(Nota: Famous Last Words department)
(Nota: Work-Still-In-Progress-taking-10-years-longer-than-i-thought)
Palimpsest : rewriting the self
from Bloomsbury to Crescent Moon
PREAMBLE
pa·limp·sest
Pronunciation:
'pa-l&m(p)-"sest, p&-'lim(p)-
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin
palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsEstos scraped again, from palin + psEn to rub,
scrape; akin to Sanskrit psAti, babhasti he chews
Date: 1825
1 : writing material (as
a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been
erased
2 : something having
usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface (Merriam-Webster Online)
A palimpsest is a parchment that has been
written over several times, earlier versions having been imperfectly erased. It
creates a strange, marginal writing that is both intentional and accidental; it
must be excavated, sought after, at the very moment that it is seeping through
unbidden. Coincidentally and rather remarkably, the word is an anagram, a "text" containing/concealing
another text; rearranged, the letters
read "simple past."
"Palimpsest," then, actually
enacts its own functioning, both erasing and engaging the "past" that
engenders it. This overwriting/underwriting suggests two contradictory impulses
- it creates both an augmented or extended text and a reduced narrow one, it
accommodates multiplicity and yet, creates
a cryptic distorted space as well. In this style of writing there are always
two pasts, one's own and the historical past, antiquity.
(http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/english/haymarket/young/palimpsest.html)
Family history is something of a preoccupation
sooner or later for every one of us, whether we go for it briefly or
in-depth. And for those of us who
arrived young from a foreign country, docilely following choices of parents to
a new adopted land, the time for feeling preoccupied by our family history
could come around quite late. We have
had to busy ourselves, for the major part of our young and adult years, with
the task of integrating into the new culture, melting our old customs into new
habits, packing away certain details of the « old country » which no
longer served any practical purpose and (temporarily) burying them deep in the
subconscious.
As is often the case, as one gets older, one
sometimes feels the urge to look up the family tree ; or one starts to plan the
« ultimate » trip to the « home country », But in this day and age, hopping on a plane is
easy matter, we can now talk to relatives on long-distance phone by a variety
of free networks, or chat on MSN in real-time.
So why should I be here making an issue (and hopefully a work) out of
family history ?
It is because in my case, family history is
neither natural nor simple. It is
because, as you were reading the first paragraph of this text, you would have
assumed that my “home country” – for a “Stephen” - was an anglo one , U.K.,
Australia, or even South Africa. In my
case indeed, the notion of « Palimsest » could not be better
illustrated : « parchment that has been written over several times, earlier
versions having been imperfectly erased... a strange, marginal writing that is
both intentional and accidental ».
Our « real story » has always been a mystery, and generates a
sense of fascination. It’s been several years now, while hopping on and off
planes between Asia, Canada, and Europe, that I’ve pushed myself closer each
time to « getting to the bottom of our family history » and to coming
to grips with this « intentional and
accidental » writing which it is.
I’ve also started to film bits and pieces of it ... places, moments,
people, conversations. But now, suddenly
in the last short while, new elements have surfaced, enabling a completely “new” reading of the
old « writing »; and I feel it’s
time to structure it - it being the
strange « text », or rather,
the « hypothesis » of our family history - and to make it into
a « work ».
THE QUESTION (WHICH BECOMES THE PREMISE)
In the last 15 years, as my reputation as a
filmmaker and a film editor (regularly for Eric Rohmer) became a bit more
established, I was often invited to participate in festivals or panels or talks
... that was when I began to realise
that the one question that seemed to preoccupy all my interlocuters was not the
« How did you, Chinese-Canadian, become a living part of the French New
Wave » nor the « What’s the place of a Chinese film worker in the
Occidental film industry » nor even the « Have you ever had to deal
with racial discrimination » ...
