Tanvi's residency curates a film series called Belonging: Documentaries from the Canadian Diaspora, which invites its audience to reflect on belonging within the mundane intimacy of private life in nonfiction diasporic filmmaking.
Tanvi Rajvanshi completed her MA in Film Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. She researches representations of memory and trauma in intercultural and diasporic cinema. Tanvi co-programmed the 2019-2020 iteration of Cinema in the Midst of Struggle, a screening series based out of Concordia, showcasing films actively engaged in anti-colonial, anti-fascist and anti-patriarchal political struggle.
Belonging: Documentaries from the Canadian Diaspora invites its audience to reflect on what it means to belong, and to think about the politics that surround our position within a place we choose to call home. Working on this project during a time of travel restrictions, curfews, and incessant isolation from my family, I was heavily inspired by a question posed by Avtar Brah: “When does a location become home? What is the difference between ‘feeling at home’ and staking claim to a place as one’s own?” Perhaps this question resonates louder now, when many of us have been forced to reckon with the imperfections systemically embedded within the homes we have chosen. Within the walls where we once staked a claim, even if it never felt like home. Where now we stake our claims to make a place the home it promised us it would be.
For the filmmakers in this program, Canada represents many different things – from the mundane, to the painful, to the exceptional. For this reason, it is vital to me to acknowledge that these films are first and foremost Canadian. They may not look Canadian, many of them are not even filmed in Canada, but these are stories of people who at some point in their lives have tried to stake their claim to Canada as their home. Recognizing these stories as Canadian opens the door to a necessary conversation about who is included in national histories, in Canada’s national imagination, and where perhaps has Canada failed to be a home for many of its peoples.
For me personally, the question of belonging has weighed heavily for most of my life. I was born in India, but raised in Cambodia, where I no longer have any roots because my family moved to East Africa ten years ago. Ironically, it’s hard to find any roots in East Africa because I was living in Singapore when my family moved there. My mom used to say that my home is where my parents are, but my dad says it is time I make my own home. So now I live in Canada, hoping that some little corner in this large country accepts me, while I sit on the fence about accepting it. In many ways then, programming this selection of films was not just an opportunity to contribute to the VCR’s collection – it was also an opportunity for me to learn about Canada, from perspectives that mean something to me and hopefully to those sitting on that fence with me.
Unintentionally, all of the films that resonated with me ended up being documentaries. During my time as a graduate student, I was always drawn to nonfiction filmmaking, but in the process of this Residency, I finally realized where that inclination comes from. From its beginnings in the early 20th Century, documentary filmmaking has been a process of objectifying a subject, creating a distance in order to construct an aura of authority over a subject matter – more often than not, another human being. A human being visibly different than the filmmaker, in many ways – the more the better. Like other tools of the Empire, filmmaking too, served to assert power. To intentionally misunderstand our stories and re-represent them in ways that served those who ruled. This is why nonfiction diasporic filmmaking is so powerful, and so important. The films presented here, and countless others like them, study the self. Unsurprisingly, family, family footage and home photos, stories of fathers and mothers, conversations with family, are central to almost all of the films in this program. In turning the camera towards the mundane intimacy of private life, all of the films in this selection make space beyond what is quantifiable and classifiable and observable. They unravel the idea that anyone is knowable, and in seeing these films as part of Canada, they unravel the idea of Canada itself as a knowable, homogenous society.
Still from Call Shop Istanbul a film by Hind Benchekroun and Sami Mermer (2015)
As you venture through the films in this program, guided by the sub-themes of Migration and History, Undoing ‘Multiculturalism’, and The Return, I invite you to ask what does it mean to belong? What are the histories entwined in our personal stories of belonging, and what do those stories reflect about where we are, and where we stake a claim to home?
Flows of migration are often linked to flows of labour and capital – where colonial structures of power remain ever visible. The films in this section make allusions to the colonial past, where imperialism spread from Europe to the rest of the world. Today, in our postcolonial present, migration flows back from Africa and Asia towards Europe and North America.
A diaspora is not simply forged out of a journey from Point A to Point B, it is instead forged from the weight of colonial history. From the encounters with the Evil Queen in Thirza Cuthand’s Just Dandy, to the home videos of Isminaz’s family in Under Two Skies by Zayne Akyol, to the shores of the Bosporus where thousands of migrants share their hopes and disappointments within the confines of a small phonebooth in Callshop Istanbul by Hind Benchekroun and Sami Mermer. Each of the following films explores how the effects of colonialism are visible in unlikely places, like in a wildflower, in someone’s home, or in a phonebooth.
In all of this, where and how we find our sense of belonging is intricately tied to a story of displacement that began centuries ago.
Speaking at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, Cuthand describes her torrid affair with the Evil Queen which led to the spread of an invasive species of flower on Turtle Island. This experimental docu-parody makes several allusions to the direct hand of British colonialism in destroying Indigenous land and identity.
