father sit side-by-side on a log as the sun rises. His dad has his shirt wrapped around his head. Liu notices and follows suit. Their bonding, constructed and framed for the screen, becomes Liu’s findings (and imaginings) for intimacy throughout MOTEL GRAND PRÉ,. Liu has crafted a world where his confessional “I love you” can exist unabashedly.

The considerations of MOTEL GRAND PRÉ, NO CRYING AT THE DINNER TABLE and FLOCK make me curious about where our attempts at intimacy lie. Through Liu’s film specifically, I consider where they could lie… and reside comfortably. For Liu’s film, the results of constructing a space for intimacy extend beyond the screen. During the Q&A session at Reel Asian’s 2025 Unsung Voices screening, an audience member directs a question to Liu’s dad, asking him what he thought of the film. His father answers in Chinese and Liu translates his father’s words. He explains that his father was once worried for Liu’s career when he graduated, but upon seeing this film, realizes that this is Liu’s calling. As he translates, Liu begins to choke up. Only the Mandarin speakers understand so far what has happened and a portion of sniffles echo in the theatre. The moderator translates the conversation, and the initial reaction dominoes out to everyone else. I witness the imagined manifest in the real world. My heart is tender. I think of my father’s tired skin again.

The attempts at spacemaking for intimacy to comfortably roam are initiated through the imagined. I believe we can learn a lot in the spaces of the unknown and from Asian Canadian (filmmakers) who dare ask, what if? And what could be? I saw parent-child affection existing in TIFF Lightbox’s Cinema 1 theatre. I hesitate asking how it can be known under my parents’ roof as I continue to live with them. But I remain curious about what I can find in my own creative searching. I will continue to learn, listen, and look to the future. To extend myself to hope and play.

Gulzar (they/them) is a Filmmaker and Facilitator based in Brampton, Ontario. While working in the (hybrid) documentary medium, their films speak from the desire to be witnessed. Gulzar continuously explores their transness, the Desi diaspora, and themes of confession, privacy and memory, in and outside of their work.

Gulzar’s works have screened at Toronto’s Inside Out Film and Video Festival, New York’s NewFest, Montréal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, London’s Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Festival, Regent Park Film Festival, Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival and Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival.

Where does it Hurt? How could it Mend? was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From the Managing Editor

The Youth Critics program began its 6th iteration after a one-year break from the 5th cycle, hosted from 2023–2024.

In some senses, we’ve sped through yet another season of films, shows, popular culture moments and trending topics. There’s always so much to take in, mull over, discuss and consider, In other senses, the writing process for criticism doesn’t shift its speed very easily. Everything moves at the same painful, glacial pace in drafting, revisions and revisions. This feels a little like whiplash, something that I’ve experienced while restarting this process (amidst big geopolitical events and the rapid expansion and adoption of AI) for a writing program that tries to spend a long period of time thinking about a very small thing and writing one piece about it.

The word “attention” is loaded with all kinds of value in our current moment. What we choose to linger on is increasingly supercharged with value; how we make those choices is a conversation we can’t quite get away from.

To pay attention is to stretch toward, to take interest or notice.
To attend to is to be present and to deal with.

Criticism requires both postures of attention to come to fruition: the stretching toward interest and the presence of dealing with. Holding this posture for a long time requires effort, intention and energy. How does the film work? Why does it choose this? What is it exploring? Why do I feel what I feel? What remains in my memory after? How does it resonate with or disturb me? The swirling maelstrom of thinking and discussing and rethinking that comes from asking these questions is a powerful thing.

The critics in this 6th cycle have held their postures of attention for months, un/comfortably, un/knowingly and (possibly) un/willingly, offering their energy, time, and language to leave a small record of an encounter between themselves and a film or two. How wonderful. What is writing if not just small records of encounter anyway?

Jasmine

A special thanks to mentors Vince Ha and keiko Hart for their generosity, time and energy in incubating the pieces with our critics.

What is the Youth Critics Initiative?

The Youth Critics Initiative (YCI), run by TACLA, emerged from a desire to share and nurture the tools of criticism and review amongst community members who were emerging creators, writers, researchers and programmers. Hosted in partnership with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, YCI offers an eight-month mentorship program designed to build skills in long-form criticism and alternative formats and nurtured through the lens of critical rigour and community relations.

Youth Critics are given an all-access pass to the festival (November 2025), begin working on their pieces after it ends, and are published together in digital format the following May (2026) during Asian Heritage Month!

We’re excited to be publishing the writing work of 4 critics this year, and are encouraged by the tender labour they have taken to attend to the storytelling efforts of Asian diasporic filmmakers and creators.

You can check out the work from past cohorts here: (YCI5), (YCI4), (YCI 3), (YCI2), and (YCI1).

YCI 6 in Review was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Gabriel Yuan

This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative V, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 27th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

a memory i carry with me: ten years ago, in front of my grandfather’s grave. early spring in the shandong province of china. gazing into the slab of stone that marked his remains with a sense of detachment and urgency. my grandmother had asked me to bow, but i couldn’t move. i knew that if i did i would be mortified. in the bible, lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt for looking back. i felt as she did, in the moment; not transformed, but swallowed whole by disobedience.

memory / construction

BENEVOLENCE opens in darkness and resonance. There is only sound, at first — three beats of a Chinese drum, slow and heavy with intention. Following closely are three strikes of a hanging bell, its fullness ringing for a second, suspended.

Kevin Matthew Wong’s documentary premiered at the 2023 Reel Asian Film Festival as part of the Unsung Voices shorts program. It serves as both dissemination and archive of the Tam Kung Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in Canada. Founded by Hakka Chinese immigrants in the 1930s, it stands in Victoria’s Chinatown almost a century past. The documentary follows a group of women who aim to preserve the establishment and broadcast its rich history.

The documentary does not follow a narrative but rather presents a series of vignettes. Interior shots of the Tam Kung Temple and interviews weave together a story about preservation, drawing toward a conclusion inviting the viewers to engage in the temple’s preservation.

BENEVOLENCE lingers upon space and memory, meandering through corridors that drift with the sweet tang of incense. Wong navigates the temple gently and with care — like a hesitant visitor. His camera commits each corridor to memory, lingering to take in the domed skylight or to pan over the banners that adorn the walls. Interspersed throughout the documentary are interviews of three women who serve as board members. Nora, Gayle, and Jackie each play a vital role in the Tam Kung Temple’s leadership and community. For them, the temple holds years of personal and family history.

In the first of many shots of the empty temple, Jackie narrates her memories over a series of interior shots. The late afternoon light only catches one wall, rendering the remainder of the room in warm shadows, as she talks about her spatial memories: the stairwell, incense smoke, and the temple’s sense of mysticality. At the same moment, the LED candles at the altar switch on with a loud click, a mantra starts playing from a speaker, and Tam Kung’s face is illuminated from the heavy curtains of the altar.

Wong’s cinematography carefully depicts the temple’s intimate holiness, rendering red and gold tones in an array of compositions — drenched in shadows, dully aglow, coruscatingly wreathed upon the altar. In the theatre, I was quietly enraptured. I had forgotten that places of worship could be filled with tenderness.

The first Christian church my family attended upon arriving in Canada was a repurposed school auditorium where the Chinese services were held. It had beige carpets and a long hallway where my friends and I gave ghost tours and scared ourselves. The building was a church in the most utilitarian sense, constructed into being every Sunday and torn down later that evening.

Growing up immersed in a deeply impersonal religion whetted my appetite for places of worship that relish in their adornment. I found myself drawn to Hakka Chinese religion, by its act of drawing upon memory and tradition not to reprimand, but to love and remember. To venerate ancestors and native deities rather than a god whose love is conditional, to be earned through romanticized suffering.