Hong Kong, April 1996. I was exploring the possibilities of
organising an international poetry festival there on the eve of the return of
the colony to its motherland. Passing by
the Hong Kong Arts Center and seeing a poster of Rohmer films being shown, I
went up to see the people in charge of film programming to introduce myself as
Mary Stephen, Eric Rohmer’s long-time film editor. Big surprise on their faces -
never for a million years would they have put a Chinese face on the name
on those posters, nor imagined that this «Mary Stephen» could be a native
daughter hailing from Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island !
Later, in 1997,
interviews were recorded for a series of « living memory » for
the Hong Kong Film Archives. Invariably,
the opening question would be : « Is ‘Stephen’ your husband’s
name ? What is your own
name ? »
Toronto.
November 2003. The Reel Asian
Film Festival invited me as « Feature Artist ». I went there without
knowing that I was going to be flattered and honoured with big words like
« pioneer », « ground-breaker » * for the following
generation of Asian-Canadian filmmakers and film workers. Suddenly not only was I thrown into the reality of age (that a certain
number of years had added up !) but also into details of personal history
long pushed-aside for lack of time and energy, or curiosity. Once again, in interviews by Chinese press
and radio reporters, the same question popped up : « How come your surname
is Stephen ? »
« I
don’t know, it’s my father’s
name » ;
« Ah, he was English ? Funny, you
don’t look mixed ?»
To which I answered, again and again, « no,
I’m 100% Chinese by blood, been Canadian for the last thirty-eight years and am
living more on than off in Europe for the last dozen or more. » Soon, I learned
to add when I felt really stuck for a « real » answer, «
ah-ha ! I can’t tell you the answer
to that one – it’s going to be my next film, watch out for it. »
*see articles in press
book
EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH
I DID know that, at one point, my father
changed his surname from a very typical ordinary Chinese name to « Stephen ». My parents had told us that it was to
facilitate emigration right after Hong Kong’s « liberation » from
Japanese occupation. An uncle, a
brother of my father’s who lives in Nanking, has another different surname, a
Chinese one. Three surnames in the same
family. Why ?
Did know too that my mother, complice to my
father, had a say in the decision of which surname to change to, before they
started their new life with this new name in 1939, and founded a family
together with 5 children. From time to time, the « story » of the
origin of the name would change : after the « emigration »
pretext, there was also a story of an
adoptive grandfather whose name would be « Stephen », or there was to be some « family »
in Australia, or ...
We the children, growing up later in Canada,
speculated on whether our parents, being quite Chinese and speaking little
English, wanted to adopt the more common English or American name
« Stephens » or « Stevens » but didn’t know how to spell
them properly. We laughed amongst
ourselves that they didn’t realize that « Stephen » was not a common
surname, and that it was used rather
more often as a Christian name.
My mother was a school teacher and a
sometime writer, a sometime poet as well, and an amateur actor in plays in the
pre-war Hong Kong. An undying romantic,
influenced greatly by the modernity of the avant-garde writings and films from
Shanghai of the 1930s.
My family emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada in
1968. It was a time of political
turbulence in the world, and particularly in Asia (Cultural Revolution in
China, riots in Hong Kong). At that time
in Canada, Asian immigrants were numerous but the composition of Canadian
society was nothing like the cultural mosaic it is now. We had to leave Hong Kong then because my parents felt it was no longer
« safe » to remain. Canada
became home – it was meant to; and at fifteen years old, there was still time
and room for me to become « quite » Canadian. The memories that would make up the core of
my being would be divided between the
hazy bays of the south shores of Hong Kong and the magical wonderland of
icycles hanging on tree branches on a bright Montreal winter day. Cultural and social integration into the new
country would be made even easier – so had I always taken for granted - by the
simple fact that I wasn’t a
« Lee » or a « Wong » like every other Chinese immigrant,
but a « Stephen » similar to those “true-blue” anglo-Canadians in
Westmount.