Isminaz works in a Turkish restaurant in Montréal, where she lives with one of her daughters, while her husband and two of her children continue living in Turkey, awaiting their Canadian visa. Through the filmmaker’s lens and various home videos, the two families are united - expressing their dreams and hopes for a future where they can all be together.
In the history of the world, Istanbul has always played a vital role connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe. Today, Istanbul is host to several migrants from Asia and Africa, be it undocumented workers, Syrian refugees, young students seeking a better future. Intended only to be a transit, unfortunately many migrants end up spending decades in Istanbul, caught between holding on to their dreams for a future in Europe, or giving up and returning home. For some, even going back home is not an option. In this documentary, this drama unfolds in a small callshop, much like the thousands that line the streets of Istanbul. Through intimate conversations, we take a look into the global interconnectedness and the reality of migration today.
Still from Under Two Skies a film by Zayne Akyol (2010)
What does multiculturalism mean? Upon hearing this word, what, or rather who does this term evoke?
In the aftermath of globalization, the idea of multiculturalism has become synonymous with ideas of dreams. Particularly of the idea of Canada as a place where anybody’s dream can be achieved. Multiculturalism is a selling point, a term that promises a sense of belonging in a foreign land. But to whom does it make this promise?
In this section, we see two films in which communities are made of individuals starkly different from one another, be it on the basis of culture or on the basis of age, gender, ideology. From the nursing home for the diasporic elderly in Many Rivers Home by Baljit Sangra, to the people of Pessamit, an Innu community in Quebec in Betsiamites by Denis Chouinard – the directors cast a light on a community we don’t often take into account when we think of the ‘Canadian dream’
As such, these films expand the term multiculturalism by challenging our preconceived notions – and force us to reimagine new possibilities of who multiculturalism includes.
Centered on Saroj, a resident at a nursing home run by the Progressive Intercultural Community Services (PICS), Sangra explores issues of aging and mortality particularly within the context of the South Asian community in British Columbia. In many South Asian cultures, nursing homes are considered a taboo. However, at PICS, diasporic senior citizens have built a community of their own in the twilight years of their lives. Paralleling Saroj’s stories with the director’s memories of her mother, who passed away during the production of this documentzary, this film explores a facet of the diasporic community we rarely think about - aging and dying in a country that is not quite home.
Featuring interviews with several residents of Pessamit (formerly Betsiamites), an Innu community in Quebec, this film reveals the ways in which people relate to being Indigenous today. Comprised of fragmented frames, the testimonials are like different beads on a string, bringing together a multi-faceted story of an Indigenous community - challenging long-established notions of Indigenous identity as one that is frozen in the past.
Still from May I Live in Peace a film by Paul Tom (2010)
Theoretically, the term Canadian diaspora envisions Canada as the point of arrival. But even so, there is a connection to an elsewhere. In this section, Canada becomes the point of departure, where each filmmaker is bound on a journey back to where their parents were born. These journeys are often motivated by the impulse to fill a void – by the tempting thought that perhaps if Canada has failed in some way as a site of belonging, then another origin, another root somewhere far away could take hold.
But what if it doesn’t? In A Land of Silences by Paul Tom, Tom’s journey to his parents’ birth country Cambodia, only answers his questions with more silence. In Cavebirds by Emily Gan, we see Gan’s father struggling to bring his new dreams in Malaysia to fruition. Lastly, in The Roots Remain by Jean-Sébastien Francoeur and Andrew Marchand-Boddy – we follow Fonki back to Cambodia and through archival footage, see a movement from wartime past and hyper capitalist present. The journey home inevitably elicits surprise – the return is never quite what one expected it would be. How then do we reconcile with this aspect of belonging – one that never arrives and never departs?
Made in collaboration with Montréal-based Cambodian-Canadian graffiti artist Fonki, this film takes place during a trip to Cambodia to complete a mural commissioned by the Alliance Française. In the creation of this artwork, Fonki explores his own Cambodian roots by meeting his long-lost family. He also meets other Cambodian diasporic artist who have returned to Cambodia to fill a cultural void created by years of genocide and civil war. This documentary reveals connections between personal and national histories, all through the process of creating art.
Paul Tom was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, and moved to Montréal at the age of one. For thirty years, his father refused to go back to his home country, Cambodia, after suffering through the genocide. In those thirty years, many of Paul’s own questions about where he comes from went unanswered. In 2010, Paul went to Cambodia for the first time, which opened a path towards a greater connection between father and son - whether that is in Cambodia or in Canada.
May I Live in Peace is a short animated documentary based on three testimonials of genocide survivors, which Paul screened during his trip to Cambodia in A Land of Silences - he notes with disappointment that his family could not quite relate to the artistic rendering of the survivors’ testimonies.
Emily Gan’s father, Howard Gan, returns to Malaysia to oversee the progress he made on an investment into harvesting swiftlet nests for a local delicacy, bird’s nest soup. In this documentary, Gan follows her father from his home in Canada to his home in Malaysia, as he seeks to reconcile the dreams he has had for himself in the past, present, and future.
© Concordia University