My religious and cultural grief are deeply intertwined. It is here, I think, where my intentions with the film grew muddled. Later in the film, Nora speaks about growing up in the suburbs just outside of Victoria’s Chinatown. As the camera pans over, she says that Chinese culture, to her, was quite foreign except when she visited the temple. Nora’s reminiscence echoed with me. I wish I had—a thread of connection, a neat cross-stitch over the void of my ancestry.

Chinese culture was not inherently foreign to me but grew dissonant, not for lack of trying, but from too many years in between and only childish evocations to fill in the gaps. I seem to have a better memory of my childhood than most people do. I remember events, even full conversations from when I was no older than three or four. Most of them comprise a mundane existence, tied to the first apartment I lived in.

tossing stones with my grandfather into the algae-covered, swampy pond behind our building, mimicking aloud their solid, wet plonks as they sank — 咚, 咚, 咚 (dong, like the sound produced by striking a piece of jade).

staring at the bamboo forest behind the playground, through which led a tiny path. i remember the darkness in there being warm and hazy, and the incessant mosquito bites.

i remember both the conversations i was not meant to overhear and the act of trying to forget them, years later.

My memories do not occupy tangible, existing spaces. That is what drew me to the Tam Kung Temple. It is a church that is also a memory. The temple’s significance is twofold, fulfilling both Chinatown’s heritage as well as religious tradition for Hakka immigrants. To this end, I thought I could honour and contend with both my diasporic and religious memories by visiting the temple.

I hold onto these childhood memories because I have not visited China in almost ten years. If I were to go back, I would be both a visitor and a foreigner. I have no idea what kind of people my maternal grandparents were. My ancestry and Chinese identity are almost mythological to me in their nearness and inscrutability.

These are not new feelings to the diasporic experience. I know what I feel is not new, revelatory, or even very introspective. I see it in my critiques of diasporic narratives that should hit home, from my disappointment in THE FAREWELL or my indifference to SAVING FACE. It feels unfulfilling to wallow in displacement yet never reach an answer. But BENEVOLENCE unearthed simultaneously a new urge and a possibility in me — to hold onto memories not out of hunger, but tranquillity. I wanted my remembrance to resemble a peaceful tradition, not a desperate search. I wanted to conclude my discontent.

guest / stranger

This past winter, while visiting my family in Vancouver, I did as BENEVOLENCE asked. I went to the temple out of curiosity, convenience, and a hunger for connection to my memories.

Early in the morning, I drove half an hour to the ferry dock and boarded the ferry to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. It was a long ride, and I headed outside to the open deck. It was December and the wind jostled violently. I watched the freezing waters churn below as we headed west and the landscape of islands passing by.

From there, I took an hour-long bus ride to downtown Victoria, where the Tam Kung Temple is housed. The entrance was a small and unassuming door with no markings or signage. I opened it and stepped into a narrow corridor that stretched into a steep flight of stairs leading upwards.

The temple occupies a small space, no bigger than a living room, but temporally it stretches years upon years. Banners on the wall list the dates of entire families who had visited. Newspaper clippings were scattered along the walls, from columns commemorating the temple’s anniversary and describing its history.

There were two other people in the temple, an older and a younger man. When the older man approached me, I realized we had a language barrier — he spoke Cantonese and Hakka while I spoke Mandarin. After some fumbling, I told him in very simple Mandarin that I wanted to look around. He told us to go ahead, but they were closing soon. Afterwards, he disappeared into the kitchen, the younger man left, and I was alone. It felt strange, with all the curiosity of wandering a museum alone, the holiness of a church, and the intimate peculiarity of being left alone inside a stranger’s home.

to confront diasporic grief / to stumble

What I was seeking was not a temple but a room. A small one, just off the main living room that contained all the answers to my ancestry. The choices of a small group of people that comprised the map of my geographical and personal assemblage. I wanted to collect and contain my desires into a house, a temple, a church — any vessel would do.

in the weeks where i am too busy to call her, i think about my grandmother at random. when i’m in the middle of cooking, when i’m half asleep. but i don’t dare linger for too long.

i’m afraid of facing the time we have left. i’m afraid of making up for the time i’ve been gone. i’m afraid, often, that my parents will one day decide to never speak to me again.

BENEVOLENCE distilled in me a sense of longing. I wanted a place for my diasporic grief to reside and to be washed anew. I was touched by the idea that a god could be someone personal — a fragment, or remnant, from a piece of cultural and personal history remolded.

Together, Nora and Gayle recount Tam Kung’s origin. He is a Hakka Chinese deity, a seafaring god who watches over fishermen. Immigrants who crossed the ocean to Canada sought him in particular for protection in their new land and dedicated the temple to his name.

Wong’s focus on Hakka religion is deeply personal, drawing from his background as a Hakka Chinese artist and his strong call to represent these stories. He mentioned in the post-screening Q&A that he visited the temple as a stranger, but by the end of the day, they had lent him the keys and permitted him to film there after hours.

Towards the end of the documentary, Wong poses a question to the caretakers: “What would it mean to you if the temple disappeared?” Gayle answers that it would be not only a personal, ancestral loss but one to Victoria’s Chinese community. The music swells as the shot cuts to a pair of hands feeding incense paper to a firebox, following the paper as it is swallowed by flame.

Every part of this scene is tied to remembrance. The camera slows down and briefly dwells by the firebox as the flames burn. The prolonged shot is heavy with a sense of loss and reflection. As flame eats away at paper, cultural tradition can just as easily be consumed. But simultaneously, burning paper is a form of ancestor veneration — a refutation of lost memories.

The shot of the fire transitions to the temple’s domed ceiling, overlapping for a second. Again, it is a commemoration. Though tarnished, the skylight doesn’t feel any less holy. Rather, it is a moment of longstanding, weathered devotion. This scene moved me, heavily, because I could feel Wong’s love for the temple; the equal measure of awe and respect for its vividness and history.

Stewardship of the temple feels like collaborative, collective work. The 140-year-old temple needs restoration. Its roof and windows are leaking, floors are worn with shoddy construction. The structural part of the roof needs fixing, there is no building foundation, and pieces of the parapet are falling off. One of the caretakers makes an emotional plea to viewers, “We want you to come, discover us, find out about us, and see what we can do. And help us protect and preserve this temple for the many generations yet to come.” At Reel Asian, her message is directly for Asian viewers, many of them diasporic. The mission to gather visitors hinges on a commonality, one of an Asian diaspora seeking to soothe their dissonance and lack of connection with culture through religion.

I am grateful to have discovered the temple through Reel Asian and seen it in person. It is a beautiful, reverent space rich with Chinese Canadian history. But I had gone hoping to reconnect with a certain part of my identity that lacked ancestral connection, and I do not think the temple offered any answers for me.

I feel I visited a museum rather than a place of worship. The documentary does not serve as an adequate intermediary for visiting a religious space, especially for those unfamiliar with Chinese folk religion.

What should the visitor’s intentions be? Is the temple equipped to accept visitors en masse? Not everyone at the temple may hold the capacity to be a tour guide. The documentary wants to invite viewers into its space, but there is neither a framework nor intentionality. It is also unlikely that Reel Asian viewers would make it to a temple on the other side of the coast in a non-central location off the mainland.

After the screening, Wong stood outside with a stack of the temple’s business cards. He handed one to each viewer exiting the theatre. But what good is visiting the temple as an outsider?

inheritance / benevolence

I was raised Christian. My own religion was not inherited but given to me, by American missionaries only one generation past — almost no time at all, almost reversible. Listening to the women speak in the documentary, I wished I had something worthy of inheritance.

I am not so different from the women at the Tam Kung Temple. My family’s story is typical in the Chinese-Canadian diaspora canon — we moved to Vancouver from Shanghai when I was a child, and through the years I have lost sense of where and to whom I belong.