For me, however, “Stephen”
wasn’t just an invented identity. « Stephen » is the name I was born
with, it engenders and concludes my identity;
without a doubt, my psychological makeup – my inner map as it were - is
based on having this very English-sounding name. But if « simple past » there is to be in a « palimsest », this was
revealed by my cousin in Bangkok a few
summers ago with the un-spectacular explanation that the real cause for the
name-change was not really to facilitate emigration but for something
else. As he pointed out, my
parents didn’t leave for England in the 40s, but for Canada in the late 60s,
along with all the « Wong »s and the « Chan »s : so, contrary to what I had always
thought, being a « Stephen »
couldn’t have been much of an asset. No,
the name change was in the context of a
family quarrel in my father’s case, and of underground resistance activities
during Japanese occupation of China in the case of my Nanking uncle. The two brothers adopted new surnames to sever themselves from the original family and to
hide behind a new identity for personal and political reasons.
This explanation represents much more a « simple past » than a « palimsest ». No other writing on the parchment would
« emerge unbidden ».... not
much of a work or a film could emerge out of this rather banal story. I dropped the idea.
Then...
Toronto, 2004.
Viewing of the film « The Hours », three parallel stories
including the episode of Virginia Woolf just before her suicide. RememberingVirginia Woolf‘s writings that I
loved so much in Loyola College days in
Montreal. Re-newed affinities with this wonderful writer and her
particular sensibility. Her modernity.
Her doomed destiny. Remembering
the tango scene in my first long film, « Ombres de soie », set
in a re-invented Shanghai of the 1930s where among the dancers was a young
woman who looked like a twin sister of Virginia Woolf ; re-visualizing her
dancing with her lesbian lover in the midst of my Chinese ghosts from this
‘époque’ which fascinates me, which inspires my work and which « provides » me with
images as if I’ve lived them myself.
Seeing « The Hours » reconnected me
with the Virginia Woolf universe and its ambiance.
Discussing the film one day with others, a Chinese writer friend turned to me and
said, « You do know, of course, that
Virginia Woolf was a Stephen before she married a Woolf ? You knew
that Virginia, and her sister Vanessa the painter who became Vanessa Bell after
she married a Bell, were the ‘Stephen sisters’ ? »
No, I didn’t know.
Surely it is just a pure, albeit a very lovely,
coincidence. What connection could there possibly be between the very British
Bloomsbury writer to anyone or anything in a country like China on the other
side of the globe ?
Then someone told me about the novel
« K » by the anglo-Chinese writer Hong Ying and the scandal
surrounding its candid erotic contents. At first read, it seems no more than a sensational sexy
account of a fictional love affair between an Englishman and a married Chinese
woman in China in 1936. But no ordinary Englishman and Chinese woman were
they. A lawsuit ensued from the daughter of the Chinese woman
on whom , she alleged, the writer based her central character. I found Patricia Laurence’s book « Lily Briscoe's
Chinese Eyes : Bloomsbury, modernism and China », which talks about the novel, saying that it « traces
the romance of Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf, and Ling Shuhua, a writer
and painter Bell met while teaching at Wuhan University in China in 1935.
Relying on a wide selection of previously unpublished writings, Patricia
Laurence places Ling, often referred to as the Chinese Katherine Mansfield,
squarely in the Bloomsbury constellation. In doing so, she counters East-West
polarities and suggests forms of understanding to inaugurate a new kind of
cultural criticism and literary description.
Laurence expands her examination of Bell and Ling's
relationship into a study of parallel literary communities—Bloomsbury in
England and the Crescent Moon group in China (to which Ling Shuhua belonged - comments M.S.). Underscoring
their reciprocal influences in the early part of the twentieth century,
Laurence presents conversations among well-known British and Chinese writers,
artists, and historians, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, G. L.
Dickinson, Xu Zhimo, E. M. Forster, and Xiao Qian. In addition, Laurence's
study includes rarely seen photographs of Julian Bell, Ling, and their
associates as well as a reproduction of Ling's scroll commemorating moments in
the exchange between Bloomsbury and the Crescent Moon group ».(http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/2003/3505.html#reviews)
Ling Shuhua (whose family was from a wealthy
family in Beijing of Cantonese origin, like myself) left China shortly after
Julian Bell’s death and actually mingled with the Bloomsbury group in the U.K.,
calling on Vanessa Bell often (and presumably Virginia Woolf also), and died in
England in 1990. Her only book in English « Ancient Melodies »
includes an introduction by Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf’s longtime
lesbian lover.
