VAFF: Asian-Canadian or Canadian-Asian... and what about being mixed-race Canadian?

Vancouver Asian Film Festival, continues to celebrate it's 10th anniversary by asking provocative questions about identity, and exploring the qualities of Asian-ness through the eyes of immigrants or through multi-generational Canadians of mixed races parentage.

Saturday morning's program, Canadian Asian vs. Asian Canadian: Politically Correct Labels, featured films Canadian-Chinese by Felix Cheng, and Between: Living in the Hyphen by Anne-Marie Nakagawa, plus a panel discussion featuring UBC English Assistant Professor Glenn Deer, author/editor Alexis Kienlen, UBC English instructor Chris Lee, and Georgia Straight editorial assistant Craig Takeuchi.

The films each explored sensitive topics of identity.  Canadian-Chinese explored the relationship of language to first and second generation immigrants, as director Felix Cheng interviewed his parents and friends about the process of learning to speak Chinese and his resistance of it when he was younger.  Cheng said he did this film as a project while attending Emily Carr Schol of Art and Design.  His parents immigrated from Hong Kong, when Cheng was still two years old, and didn't learn English fully because they were focussed on providing for the family.  Felix says he basically grew up with his older brother watching English television programming. 

Through the interviews with his parents, it is apparent that they have a different perspective of him growing up and not wanting to lear to speak Chinese, then he does.  He is now questioning himself and his identity, as he converses with a friend who came to Canada at age six.  It is an intimate look at the schism between immigrant parents and their children as they come to grips with the children wanting to fit in more with Canadian society, at the risk of creating a communication gap with their parents.  At one point, Cheng shows moving pictures of his parents interacting and talking without sound, highlighting the inability to understand the Chinese language... imagining for the audience what it must be like to be unable at times to communicate with his parents.

Ann-Marie Nakagawa has created a beautiful lush film about the personal issues of growing up mixed race.  She spoke to the audience that Canadian and Hollywood films have addressed mixed-race relationships but never really about the children who grow up in such unions, and the issues that they have to face, sometimes ostracized from one culture or the other, or both.

Nakagawa found a variety of celtic-First Nations, Indo-German, Carribean-Caucasian, African-Caucasian, Chinese-Irish-Scottish-Swedish subjects for her interviews by word of mouth, she told the audience. 

Poet Fred Wah, the poet / retired University of Calgary Engish professor is featured in Between: Living in the Hyphen, a National Film Board film.  He  speaks about growing up mixed-race, and finding his own place in a Canada that initially wanted to homogenize everybody into a White Anglo-Saxon culture during the 1950's when he grew up.  Several other interview subjects discuss growing up as products of racial hybridity, and how they move between the ethnic cultures of either parent, as well as mainstream White Canada. 

Nakagawa proves herself to be a gifted filmaker both in presentation and subject material.  Over a period of three years, she got to know the interview subjects to the point where they trusted her enough to share intimate and personal stories of race and prejudice.  Some feel they are as Canadian as can be, while others share that because of the way they look, they will always be questioned as to their ethnic origin, as the traditional stereotype "Canadian standard" is white, blond with blue eyes.  Nakagawa plays this challenge to great effect by utilizing the famous "I am Canadian" Molson beer commercial rant, which featured a good looking caucasian male.

It is an interesting must-see film that seeks to legitimize mixed-race as a valid cultural identity within the mosaic of Canadian multiculturalism, while challenging the the pigeon-hole process of ethnic labeling.

The following panel discussion was lively.  It included perspectives that were  honest, academic, casual, immigrant -based, multi-generational, and prarie-informed.  Each panelist described themselves and their interests in relation to the themes of identity and labeling.  Kienlen said she used the term mixed race, because that is what she is.  While many of the Nakagawa's subjects grew up as solitary mixed race individuals, she grew up with her mother who is half-Chinese. 

Takeuchi says he describes himself as 4th generation Japanese Canadian, because it is important to demonstrate the relationship to the internment.   Lee said he felt he was the newcomer to the group because his parents were immigrants, and because of that he doesn't have all the familial history that the other panelists carry.

Festival founder and president Barb Lee shared she came up with the theme of Asian Canadian vs Asian Canadian on a car trip in Eastern United States with her sister.  They argued about the usage of the word forms.  Her sister stated she was Canadian Asian because she wanted to emphasize her Canadianess by putting Canadian before Asian.  Glenn Deer pointed out that the word "Canadian" is really a noun, denoting a country and a culture, so that Asian Canadian is the more correct term.

Personally, I feel that both forms of usage are valid, but Asian Canadian denotes a Canadian of Asian heritage, where Canadian Asian will more likely describe an immigrant Asian who has come to Canada.  Felix Cheng's film's subjects were Canadian Asians, born in Hong Kong, who became naturalized Canadians.  Nakagawa's film included Fred Wah a Canadian of diverse ethnic ancestry who can be included in the group of Asian Canadians.