During my trip to my family’s home, my grandmother was also visiting us from China. It was my first time seeing her in nearly seven years. I was intent on asking her about our family history, a topic largely unknown to me. I was older now, and I felt a sense of urgency.

I asked her over lunch one day, and my grandmother answered: she talked about her life as a young adult during the Cultural Revolution, how she met my grandfather and all the grief she had endured. It means a lot that she shared these memories with me. I have never seen an adult in my family share their trauma and grief before, much less in a raw, candid manner. I learned more about my family in one afternoon from my grandmother than over a lifetime of stilted conversations with my parents. She talked for hours — there, again, I felt a sense of tranquillity. I felt myself brush up against a sense of fulfillment. To have something however small to preserve is a privilege. My grandmother told me that my father knew all these stories too. He had never asked, only eavesdropped over the years; she only found out when he was an adult. I wonder about his silence, sometimes, and why he chose to pass it on to me.

To preserve something — a memory, a culture, a tradition, is not a solitary task. What is so enrapturing about Wong’s depiction of the Tam Kung Temple is the act of preservation, and how the documentary calls its viewers into collaboration. Preserving Hakka Chinese history is a collective political act, but I wished the documentary had facilitated a better dialogue.

BENEVOLENCE conceptualizes a different mode of diasporic identity, one that refutes western hegemony by preserving traditional folk religion. But the documentary does not depict the Tam Kung Temple through any sort of narrative or theoretical framework — what does the temple stand for? Tranquillity? Benevolence? These are traits one would assign to a god or an acolyte, not beliefs.

The word “benevolence” connotes a kind, selfless disposition. Here, the word is attributed to the temple caretakers and their intent — they are steadfast in their stewardship and dedication, driven and enmeshed by a benevolent cause. But throughout the screening, I thought of benevolence as a godly attribute, an unfamiliar tender sense of holiness.

Benevolence presented an alternate path to my cultural identity I had been pondering — both to reconnect with Chinese culture through religion, and to reconnect with religion as an autonomous decision rather than a forced assimilation. I think that is too heavy a cause to impose onto this documentary. Its call to action is rooted in cultural intent, to preserve and pass on the leadership of the temple, rather than religious exploration. It is not an adequate intermediary between the viewer and the temple. I hold both cultural and religious grief — they are impossible to fully untangle; but in a call to action, these emotions must be separate rather than being expected to bolster one another. BENEVOLENCE was ultimately not an answer to my religious contention, but it nurtured my search for cultural connection. It is the fear of losing my own history that binds together the entirety of my cultural grief. Hearing about my family’s rich history in Northern China from my grandmother helped me make sense of myself and where I exist now. Generational strife slots into place. It helps to know what I am missing.

on the tam kung temple’s website is a brief history, a snippet of a memory: a hakka chinese man swept to canada by the gold rush had brought a small statue of a local deity along as he travelled across the ocean. before he left in search of gold he placed the statue in a small wooden niche, by the mouth of a ravine, so that his fellow countrymen could pray to the god as well.

to confront diasporic grief is to hold onto a fragment and make anew. memory, tradition, self — a temple. i wonder about the man who had brought a piece of his mythology overseas and made an altar for it in a new land. did he, too, fear forgetting?

Gabriel Yuan is a writer with a craving for mythology, body horror, and Catholic imagery (they are not Catholic). They are finishing up a degree in English and Urban Planning at the University of Toronto, where they also curate a student magazine, the UC Gargoyle, as the editor-in-chief.

confronting diasporic (un)memory / awash in benevolence was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative V, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 27th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

I used to be an optimist. Hope brings colour to life. Anticipation brings about an excitement that can’t be quelled in your soul. Doesn’t it feel good to see things play out exactly how you wanted it to? It brings about a sense of control and certainty for your future, that everything will be just fine.

I don’t know what happened since, but, I’m a pessimist now. There are more times than I can count when I’ve been let down, that reality did not match my desires. Perhaps my dreams were too lofty, but that’s not the point. I believed I was more on the side of realism, but my editor laughed in my face. My jaw dropped at that realization about myself. How blind could I be to not have known that? But I don’t view life bleakly. It’s peculiar—I use pessimism to generate excitement in my life.

If my expectations are low, then the threshold for an event to surprise me is bound to be surpassed, allowing joy to enter my life with ease. Or, I abandon expectations altogether, and the lack of attachment will bring bliss. A life without worries. It’s worked for me and I find myself happier these days. I’m more content with life as is, instead of looking forward to the next big thing. Although I welcome ambition, I’ll still try to achieve goals for myself. Rather than fantasizing about them, I do the work.

I give this advice to my friends: minimize your sadness and maximize your happiness.

This is what I thought the short film, EVENING CLOUDS was preaching, and I was all about it. “Yes! Spread the message and share it with everyone you know!” That’s also why I love narrative short films: they provide a relatable glimpse into another person’s life and represent a message the director wants to share with the world. For me, the film strengthened my beliefs, but also reminded me of something I’ve forgotten, but only after having carefully dissected this film did I find it so profound. More on this later.

EVENING CLOUDS by Aung Phyoe is about a young Burmese girl who yearns for liberation from the expectations imposed on her. After losing her job at the factory, San Kyi must care for her bedridden grandmother while her widowed mother struggles to support the family. To alleviate their struggles, San’s mother arranges for her to marry Ko Bhone, an older family friend. These obligations weigh heavily on San, but she sees a way out with her friend and romantic interest Theint Theint Oo, who, like her, has lost her factory job and now plans to return to her hometown. San plans to elope with her, but events do not exactly play out the way she expects.

What exactly are expectations? Simply put, they are strong beliefs about an outcome in the future. These expectations arise from a desire for control, predictability, and stability. It’s a common occurrence in Canadian immigrant families. Immigrants experience instability when relocating to Canada for many reasons: a lack of resources from being unable to bring many belongings from their home country, restarting careers and financial records, and having to discover a new network of support. When adapting to a new societal structure, there is inevitably chaos. To have their children avoid these hardships, they pressure them to pursue a predictable path toward a secure future. In many cases, it does work out and success stories are heard through the dragon fruit vine. “Did you hear your cousin became a doctor? He already has a house and got married. You should follow in his footsteps.” Words that are all too familiar to first-generation children. Similarly, the values formed amongst the characters in this film are exacerbated by the disarray of the political turmoil in Yangon, Myanmar, where prices for mohinga, a breakfast staple, fluctuate constantly and where bomb explosions are a daily occurrence. Within the chaos, they yearn for something predictable and stable to latch onto.

San is ensnared in a web of expectations that control her. She is burdened by familial and gender norms, primarily from her mother. There are also the expectations she creates for herself, displaced onto a saviour figure who might rescue her from her predicament. All these conflicting desires inflict San so much that they manifest in her dreams, a sign that her subconscious motivations have been infected. To make matters worse, these demands also arise against a politically unstable backdrop. This social instability increases the pressure of the burdens she feels, creating a sense of urgency to resolve things and establish stability in her life.

To escape this web, she places her bets on Theint, someone who can answer all of San’s problems, and who she believes can fulfill her desires. Most of the dialogue spoken by San is about Theint or when she’s with Theint. San feels her most authentic self around her. Love is framed as a liberating force and the queer nature of San’s and Theint’s relationship is radically liberating in itself since it challenges many social norms in Myanmar. A lot rides on Theint, who holds power over San and controls the outcome of San’s happiness.

On the other hand, with her mother and Bhone, it’s largely an exchange of small talk for San. She only speaks one sentence to Bhone, “Do you want more water?” out of common courtesy. San is restrained in these relationships. They address San purely as the roles she plays for the family: a caregiver, a wife, and a potential mother. San’s relationship with Theint looks much more special in comparison since only Theint can bring out all of San.