Could my mother, who was a very literary and romantic modern
young woman back in the 1930s, have somehow come across someone connected with
the « Crescent Moon » literary group to which Ling Shuhua belonged,
and/or discovered the work of Julian Bell’s famous contemplative and
melancholic writer aunt ? Could it have fired my mother’s imagination
or perhaps ignited an irreverent streak in her to dream up this «breaking-in» into the other, literary and
artistic, « Stephen » family ?
I then remember worn-out magazines that we
found amongst my mother’s papers after her death : magazines from 1933,
1934, 1935, 1936, not only from Hong Kong, but also from Shanghai. In them we found, again and again, the same
pseudonym of a woman contributing articles and poetry : no doubt it was my
mother using a pen name. And in these
same magazines, right next to the pages of poetry were advertisements for books
by avant-garde writers of the time, such as Tsui Chi More who was another
well-known writer of the « Crescent Moon » literary group.
This is no longer a « simple past »
but a « palimsest » : « earlier versions having been imperfectly
erased. It creates a strange, marginal writing that is both intentional and
accidental; it must be excavated, sought after, at the very moment that it is
seeping through unbidden. » Here
are all these layers of identities : the original self (if there was one),
the hidden and erased self from the changed family name, the acquired self
through identification with an invented and foreign surname, and the
newly-(re)found identity of (and identification with) the « real »
family of that surname with which there are undeniable, metaphysical and
intellectual affinities.
All these layers. Seeping through unbidden. Palimsest.
I started asking questions and reading and
recording on video every time I was in Asia, looking up places, family members,
surviving aunts, uncles. I started to
explore the 2nd layer of the story : the
real « Stephen sisters » story and their connection with
China. The layers started to intertwine
with one another : at times one layer would « seep
through », at others, one of the
other layers would become more dominant or more hidden.
The way this tapestry was being woven from all these different threads intrigues
and inspires me. It seems perfectly
suited to the genre of work that I have always been passionate about : an
impressionistic, experimental work, whether in fiction or documentary
form, born out of the intimate sphere
and which has to do with the themes of memory,
identity, and cross-cultural selves. I am now at a stage when I would like to
organise all of this into a programme of work.
At the end of the process, I would like to have
completed a film in DV format (of approximately 50 minutes to an hour), “woven”
from images and sounds and sequences recorded in video during these three trips
to China, mixing experimental and documentary aethestics, which tells the real
and/or imaginary “story” of the palimsest of the “Stephen” family history.
THE PROGRAMME OF WORK
Some of the puzzle has already been
filmed. I made a first trip four years
ago with my children to the Canton province looking for the 80-year-old aunt
and her branch of the family whom I had never met, and who could tell us more
about the family. My daughter filmed
this encounter. During the visit, my
family showed me a video tape of an uncle, i.e. an older brother to my aunt,
who was in his 90s and living in Nanking.
The video was made because the 80-year-old aunt could no longer travel,
and the Hong Kong branch of the family passed through Canton first to film the
auntie, before bringing the video tape up to Nanking to show to her 90-year-old
brother. Then they did it the other way
around : filmed the uncle and brought it down for his sister to watch. Good use of the video medium ! They told
me that the uncle had also changed his name, but to a Chinese surname, not as
drastic as changing to a name like « Stephen ».
Three years later I went to China again and
went to pay a visit to this uncle. Again,
my daughter filmed the encounter.
On both occasions she recorded the visits and
the conversations with these family members who didn’t tell me directly or
immediately the why’s and how’s of the name changes. I understood that it was just a preamble for
the re-establishement of family ties after over 40 years.
This programme of work will start with in-depth
research into the Virginia Stephen Woolf material. After which, it involves a return to China
for a third time to retrace the route of my family’s wanderings (Canton –
Shanghai – Nanking) and at the same time to attempt to enter the territory of
the real « Stephen » thread in China : Julian Bell and his
itinerary (Wuhan – Shanghai). Try to find people in Shanghai who knew the period
of the « Crescent Moon » writers.
