By: Phone Min Thant, Staff Writer
Last month, Casey Wei, an SFU Master of Fine Arts alum and a current PhD student in Contemporary Arts, was awarded the Philip B. Lind Emerging Prize for her work, The Zhang Clan 张家族. This experimental documentary project focuses on the experiences of her family members following their departure from China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. The Peak had an opportunity to speak to Wei last week to learn more about the inspirations and work behind The Zhang Clan, her ongoing projects, as well as her experiences as an SFU student.
The Zhang Clan is a beautiful representation of the experiences of diaspora, bringing to life the daily comings and goings of a family away from home. The documentary is the final piece to Wei’s 父母 (fumu/parents) trilogy, which also features Murky Colors (2012) and Vater und Sohn/Father and Son/父与子 (2014). Since the first two films focus on the relationship between fathers and their children, Wei was motivated to produce The Zhang Clan to share the relationship between her and her mother.
“It’d be nice to make a film about my mom and my mom’s experience,” Wei explained. “And eventually, it happened with The Zhang Clan,” she added.
Ultimately, Wei said The Zhang Clan came to be after she took a snippet of her family studying and commenting on the family tree handwritten by her maternal grandfather, a moment she described as “the perfect timing.” The Zhang Clan is a special project, both in itself and for Wei. According to her, the choice of making it a documentary was deliberate, reflecting her “real life” and involving her “real family” without any need for extraordinary acting. The experimental aspects of The Zhang Clan also make it an innovative form of art, using “two channels and a sculptural element” instead of a usual film screening.
The core philosophy behind Wei’s work is to showcase everyday lives of diaspora. This sentiment is mirrored by her methods of making the documentary, which she directed wholly using a “small, non-invasive” DV camera without any artificial lighting and mics. The transformation of daily happenings to something “important enough to record” is what makes Wei’s project unique.
“That style of filmmaking of just everyday where not a lot happens, those are my favourite kinds of films.” — Casey Wei, SFU Contemporary Arts PhD student
“That style of filmmaking of just everyday where not a lot happens, those are my favourite kinds of films,” Wei said. “This kind of universal human experiences of the common person, I find really engaging.”
One thing that lingered with me beyond the interview itself was Wei’s explanation of a three minute stop-motion segment shot at one of SFU’s visual arts studios, where the pollen of a money tree was blown away to a new location. Wei elaborated that it is “symbolic of [her] family’s migration,” a “metaphorical” representation of the experiences of diaspora families. These themes of family and leaving home are also seen in Wei’s book, Tuning to Oblivion, which explores her experiences as a travelling artist in Thailand.
“It definitely did impact the way I make work in a positive way, and I think that’s just from the professors I had,” Wei explained. “Having that consistency in mentorship and guidance has helped my work be consistent.”
Currently, Wei is working on her PhD project, trying to find connections between “the seemingly disconnected ideas” of communes in China in the late 1900s and how they affected artistic activities on the Canadian West Coast around the same time.
The Zhang Clan is a wonderful, thought-provoking insight into the daily lives of diaspora in a place continents apart from their original homes. Like Wei’s analogy of pollen being blown away, projects like hers show us how families drifted apart by the forces of history survive, adapt, and communicate with each other and the new world around them. In a world increasingly hostile to the issue of migration, The Zhang Clan offers a positive hope for families caught up in such challenges.