EVENING CLOUDS begins with San asleep, passing the time as if waiting for something. Then, her phone on the table rings and San gets up to look out the window. Every time she looks out the window, there’s only one thing and one person she looks for: Theint. San reminds me of an earlier version of myself. Dreaming about the possibilities, unable to do anything else to pass the time but fantasize. Theint is all that occupies her mind.

Are we defined by our desires? In San’s case, yes. Theint is the sole motivator of her life. Are we in control of our dreams and desires or do they control us? The dream-self relationship is cyclical. Our dreams can only arise from subconscious desires, but the dream synthesizes a possibility that fuels these desires. Yet, the cyclical nature of our wishes can be harmful.

When Theint arrives, she asks if San’s mother is home, to which San replies, “No.” These two have a private relationship that they don’t want others peering into. It is so private that Theint tightly packs her cell phone into her purse after entering the house, closing them off from the rest of the world. The nature of their relationship is taboo in Burmese society as the Myanmar government does not recognize same-sex marriages. To remain safe and protect their relationship, no other eyes can pry into their relationship, and many precautions must be taken. The burden of gender norms lies heavily on the two as they challenge them, straining their relationship.

Over breakfast, the two talk about their cloudy future. It’s revealed that things aren’t going so well: they were laid off from their factory jobs in the city, mohinga prices keep going up, Theint’s elbow is swollen from preparing to move back to her hometown, and San is unwillingly getting married off to a much older family friend. Despite these misfortunes, what keeps them going is their relationship. They discuss eloping back to Theint’s hometown, although San is unconfident if she can. But what she can do is show her love to Theint. Without uttering a word, she gives her an egg from her mohinga. She stealthily takes her grandmother’s gold bracelet and gives it to Theint to sell for a pair of bus tickets to Theint’s hometown. San is invested in her relationship with Theint and is willing to give her anything without asking, hoping for a future together despite the odds stacked against them. This is a dream that San is heavily investing in to become true, a dream that could easily dissipate before her eyes if just one thing goes wrong, a dream not entirely based on reality. This one hope becomes her life aspiration. If all goes well, then it’s happily ever after for San and she doesn’t have to worry about anything else, or so she thinks. But, what are the odds of that? What would happen if it’s taken away?

As Theint does her makeup in front of the mirror, she sings a little song:

The clouds are turning grey.
It seems it’s going to rain.
So the waves will be getting wilder.
Sweetheart, please come closer to me,
you will get wet in the rain…

The song illustrates their relationship, the gloomy weather an ominous symbol of their future, and their desire to be closer during this turbulent time. However, the way the shot is framed suggests other possibilities. The two are deftly positioned in a mirror, but their gazes do not meet. San stares longingly at Theint but Theint is fixed on her makeup. The lack of reciprocation in their gazes illustrates how their visions for the future do not align. San expects a future with Theint but given her signals, seeming hesitant about moving away, Theint still plans to move away knowing that San most likely can’t commit. The rain won’t last forever and eventually, the two will have to go their separate ways.

Theint notices San’s more dishevelled appearance from staying home all day and they switch spots. She puts her hair clip into San’s hair, an act of intimacy. The two discuss their possible future further: Theint has been asking her friends around for jobs for them, but also tells San she doesn’t have to worry too much about what lies ahead, and that her mother and Bhone can always provide for her. San refutes all that, saying she could never marry him and that they’ll stay together, hugging Theint tightly. Getting even more intimate, they start to tickle each other. San’s desire is at its climax. The thing is, Theint is a little older than San. She has a few more years of experience and has already adopted a more realistic mindset after having lived her life so far. San has the eager and earnest energy to ramble about lofty dreams all day while Theint knows the reality of the situation, proposing pragmatic solutions for their issues if they’re truly going to move away. San trusts that it will all work out smoothly as long as she’s with Theint. Hoping won’t get anyone anywhere, but the action driven by the hope will, however small it may be, and Theint knows this.

It seems as if things might escalate between the two, but a bomb blast kills the mood, a daily occurrence in Yangon. Theint’s phone rings in her purse, raising San’s suspicion. Theint tries to silence the phone. Who could be calling her and why did she tuck her phone away so tightly earlier? Theint leaves to secure bus tickets, but San’s suspicion is piqued—she monitors Theint from the window and finds that Theint is cautious of her surroundings, making sure no one else sees what she’s doing. Theint heads toward a nearby alleyway, and San’s gaze follows her, catching Theint secretly meeting a mystery man. The notion of Theint seeing another person, a man, for that matter, intrudes on San’s thoughts. It chips away at the dream she longs for. When the dream you’ve been banking on so heavily is taken away, what else is left in your heart?

Before San can muse any further, San’s mother arrives home, and San is asked to help Bhone bring up her grandmother’s oxygen tank. San’s interactions with her mother and Bhone are restrained, creating a tense atmosphere. Her mother orders San around to assist with chores and no other kind of communication is exchanged between them, not even a “how was your day?” Furthermore, San’s mother talks about San as someone who provides care and “great-grandchildren” to her grandmother if she lives long enough. The gender norms that burden San are on full display here. She is required to be a provider in all contexts, without a say in it herself. Her mother orders San to go to the hospital with her grandmother as her condition is worsening. She complacently agrees. While still trying to resolve her fantasy escape being ripped from her, she must deal with familial obligations before tending to her own needs. Expectations burden her twofold here— her unfulfilled hope of being with Theint, and the enforced responsibility to assist the household at a moment’s notice. Her relationship with her home is prison-like, alluded to by the bars attached to her window.

With Ko Bhone, their conversations are even more restrained. Simple nods, glances, and other non-verbal cues are exchanged to coordinate on the same task. The disinterest is clear from an outsider’s view, but maybe not for Bhone who perceives it as kindness. His presumptions of San frame how he interprets her actions. There’s a well-crafted shot where the two are positioned in a mirror, but the two are not looking at each other. Bhone tries to make eye contact when trying to make conversation but San keeps her gaze away from him, a reflection of how their views of each other do not align, an echo of the earlier mirror shot with Theint. The unspoken presumption that the two will be wed creates a tense atmosphere here as well.

The situation would be more relaxed without that assumption, wouldn’t it?

San goes to fix her hair by the mirror and begins to sing the song that Theint was singing earlier–Theint still lingers in her mind. The song takes on a different meaning now. Forced to go to the hospital with her grandmother, all San wants is to be with Theint. If all else, if she cannot escape the expectations of her family, she wants Theint to be by her side.

She removes the hairpin that Theint put on earlier and starts to fidget with it, fixating on what Theint could be doing with the man she met. Her mind spirals into unwanted thoughts of Theint being intimate with someone else. San grips the hair clip tighter and tighter at the thought of Theint’s “disloyalty” and it eventually pierces her hand, drawing blood. This thought harms San both mentally and physically as her hope for Theint transforms from a bright future to mental anguish. Theint becomes all she can think about. The scene then cuts to San waking up, it was a dream after all. After she wakes up, San tries calling Theint, but to no avail. She scans out her window for any signs of Theint, but nothing. Her suspicions of Theint betraying her are affirmed. The dream has devolved into a nightmare and the symptoms of its burden become ever clearer.

If only she hadn’t mentally invested so much energy into trying to manifest it, she wouldn’t be suffering.

As revenge for betraying her, San tells her mother that Theint stole the precious gold bracelet that belonged to the family. San was fidgeting with the hair clip earlier, chanting to herself, “Theint took it, Theint took it, Theint took it”, to convince herself that Theint was the wrongdoer responsible, to desperately morph her image of Theint to ease the sting of deception. Dismantling the expectation of Theint that she had built up so much takes just as much effort and investment, hence the extremity of her actions.

