By: Ryan Tuchow
There was nothing unlucky about the start of the 13th annual ReelHeART International Film and Screenplay festival which screened the first films of 2017 in the Imagine Cinemas on Carlton Street. Film screenings began at 6:45 on July 3rd and the audience waited in the intimate silence of the theatre for them to start. All of the films being screened were having their Canadian premiere.
Highlighting the diversity of the Festival the first things to be screened were two short films from China followed by a feature length film from Vietnam.
The first short film of the festival is “Choice in Quantum.” A film that explores the trials of time travel and the bond between father and son which transcends time. Directed by Yutang Wang, this Chinese short is a fascinating look at the future, the past, and the pain that can drive one to try to fix both. In 17 minutes it looks at a son defying laws, both natural and otherwise to save his father. Its science fiction plot that is in some ways reminiscent of other time travel stories approaches the speculative through the perspective of a child who had yet to get over his grief. And with a focus on a father who got the chance to help him do so.
In the second short, entitled “Death In a Day” director Lin Wang looks at a family fractured by pain, and yet one that endures. Like with the other films that made up the screenings on the first day of the festival, it’s a story about suffering, but also of hope. And although loss and death permeate the pictures, so to does the possibility of new beginnings. Forced to new levels of understanding because of what they must endure, the children and their parents evolve before the audiences eyes. The short film is possessed of a stunning totality wherein every frame seems to matter to the overall story by working to reinforce the abstract ideas of how death is a staple in this child’s life. And like with the other films, the audiences was left with the realization that something else is lost, or to put it more bluntly, something has been taken from the children in these films. And that is the chance to have a “normal” life.
“Death in a Day” begins in a bathtub and ends with the child protagonist Evan being present during what seems to be a suicide. Despite the films limited scope it is possessed of such depth. A depth that can only be found in the films screened at the 13th annual ReelHeART International film and Screenplay Festival.
According to the Internet Movie Database the film was previously screened in 2016 America where Lin Wang won Best Director at the San Diego Asian Film Festival.
The film is about 14 minutes long and it manages to present so much in that time. From the inner workings of the protagonists family, to the meaningful shots of the other children who are free to wear masks and play the film shows not just death in one day, but life in all its numerous gradations.
Once that ended the festival screened its official opening film. “Father and Son” from Vietnam. Before the films began Minh Anh Hoang, a spokesperson for the film, who spoke in both Vietnamese and English, introduced it by saying it is a film which highlights the bonds of family.
She summarized the film by telling the audience that it is about, “A single father and his six year old son who live in a remote but picturesque village. When the son gets sick the father journeys to heal his son and to get a better life for him.”
For the next 88 minutes the film is a sweeping beauty that highlights the natural majesty of Vietnam before turning to the city which both the children dream and adults dream about. Where the jungles of Vietnam are these open expanses of green where water is almost always present, the city becomes focused and symbolized through one skyscraper which is referred to as the “house of the future.” Nothing highlights the dichotomy between the two worlds the characters live in more than this towering monolith. So much so that one of the only characters to be of the village who goes to the city (and who works on this building) is left blind and deaf by his experience, showing how in the Vietnam of this film, there is a price for trying to be more than you are. But despite all that the tower remains this repository of dreams and hopes for children and even for the man left broken by it. At the same time “Father and Son” is offering beautiful shots of land and cityscapes, the film is also critiquing the Vietnamese healthcare system which will do almost nothing for a person who cannot pay. To put it into perspective 800 million dong is close to $46,000 dollars in Canadian currency. And as a fisherman the math the father painfully understands is that he realizes that he has to catch 160,000 fish in order to help raise the sort of money he needs to help his son.
On IMDB the only details provided as description of the film are the words: “Thousands of fish for a single life.”
And director Luong Dinh Dung, in what is the Festival’s official opening film, manages to capture the wonder and beauty of this life.
The audience applauded at the end of “Father and Son” and afterwards, via Skype, a Vietnamese producer spoke about how the film explaining how was inspired by the true stories of people who have suffered much like the characters in her film did.
“This is based on the stories of developing countries,” the producer said, “We wanted to show the impact this sort of life has on poor people.”
An important point to mention is that the films all explore family through the lens of sons and their fathers. The relationships between parent and child are examined in different ways in each film, showing how diverse this relationship can be in any family.
Another interesting point of intersection between the films selected was their use of water. Water recurs in the films in many different forms. From a flood that washes away a family leaving only a mother and her child’s boots, to becoming the final resting place of a mysterious man, to being the tears on a child’s face. It is a thing that comes to represent, not just in each film individually, but after watching them all together, sadness in its in truest most unfiltered form. It is something that in “Father and Son” has to be avoided and in “Death in a Day” it seems to serve as a vehicle for escape. It is the source of fish, which ultimately come to be synonymous with life, but at the same time in both films, the deaths of fish are shown in graphic terms when an uncle teaches his nephew how to kill them in “Death in a Day.” And in “Father and Son” the father has to profit off the death of fish to save his son’s life.
One other overlapping theme present in all the films screened on the first night of the festival is an interest in the exploration of grief. Whether it be the grief that comes from loss or a loss that is soon to come, the films don’t shy away from presenting pain to the audience. And in dealing with something as personalized as grief is the films take on the challenge of translating it to the audience as something they can feel. As a result what is unsaid and unseen becomes just as important as what is said and what is seen.
The films cover death and all the life that precedes it by offering contemplations on its stunning reality. And in the case of “Father and Son” there are moments of humour and the audience laughs at the innocence of the children.
These are wonderful examples of films that offer an escape but also work to educate viewers as well, and by showing them something more than what they might otherwise know, it broadens their horizons. The Festival began with three excellent pictures which showcase the diversity of both Asian cinema, as well as the diversity of the festival itself, which looks to present the best films and filmmakers from around the world and ReelHeART managed to do that on their first night.
ReelHeART brought to Canadian audiences films they might otherwise have never seen, and worked to open their eyes to lives vastly different from their own, while still choosing stories that audiences could relate to in some crucial and ineffable way. Even if it is just to realize they are not alone in their pain.