See for myself the place in Wuhan where this passionate illicit love
affair took place between the Chinese
woman writer and the English descendant of Virginia Woolf. Imagine how it would feel, if I had been a
young modern woman as my mother was in 1936, and if I had been aware of this
forbidden love encounter. I would try
- from the uncle in Nanking, from
the aunt in Canton, - to retrieve some answers.
Or to record their silence and the unspoken words between us.
I need to « engage the ‘past’ that engenders (the palimsest) ». I need not so much to « erase » but
to « submerge » myself in the layers, to inhale in the air of what
had gone before, of what had stirred fires and imaginations, and possibly then,
to « excavate » the
« self » - this self – from the layers of writings which had
«invented » it. I have to find the
layer of the Shanghai expatriate and intellectual society of the 1930s which,
unconsciously, I had « scraped » to create the atmosphere of my first
long film « Ombres de Soie ».
With the visual material from these different
trips, and the research that I will continue to carry out to further map the
areas and times where these two lines of the « Stephen » story might
have merged, I would like to structure
and compose a work.
I would like to end up with a film (in DV
format) that starts with a question of identity : « why is your name
Stephen », proceeds like a puzzle
or a tapestry, and ends when the « picture » is whole – whether
symbolically, metaphysically or just simply visually. I don’t see it as a linear work like a
detective story : I don’t intend to unravel the mystery, I don’t want to
find out which part is reality, which just figments of imagination. It is not my goal to make a classical documentary
film. The “question” has deliberately
been left unanswered for fifty years or more, why would I wish to disturb this
shroud of poetic mystery ? Rather,
I would want to use all these elements, real or dreamnt, and make it into an
“original” film. It is not unlike the
creative processes of “mentors” such as Joris Ivens (“The Story of Wind”, shot
in China and mixing documentary footage and dream sequences), Johan van der
Keuken (“Prolonged Vacation” – a documentary, yes, but his use of music and
imagery created a poetic and metaphysical work not at all in the conventional
mode), or Agnès Varda (“Les glaneurs et la glaneuse”, mixing the very personal,
the very intimate, with a real documentary subject).
I would add that, on a technical level, I would
bring into this project the experimental film techniques I have used in my
films and which brings to mind another “mentor “: Charles Gagnon for whose last
unfinished experimental film I am now involved in archiving with his daughter
and a fellow filmmaker; these would
include the re-reading of sounds and musical pieces, image distortion and
redigitalisation, colour experimentations to create a different, innovative and
integral artistic work.
To engage in an explorative and creative work
of this type is in line with the memory and cross-cultural communication work
I’ve been doing all my life. On a more
personal and peer level, this type of creation falls into the family of artists
like the Trinidadian-Canadian Richard Fung’s « Sea In The
Blood ». or the French Henri-François Imbert « Doulaye, une
saison des pluies», or the Chinese-South African Henion Han’s « A Letter
To My Cousin In China ». It works
from the personal family sphere outwards to chart oneself as part of a
time, a place, a culture or cultures, and eventually part of the larger human family.
In so doing, the film unveils layers of history
of China in the 1930s with the imminent invasion and occupation by the Japanese
army, it charts the social, psychological and literary landscape of a young
Chinese woman of that time whose search for modernity may have led to her
enslavement before western values (and a western name)*, it foreshadows the choice of this woman to
lead her husband and her children into Canada to start a new life. And, as this
is a palimsest, « there are always
two pasts, one's own and the historical past. » It is my family history – but it is also the history
of the multicultural elements that make up the mosaïc fabric of this country.