San’s mother had saved the gold bracelet to help them out in potential financial ruts, but with that safety net gone now, her mother threatens to punish San by reporting her to the police for allowing Theint to do that. She knows that San fawns over her, but is not aware of the full extent of their relationship. However, Bhone intervenes and says that the situation outside after the bombing is too dangerous and that the police have other priorities on hand. She gives up on dealing with it. San went so far as to potentially expose the nature of her relationship with Theint to her mother and the police likely would have found out. San had truly lost all hope in their relationship that she was willing to abandon it all and just move on. San’s dream had harmed her more than it had brought her joy in the end.

Why have dreams in the first place?

The ambulance for San’s grandmother finally arrives and they bring their belongings downstairs. Expecting the worst, her mother takes off her grandmother’s ring, raising many questions. Will she make it back home? Is she in serious need of money to think of selling the ring? Will this fast-track Bhone and San’s marriage? The family is at its most unstable now, lacking the financial safety net with the gold bracelet and the grandmother needing care at the hospital. States of transition bring about disruption. Familial obligations are felt now more than ever to ensure things don’t spiral further.

At this moment, I think it is better to take control of the situation and work towards a desired outcome than to worry and fret over anything that can go wrong. Mental resources need to be so preciously allocated towards productive outcomes.

As San is packing her things in the ambulance, Theint waves her over to the alley nearby to talk. San goes to hear Theint out but it’s not up for discussion. Theint’s reputation with San’s family had already been tarnished. However, Theint had followed the plan exactly as laid out and has the money now. Theint mentions the hardships she had to go through for Theint. “I can get killed in a bomb blast, or I can get randomly detained by the police. You never try to put yourself in my shoes.” Theint came back for San in the end and isn’t the end goal what matters? She sheds a tear, hurt by the sudden change of heart she sees in San. Theint still acted for San, but not in the way San fantasized.

Theint doesn’t elaborate on who the man she met was. Perhaps he’s the reason that Theint was able to get any money at all and Theint had to make a difficult decision to save their relationship, to attain the future they want. Despite all of that, San rejects her, she knows there’s no going back after telling her family. Theint, in one last act of desperation, gives San all of the money she got from the bracelet, enough for two bus tickets out of the city and walks away. She doesn’t go with San as the purity of their relationship has been tarnished and the trust is lost. She decides to empower San and sacrifices her future for San’s happiness. San in the end though, betrays all expectations of both her dream of eloping with Theint and of the disappointment from Theint’s “betrayal”. All San needs to do now is decide for herself what’s next. The one in control of San’s happiness has now shifted from Theint to San. This conflict could have been avoided if San didn’t have such strict presumptions of Theint. San had created a false image, a delusion not representative of reality.

San returns to the ambulance and reflects on her conversation with Theint. While stuck in traffic on the dusty, debris-filled roads and grasping her grandmother’s hand, San notices a change—a lack of pulse. It takes some time for San to realize what this means for her. She had lost a family member, but may finally feel liberated, as if her grandmother heard her woes and permitted her to be free. Free from the burden of having to take care of her, free from having to provide great-grandchildren. Paradoxically, this moment of loss comes with a moment of freedom with bittersweetness for San. She had never wished for her grandmother to die, but perhaps that was the only way for San to be free. San decides right then and there: she busts out of the ambulance doors and escapes in the middle of traffic.

The final scene shows San walking across a bridge, leading out of the city, against a sunset. With her backpack in hand, she pulls out her phone, which she typically checks for one reason. The dream is rekindled and San needs to call Theint.

It took me a while to figure out the meaning of this ending. At first, I thought it was an open ending and I wasn’t at all sure where she was going. Was she going to leave all on her own? It wasn’t clear to me if her grandmother had died, so did she just abandon her out of selfishness? Because her decisions were in line with my own beliefs that all expectations should be abandoned, I was prevented from seeing the film comprehensibly. She reminded me of a past naive version of myself that had just learned the pain of disappointment and I became fixated on the idea that the film was inherently pessimistic. Only after multiple rewatches of the short film did I realize how much more complex her situation was. Sure, San did bring about her own misery from constructing delusions of the future, but so many other things just happened to fall into place for her afterwards that she could not but have hope.

Am I still a pessimist? Yes. After all, I told you to abandon your hopes and dreams to avoid suffering. EVENING CLOUDS depicts the weight of the burdens that San carries with her over and over, in various shapes and forms. But the film also represents reality: life will never play out exactly how we wish it to be, in both positive and negative directions. Even though this is fictionalized, the film connected with me in many ways that it felt real, that I and everyone go through an experience similar to this, a universal and necessary lesson. As I mentioned earlier, if my expectations are low, then the threshold to be happy is bound to be surpassed. This part of my philosophy was something I needed to be reminded of and only after the film was hammered into me did I put the pieces together. There is room to dream a little bit as long as action is taken towards it. Our dreams hurt us only if they are never realized.

John Bao is an emerging screenwriter, drawn to character-driven storytelling, no matter the genre, ranging from the surreal to borderline autobiographical. He is a recent participant of the Justice For My Sister BIPOC Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab, currently developing an all-ages TV animated pilot. He is also a member of Writers In Trees, a collective of emerging writers, specializing in short prose and poetry. You can catch him watching films, struggling in music, or exploring the city in his never-ending search for inspiration.

IG: john.bao

The Cloudiness of Expectations was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A thank-you to films that let longing go wild

by Issra Marie Martin

This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative V, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 27th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

I’ve been trying to make a list of the first films I remember watching to better understand the stories I grew up with. My recollection is disappointingly spotty. There are the Barbie movies on the VCR — Barbie of Swan Lake, Barbie as the Princess and The Pauper. A special edition of 13 Going on 30, gifted to me by a classmate in a pink DVD case that glittered and smelled faintly of bubblegum. Other forms of media come to me more easily. I remember the dubbed anime available on cable TV — Sailor Moon, Inu Yasha, Naruto, Pokemon, Cardcaptor Sakura — and remember the electric feeling of watching scenes that barely passed my household’s filter for “adult-themed” content, which had a low tolerance for kissing, characters that professed their “like” for each other, and the words “damn” or “heck.” (Violence was alright unless it was excessively bloody.) And because I grew up with more music than I did film and TV combined, I can effortlessly recall the love ballads that played on my parents’ CDs. I soaked up their lyrics for years and then learned to repeat them with the help of our karaoke machine.

If the narratives that surrounded me as a child portrayed any sort of longing, it was in narrow service of upholding relationships between men and women. Within a conservative Catholic upbringing that avoided discussing matters of the flesh, “desire” was precariously balanced on the edge of sin and permissibility. I eventually conflated the language of desire with the language of heteronormative romance and inherited a sanitized understanding of it that demonized its heady, unpredictable influence. I didn’t know that one could ache for friendship, family, belonging, legacy, influence, or justice, and see that they were forms of desire all the same.

Because I didn’t realize that yearning could take other forms, I couldn’t see the connection between desire and other, less “delightful” affects, like desperation, anguish, and impulsiveness. The Disney villains whose yearnings expressed themselves in “unsightly” ways — a tantrum, a deranged smile, maniacal laughter — scared me because they were so different from what I had learned to be “appropriate” shows of wanting. This colouring of desire has only held me back because the things I have learned to want and how to ask for them are connected to the ways I have been taught to be good — a meek, obedient daughter who expresses her desires only as she has been taught. I’ve judged myself for wanting and I’ve judged the way others want, playing into the Western, patriarchal structures that both stymie and fetishize the desire of young Asian women. It’s like I grew up to give the world’s most boring karaoke performance, singing only as the lyrics appear and to the exact tune of flat MIDI tones.

