Editor's note: this story was previously posted on StratfordToday.ca.
Ballinran Entertainment’s latest documentary, Exclusion: Beyond The Silence, is set to debut at the Reel Asian Film Festival in Toronto later this week, showing the human impact of discriminatory immigration policies that caused lasting intergenerational trauma to Chinese Canadians.
It’s also a story that hits close to home for the film’s director, Keira Loughran. While digging into the history of Foon Hay Lum, one of the people featured in Exclusion, she discovers a familial connection upon finding out their families come from neighbouring villages in Guangdong Province in China.
It began as a hunch, Loughran said, and turned into more when she followed up on it.
“Here is this 111-year-old Chinese woman living in Canada who had been separated from her husband during exclusion,” Loughran said, referring to the Canadian government’s policies regarding Chinese immigrants – the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923. “I was intrigued by her story and then noticed we also shared the same last name. It was kind of a hunch and I don’t know if it was based on my own ignorance or just not knowing – I had a hunch that our families might be more closely connected than just random chance.”
Most of the knowledge of Chinese Canadians and of her family that Loughran had came through her grandmother, and she then met Helen Lee (Foon Hay Lum’s granddaughter) during the project which opened up even more learning opportunities. It was around that time that the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act came up, and that gave Loughran even more perspective.
“It’s been 100 years, and what has happened to our families in that time, and what is the lasting impact those policies have had,” she asked. “I began talking with people about that, so the story really started to come together. It felt really big and really personal, and it became the story to chase – we knew what we wanted to shoot and where we were getting interviews, but we really discovered the story as we went along. And as we learned more, we wanted to be able to find our family roots back in China.”
Loughran credits Ballinran for not only taking on the story but helping sift through all the material in order to help bring the point of the film into focus: sharing not only the personal connection Loughran had with the film but the long-term impacts decisions like this can have generations later.
“Koi and Craig (Thompson) were able to just capture it all and then comb over copious amounts of footage to really be able to help people see the film and find a way to make that part of our history uniquely personal,” she said. “It lets us look at immigration and understand the stories of immigration to this country in a different kind of way that is more important now so we don’t repeat those mistakes.”
For his part, Craig Thompson said the impact of the film comes from the realization that this story might never have been told had it not been for the strange series of coincidences that unfolded as they researched the project.
“When you see the film, you see that Foon Hay Lum’s last name is the same as Keira’s except that Keira’s grandmother spelled hers with a ‘B’ when they came to Canada because that’s how British or Western people interpreted it,” he said. “It’s just incredible – there’s one scene in the film where Keira looks up at Helen when they’re in the graveyard of their ancestors and Keira’s family graveyard is only 100 metres away. It just sends chills down your back when you see it. It gave me the feeling that this was a story that was meant to be told.”
The personal connection to this film made it more difficult for Loughran to tell the story because there are just so many details to get into that it could potentially have bogged things down on screen.
“I had to look at it from the perspective of what my story is and how it overlaps and touches on other people’s stories,” she said. “It brought me closer to the Chinese community, letting me feel like I was in the trenches with other Chinese Canadians that were trying to uncover the stories and share them in their own mediums and in their own way.”
Exclusion: Beyond The Silence premiers at the Reel Asian Film Festival on Saturday, Nov. 16, at noon.