* ref. « The Lure of the Modern » by Shiu-mei Shih : « Shih argues that, whilst modernity and modernisation are relatively acceptable as universal-yet-differentiated processes, modernism is vexed by suspicions of its supremely western orientations and categoriacal themes. However, Shish points out that the terms of modernism and its materialisation in cultural product are discursively constructed as occidental. Her argument infers that to bow to this paradigm and thereby support the hegemony of western influence is part of the process of working through postcolonial experience. » http.//wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue8/donald_review.html
On the “narrative” level, my films have often grown out of literary works. « Ombres De Soie » was inspired by Marguerite Duras’ writings and based its structure on letters exchanged between the two women friends in the film and read by them. « Vision From The Edge » explores the relationship between the creative processes of writing and painting ; its soundstrack is a tapestry made of read pieces of poetry translated into different languages (and using these languages as music), prose works of the author, interviews with him, and excerpts of music he chose himself for the influence they had on his life and his work . Now this new work is once again inspired by and very much connected with literature. It grows out of a thinking process of memory, reflection, writing. But the literary process ends here ; once the images are « in », once the « text » is translated into « visuals », it becomes more similar to a painting process.
What will the end « product » look
like ?
« ah-ha, I don’t have a question to that
one.... it’ll be my next film, don’t miss it. »
TIME FRAME
1.
September – December 2006
Research and correspondance concerning the two
« threads » of the « Stephen » story. Identifying of scenes, locations and
interviews missing from the first two trips.
Bibliography and library research on the
following themes :
Virginia Woolf’s nephew Julian Bell’s 18 months
in China ; the « Crescent Moon » literary group of Shanghai
writers of the 1930s ; of Ling shuhua, Julian Bell’s purported secret
lover and her subsequent meeting with the Bloomsbury writers ; on the
literary and feminine magazines of the 1930s for which my mother was contributing articles
and poems...
Correspondances with :
Descendants of the « Stephen »
sisters in Charleston, U.K . Quentin Bell, the younger brother of
Julian Bell and youngest son of Vanessa Bell (nephew of Virginia Woolf) is
survived by children and six grandchildren, most of them living in London.
2. May –
June 2007
A third trip to China in order to complete the
filming of material already obtained in two previous trips. I need to film, on
the one hand, the locations where the real « Stephen » story would
have taken place , i.e. Wuhan and Shanghai ; and on the other, the places
and people familiar with the « invented » Stephen story, i.e. Hong
Kong, Guanzhou, Nanking and Shanghai.
What is the common denominator ? What is in the Shanghai of today that is
common to both stories of the 1930s, where did, if ever, the two
threads of the « story » meet ?
I will be equipped lightly with a DV camera,
and a good microphone. A camera man will
be with me with a second light DV camera.
3. July – December 2007
Editing on Final Cut Pro.
« From All This Journey: Two Chinese Sisters and
Their Quest to be Modern » by Sasha S. Welland
« The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in
Semicolonial China 1917-1937 » by
Shu-mei Shih
« Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes » by Patricia Laurence
« Virginia Woolf
and Vanessa Bell : A Very Close Conspiracy » by Jane Dunn
« K, the Art of
Love » by Hong
Ying
« Ancient
Melodies » by
Ling Shuhua, preface by Vita Sackville-West
PHOTOGRAPHIC SUPPLEMENTS
1.
Map of China, with the four
major places of the two “Stephen” stories: Wuhan, Nanking, Shanghai, Guangzhou
(Canton).
2.
Three photos of the Chinese “Stephen” family
3.
Five reproductions of one of the 1930s Shanghai
magazine I found in my mother’s papers, with advertisements of books by western
authors such as D.H. Lawrence, and Chinese writers of the “Crescent Moon” group
such as Tsui Chi More, a contemporary of Ling Shuhua’s.
4.
Three pages of photos of the Bloomsbury “Stephen”
family
OPTIONAL ELEMENT : PRESS KIT
Seven documents, please delete the last two
pages if it’s strictly limited to 5 pages
SUPPORTING AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL
1. A
VERY EASY DEATH
Cued passage: 3 minutes. Showing
use of experimental techniques on a very personal
subject.
2. OMBRES
DE SOIE
Cues passage : 6 minutes. Showing ambiance and characters of a
re-invented Shanghai
of
the 1930s, which is the same “époque” as
this new project.
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