Detangling these views of desire from my own longings is an agonizing process, but with an invaluable reward: realizing that my capacity to yearn has been expansive all along. Sometimes I pine for specific things, goals, or realities; sometimes I put in a vacuous request to the sky. Often, I feel most of it is unattainable: I want stability, certainty, reassurance, opportunity. I want to be even more fortunate than I currently am. I want to be surrounded by love.

I attended my first Reel Asian when the triumph from completing my MA was beginning to fade. My post-graduate preoccupation was to regain my footing in the suburbs of my home city, adjust to a tenuous job market, and nurture my work as a budding art writer, all at the same time. Those goals asked everything of the world, and everything of me. Reel Asian turned out to be a perfect place for me to show up, yearnings in tow. Halfway through the festival, I realized that many of the screenings, panels, and conversations were also driven by desire, ambitions ignited and fulfilled by the promise of film. At a time when I felt both obsessed with my aspirations and powerless in realizing them, I saw two films that freely explored the sheer force of desire and what it could achieve, whether or not their characters secured an ideal outcome: FUR, the 2022 experimental animation by Zhen Li, traces a schoolgirl’s fermenting feelings for her crush as she sits behind him in biology class. INVASIVE SPECIES, written and directed by Annie Ning, follows the complexes and cravings of young sound artist Maggie (Emily May Jampel) while she navigates the social politics of her first artist residency. The overwhelming desire to be seen fuels both the disfigured reverie in FUR and Maggie’s eventual rupture in INVASIVE SPECIES, unsettling visual and sonic boundaries in the pressurized package of a short film.

FUR: butterflies gone bad

A biology teacher holds up a tiny hair from a fly being dissected in class. The eyes and nose of a school crush are peeled from his face. A pair of giant chopsticks inches toward lovers who have abandoned their dinner for each other. Things are picked and plucked for examination in FUR. Li animates her adolescent protagonist’s fervour with smudgy, charcoal illustrations, while disembodied limbs and floating hairs illustrate what it’s like to (quite literally) get under another person’s skin. Her choice of sound design is minimal and detailed when it needs to be, amplifying the intimate details of a classroom daydream. For seven intense minutes, I was swept into the pent-up desires of a schoolgirl. I was horrified, and I was delighted.

The opening fantasies in FUR are sweet and saturated with pure, juvenile yearning. Early in the film, the protagonist joins her crush to hang halfway outside the window and watch a crescent moon rise over the school. But FUR isn’t just a fanciful joyride of its protagonist’s feelings, which are restless and powerful, deforming and digesting the bodies in her imagination. In the next scene, a spread of vegetables, soup, and half-eaten fruit rots on a dinner table. It’s the only part of the film where Li opts for an actual time lapse over illustration, and she punctuates the footage with the sound of wet kisses, pushing realism into excess. The kisses come from another room, where two bodies sit on a sofa and wrap around each other like a cord. As their faces warp into one, a fuzzy, white orb emerges from their melded form, and a pair of chopsticks enters the frame to pull at the thing. It stretches, snapping like rubber, and the fever dream collapses. The couple, the living room, and the dinner cave in on themselves. Entire frames liquefy. When the protagonist eventually reappears, she is tiny. Her classmates loom large and peer at her from floating windows, spectators of her disorientation. She finds her crush, and a few heartbeats pass before she peels the nail of his middle finger to slide underneath it. It’s only a second or two of body horror, but I thought it was the most unsettling part of the film. The scene has stuck with me for months now as if I left the theatre with a version of the protagonist under my skin.

Hiding under a blanket provides a sense of safety, even if it doesn’t actually make the monsters go away. The fingernail of a crush can be like that, too — the protagonist’s cloak from the wildfires of longing, fashioned from the very object of her desires. And yet, even as she hides from her feelings and the judgment of her peers, she continues to fiddle in her crush’s direction. Later in the film, the protagonist tries to lick her crush’s face while their disembodied heads are tossed in the air. I laughed in the theatre because her messy, oscillating behaviour is understandable: she’s stuck in a stuffy classroom and must remain tantalizingly close to the person she likes. In her personal, torturous merry-go-round, her crush is the source of both anxiety and comfort. In reality, he might be a little indifferent to her, but in her imagination, he is the only giant without a window, the only one not examining her. This conjured version of her crush is her refuge from everyone else’s prying eyes.

The feverishness in FUR suggests something unpleasant about the way the protagonist experiences her feelings. The attraction she feels is past the point of stale; it doesn’t put a skip in her step, nor does it embolden her to approach him. Her daydreams escalate from the slow, attentive deconstruction of her crush’s face to the dismemberment of the entire class, as if her unfulfilled longing is eating away at itself. While FUR is a firecracker of a short, its frenzy is a veil for the disenchantment and sadness of unrequited love. When the protagonist looks to the sky at the end of the film, the reflection of the moon in her iris dissolves and escapes from the corner of her eye — a tear shed from the remains of her fantasies.

Surreal elements provide a splash pad for desire to make a fuss against circumstance — in this case, a potentially unrequited crush, a classroom intolerably filled with other people. Desire is depicted in FUR as a reaching, grabby force, which is why forms are stretched past their limits in the film. In the end, unanswered heartache doesn’t look too different from a mould colony: it is all-consuming and decays everything it touches, even its own fancy. Though the protagonist runs from her imagination-gone-awry, I appreciate that the film doesn’t hold back from its subject matter. We get to see the rot and fuzz of her feelings, and they are playful, disturbing, tender, and persistent. FUR remains honest as it explores the expression and anxieties of yearning. It’s an exhilarating trip, and perhaps even a comfort for viewers who have been sitting on their longings for an extended period of time.

INVASIVE SPECIES: a study of the starving artist

At the beginning of INVASIVE SPECIES, Maggie eats small. Physically, she is compacted, sandwiched between two other artists. She keeps her elbows narrowed while she slices her food, and even when she switches to using her hands, her bites remain polite and indiscernible. Her mouth barely opens for a strawberry; her fist covers her mouth as she chews. When the table of artists raises their glasses in a toast, Maggie’s cup is stainless steel, its contents hidden amongst clear goblets.

After a few nights at the farmhouse residency, Maggie devours the communal produce in the kitchen while everyone else is asleep. Her face fills the screen as she bites into raw, dirt-encrusted carrots, a cucumber, and a yellow bell pepper. In the morning, she is disoriented and covered in soil. Director Annie Ning spares no sonic detail while Maggie attempts to cover her tracks: against an increasing staccato of strings, you can hear the dampness of torn vegetables swept off the kitchen tile, the moisture of soil and saliva as she spits into the bathroom sink, and her muffled cough against the toilet bowl.

INVASIVE SPECIES is a portrait of the aspiring artist’s shadow self. Though Maggie has been afforded a seat at the table, inner and outer voices alike unsettle her feeling of belonging. Her hunger for acknowledgement grows during the residency, and it’s only in secret that we see a glimpse of this appetite — she craves a little bit of everything, all for herself. No one else is awake to see, and Maggie herself might even be acting in her sleep, giving her desires free rein in the night.

Maggie is the next subject of gossip shortly after her clandestine meal. In the garden, her recording equipment captures flies, sheep, and whispers:

“She rarely talks to anybody…”

“I can’t imagine… do something like that…drawing attention to herself.”

“She’ll get there.”

“Eventually, maybe.”

“And her work is pretty, it’s nature. It’s not brave, it’s boring.”

There’s a promise of confrontation right then in Maggie’s brisk rise from the grass. But she acts instead at the following dinner, in front of the whole group. While everyone converses as normal, Maggie eats with her bare hands. She reaches into serving dishes and other people’s plates, grabbing the cup of the man who interrupted her a few nights before. The table falls silent as Maggie eats big, eats wide, and leans into everyone’s space. No one stops her from taking a bite out of every dish, including a yet-untouched chicken, which she drops carelessly onto the table before leaving the room. With this spree, Maggie spoils everyone’s meal and endangers her social place among the other artists. It’s a public transgression of the very first rule she is reminded of at the residency — that consumption should not take place unless it is shared.

When I think about Maggie stuffing herself with freshly harvested vegetables in the dark, I’m tempted to describe her actions as grotesque, especially compared to the other artists who dine merrily with each other at prescribed mealtimes. But she isn’t the only character to consume in this way. As tension builds in the film, the usual dinner scene is replaced with a montage of white mouths that chew and pucker and suck seasoning off of fingers. Microphones capture the squelching sounds of mastication, which are combined with angles shot close enough to catch the moisture around the artists’ lips. It’s gross. It’s also not that far off from the way Maggie eats at night and during the final dinner. The difference is that the other artists eat at the table, with a shameless comfort that comes from age, experience, and artistic clout. They eat with self-assurance, in bodies that have inhabited this earth and produced work for a while, in bodies that already feel welcome. Everyone is a consumer in INVASIVE SPECIES — the question is, who is invited to devour as they are?

I could say that Maggie’s arrival results in an upset to the ecosystem of the residency, that she is the invasive species of the film. However, the residency is overwhelmingly populated with older, white artists who speak over land acknowledgements and criticize the work of emerging artists. According to this majority, to be recognized as an artist is to take up space: flood conversations with criticism, land multiple residencies, and then take issue with other people who land multiple residencies. Maggie, on the other hand, is timid and struggles to describe her artistic practice to those around her, even when others attempt to make small talk with her. She might eat from the communal gardens when she’s not supposed to, but she is also surrounded by strange restrictions, hushed conversations, and competitive, exclusionary attitudes. Their dominion over the art world precludes Maggie’s presence and crowds her out from the beginning.

When Maggie’s episode elicits unexpected applause from the rest of the artists, it’s because she has assimilated into their invasive herd, at least through her consumptive habits. After her outburst, they follow her outside, considering her as if she were an artwork. For a split second, their evaluation is uncertain, but then a single clap turns into slow, buzzing applause and nods of approval for the young woman who just stole bites from everyone’s food. It’s cathartic to see Maggie finally express herself when she struggles to do so for most of the film. But how turbulent it is to realize that your presence is encouraged only according to norms that have been set long before you.

I would have felt monstrous in that farmhouse, too. In fact, as an early-career cultural worker in an increasingly precarious arts landscape, monstrosity often feels like the most comfortable suit for my desires. I grow prickly with each rejected pitch or job application. I often wonder if I’ve sprouted horns or if my desperation throws a scent across the room. There have been months I don’t hear anything at all, not even a message starting with a “We regret to inform you,” and during those months I’m especially convinced that I’m only screaming into a void. In the worst of these times, my desire is ugly. It fuels me, and it burns me. I clap for Maggie at the end of INVASIVE SPECIES not because she’s ruined dinner for everyone, but because she’s embraced her appetite. For a moment, watching her eat whatever she wanted at that table soothed my own snarling hunger.

Like Maggie, there’s a part of me that longs to be seen, my existence assured and acknowledged by the outside. It’s a longing that perseveres even if its object is compromising (why crave to be part of an exclusionary art world?) or just plain unattainable (why unravel for someone who seems indifferent to your existence?). I don’t want to judge the desires of a starving artist and a schoolgirl terrified of her reverie because I feel a kinship with these characters. Not because their stories show me some uncomplicated wish fulfillment, but because they bridge the cognitive dissonance I’ve felt towards my desires and their appearances. This dissonance causes me to turn on my own longing and recoil from its painfulness and intensity. I don’t think my experiences with desire are singular, though there is a loneliness to prolonged yearning. I suspect that others have also been forced inside themselves at times; it is belittling to feel like you demand too much from the world. FUR and INVASIVE SPECIES, then, are bold examples and good company. At the center of their disfiguring, ravenous narratives are young women who would upend everything if they could, just to answer, “How much do you want this?” I can’t imagine a friendlier face.

Issra Marie Martin (she/her) is a writer and arts worker from Manila and Toronto. She has taken up a variety of community-oriented roles in Toronto, Montreal, and Hanoi, ranging from museum operations, youth programming, and podcast production. Marie recently completed an MA in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory and currently serves on the Editorial Committee for Peripheral Review. She’s especially curious about affective elements in contemporary art, craft (especially textiles), and the entire world of art & cultural criticism.

IG: issssraaaaa

FUR, INVASIVE SPECIES, and desire unchained was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Boris Yu

This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative V, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 27th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.

I was recently asked whether my desire for control is over my own life or if it’s over others. I hesitated. To have control means to have power over something or someone, and while the former sounds inspirational, the latter…we’ll talk about that another time. Growing up in an immigrant household meant learning about power and control under nuanced contexts. The traditions and values of my Hong Kong-Chinese family approached control as a form of repression. Feelings, thoughts, and even “I love you” were things my parents rarely shared with my brother and me because, to them, actions spoke louder than words. I would be called out for being disingenuous if I vocalized my feelings. Living in this late-stage capitalist society exposed me to a side of control and power oriented toward individual success. Take control of your finances; take control of the way you present yourself; take control of others for your gain. It was about winning at life and securing a comfortable future at the expense of others.

In this awkward tug-o-war pulled on one end by this need to win in life and the other by the repression of my feelings, control and power became tools to mask my feelings and insecurities. I became someone unfamiliar to even myself, easily swayed by the currents and blaming the world for my problems when I was swept away. All it took was 30 years for me to realize I never had any control or power to begin with; at least not in the sense of someone who knew what he valued and treasured. I was cosplaying a form of control and power that left me empty. As another mentor in YCI often reiterated, I didn’t know what hill I was willing to die on.

Reel Asian became a therapeutic ground to witness various forms of control and power through creative practice as a way of resistance. In particular, the HERE WE ARE shorts program centred the human condition troubled by forces beyond our grasp, offering a collection of narratives where protagonists discover and express their agency in a world relentlessly boxing them into prescribed categories. Two hours went by quickly as stories of heartbreak, wonder, absurdity, and grief played out on screen.

I left the cinema with HITO by Stephen Lopez engraved in my memory. The short follows Jani, an unassuming high school student whose encounter with a talking catfish propels her towards a path of rebellion in search of freedom against an oppressive authoritarian state.

“Registration for mandatory military service will begin on July 1st.” — HITO

HITO begins with a military conscription announcement muffling the sounds of kicking and punching. Jani, the protagonist of this short, is seen fending herself against a school bully. CGI nuclear reactors tower in the background amidst a saturated hazy atmosphere, straddling reality and dreamscape. An unannounced encounter with a Japanese-speaking Shih Tzu leads Jani to an alternate reality where she is greeted by a quirky scientist, Brad, whom I can only describe as a san zai (山寨 — bootleg) version of the Oracle from The Matrix. I remember bursting into laughter in the theatre. It was a feel-good moment after seeing Jani’s struggles. As a token for her troubles, Brad gifts her Kiefer, a talking catfish and a rescued science experiment.

“I came here to save you from your terrible fate”

— Doraemon, All the Way from the Country of the Future

Freedom is not necessarily the talk of the town in HITO. Military broadcasts continue to play in the background throughout and we learn a curfew is in effect. In this dystopian sci-fi world, Kiefer and Jani’s interactions cut through the heaviness of the military and authoritarian undertone in Jani’s world. A catfish who loves to watch television and is rehabilitated to live with humans, Kiefer’s endearing nature reminds me of when Doraemon and Nobito first met. Jani’s confused and frightened look upon finding out Kiefer can talk was similar to when Doraemon’s voice was heard in Nobito’s room during their first meeting. Yet the two could not be more different. Doraemon shares gadgets; Kiefer shares memories and feelings that had my blood boiling with rage as the montage of protests, rebellion, and resistance reminded me of the power imbalance in our society.

The sun sits in the middle of the shot with Jani’s back facing the audience as she peers at the windmills in the background. The saturated orange overlay triggers a feeling of desolation and hopelessness in me. Images of project H.I.T.O flicker and in a moment of abruptness, a distorted electric guitar summons a progression of punk chords and videos of protest, police brutality, and violence appear one after another. The words sanitize, subjugate, cauterize, flash across the screen as I see protestors dragged and sprayed down by the riot police — I was not expecting Kiefer’s memories to be anger-inducing. Illustrations of what appears to be an elementary school textbook depicting the “ideal child” follow — children undergoing military training; children saluting with a nuclear powerplant in the background, and a teacher pointing out the word “pagkakaisa” (unity). I was glued to the edge of the theatre seat, my heart racing from the disturbing images. The music reaches its climatic height with its distorted guitar and fast-paced cutting as Jani flips between cut-outs of her facial expressions. The montage ends by returning to the initial desolate scenery, only now the wind turbines are replaced by goldfish swimming in the sky. Jani smiles into the distance—the first and final time we see our protagonist laugh.

Unlike the previous sequence with Brad, I was distressed and unable to discern my emotions. How could I feel anger and hope at the same time? Why was it unsettling to sit through a montage where goldfish were swimming in the sky by the end? WHY!? I learned in conversations with my mentor post-festival that this sequence celebrated and indulged in the essence of punk and rebellion. These were words that I had known before, but this might have been the first time I’d come face to face with the weight they carry.

“The ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality”

— Power, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary

I wanted to know how power was created in the world of HITO, as a way to understand what Jani was rebelling against. Whether it be through the nuclear reactor that stood as a monument across multiple scenes, the dilapidated powerlines, or the conscription announcement, I was desperate to uncover the decisions made by Lopez and his team, thinking this knowledge would give me the credibility needed to critique the short. What followed was a montage of research leading me to different points in the history of the Philippines, specifically the Marcos administration — failed promises of energy independence, political collusion, and martial law. The details that confused me rearranged themselves into learning pathways—a crash course on the history of the Philippines. Although for different reasons, I suppose this overwhelming feeling was akin to how Jani felt watching Kiefer’s transmitted montage.

Yet all this research only convoluted my understanding of the short, muddling my experience with context that I did not have language to express. The anxiety I felt watching the montage sequence the first time came back twice as hard as the confusion left me paralyzed within my thoughts. For a moment, it was if I was Jani, crawling backwards trying to catch my breath. I was overwhelmed by the information I gathered. I was saddened by this history.

I also had a double viewing experience, where watching HITO in person brought on a wave of nostalgia. There were uncanny flashbacks to when I was bullied and the companionship I’d yearned for when I was younger. My emotions were tethered to HITO via my childhood and its fantasies. When Jani was getting bullied, I felt each punch against her skin. When she laughed at the end of the montage, I felt joy for her. During subsequent viewings, however, my research attempts turned my nostalgia into powerlessness. I gained a deeper insight into the world of HITO but the oppressiveness of this setting paralyzed me. What could Jani possibly do when the odds were stacked against her?

“Why do you keep changing the narrative we’ve given you?” — Short quote

And then it happens. The world of HITO we have been immersed in crumbles.

It turns out, everything has been a simulation till now. This world of towering nuclear reactors has been a dream sequence stitched together to interrogate Jani into telling the military who gave her Kiefer, an entity deemed to be a terrorist weapon. In a breakfast sequence filled with awkward jokes and strangely loving parents, Jani’s confusion is met with a glitch in the system. Her parents lag out and a new scene begins, only for it to break down again when Jani asks her father for a Hito at the pet store. Cue computer glitches, looped dialogue, swapped backgrounds and cardboard cutout food while an emergency siren blares in the background. When we are sucked back into reality, Jani is actually strapped to a chair with a contraption on her head and wounds on her face.

HITO shares many similarities with tokusatsu (特撮). Referring to live-action sci-fi television or films incorporating heavy practical special effects, tokusatsu was and still is a genre to depict fantasy grounded in reality for superheroes and kaiju (怪獣 — strange monster) or kaijin (怪人 — stranger person) fiction. Growing up with works such as KAMEN RIDER and ULTRAMAN, there was nothing more exhilarating than rooting for my favourite superhero and imagining the flying rockets and explosions in my backyard. With its CGI elements and glitching SFX, HITO borrowed similar tokusatsu techniques and channelled my imagination only to trigger some of my most primal emotions. The fear I felt upon seeing Jani strapped down left me speechless. I thought to myself… “Ah, so this is the aftermath of what rebelling against power looks like.” I was fucking scared.

My fear, however, made Jani’s victory that much more powerful. After being flushed down the toilet by Jani earlier in the film to aid its escape, Kiefer reappears, no longer a realistic catfish but in kaijin form. Kiefer breaks into the laboratory in a Kool-aid Man-esque entry, frees Jani from the machine and together, they violently attack the military director, strapping him to the interrogation chair. And there, we have it: the climactic middle finger. The director bleeds profusely from his face after getting flipped off and explodes. Our heroes are covered in the director’s blood; justice has been served.

While writing this piece, I was forced to return to the question my mentors have been asking since the beginning, “Did the middle finger mean anything to you?” The answer remains the same, “Yes it did. It was badass, it was hype, it was liberating.” I internally screamed as loud as watching Deku from MY HERO ACADEMIA pull off a Delaware Detroit smash against Muscular. Jani’s middle finger was a “fuck you” to not only the director but to the system that has trapped and oppressed her.

Phew, that was a lot to process.

It’s shameful to admit, but there’s generally not a lot I care about. Controlling my emotions and finding power in being disciplined and desensitized prevented me from actively engaging with my surroundings; I was willing to only subject myself to the “feel-good” emotions and not the negative ones. Complicated doesn’t even come close to describing the roller coaster of emotions I felt watching HITO. Bearing witness to Jani’s hopelessness, anxiousness, and powerlessness, I almost felt justified in my decision to block out these feelings. I am afraid of being consumed by something I have no control over.

Yet as much as I attempt to limit what I feel, I was nonetheless moved by Jani. It wasn’t the act of giving the middle finger, but the courage behind her decision to rebel despite her situation. In the face of surmounting oppression, she chose to say (at least in my mind) “Fuck you, fuck this simulation, fuck your system. I will live the way I way.” I was originally overwhelmed and under the assumption that rebellion only had to be against state history or related to government politics. However, through conversations with my mentor, I started wondering what my own rebellion might look like. What hill am I willing to die on? To be honest, I don’t know right now. This isn’t a question that is easy to answer for someone who has closed off his emotions. Opening the floodgates and relearning the range of emotions and feelings is overwhelming, but it sure does sound better than never knowing what my authentic self looks or feels like. I’m not sure what my middle finger will be like, but the gates are open and I welcome my emotions to run their course as I find my anchor to stake my “fuck you” on.

Boris Yu (he/him) is a designer and artist intrigued by the discourses around the natural and unnatural world and its relation to our current emotionally detached environment. The studio’s body of work currently focuses on conceptual material research and objects as a carrier for speculative futures, investigating alternate narratives at the intersection of craft, nature, and technology.

IG: onlyoneyes

Power and Control, The Middle Finger in HITO was originally published in taclanese on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.