Vancouver writer/director Julia Kwan recalls a day of auditions held for her debut feature film, Eve & The Fire Horse: “I had to audition all these kids. And then this one kid was giving me a lot of attitude. Halfway through, he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, but I thought you were an assistant director, because, seriously, I never had a girl director before.'”
That sort of stereotyping is nothing new for the rising Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, who had to face a number of obstacles before making her first feature, which is currently garnering accolades across North America-not only was Eve & The Fire Horse the only Canadian movie to be invited to Robert Redford’s prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah last week, but it also took home a special jury prize.
“I think people have certain preconceived notions about an Asian woman,” Kwan reflects. “I think in a sense, I had to jump through more hoops. I really think that I have to work twice as hard to prove myself.”
Kwan, 39, was eager to rise up to the challenge. She recounts the extensive journey from when she first had the inkling to work in film at the tender age of 16 to graduating from Ryerson and working on numerous award-winning short films for almost a decade before finally making Eve.
Eve follows the misadventures and religious awakening of two young Chinese-Canadian sisters growing up in Vancouver during the mid-’70s. The title character is born in the year of the Fire Horse, a bad omen in Chinese culture.
“It happens every 60 years…and the last time it happened in Asia, the abortion rate spiked,” Kwan points out. “Nobody wanted a child who was a Fire Horse. Fire Horses are independent thinkers, and they’re strong-willed, and it’s not really the culture that (the Chinese) really encouraged.”
Kwan herself is a Fire Horse, which might explain her resilience in bringing this deeply personal story to the screen, regardless of a major lack of support.
“It was quite difficult because Telefilm [the governmental funding agency for Canadian film] had this new mandate about box office sales. They didn’t see [Eve] as a commercially viable project, because, you know, the leads are Asian-Canadians, and it’s half in subtitles [for the portions spoken in Cantonese]. So people were a little wary about the prospects of this film,” Kwan says.
The “stubborn” Kwan was nevertheless able to scrounge together enough financing from various sources, including a private investor, to deliver the film that she wanted to make.
“It’s a typical Canadian film because it’s always about cobbling together funding,” Kwan notes. “It’s the reality of making a feature in Canada-a lot of paperwork.”
Another element of her film that places it squarely within the Canadian tradition is the multicultural themes that are frequently revisited throughout the plot. The protagonist sisters not only have to deal with the complications of a multi-faith household as they are jostled by both Christian and Buddhist traditions, but are also often confronted by underlying racial tensions.
“Back then, growing up in the ’80s, the racism was more overt,” Kwan says of her own childhood. “And so it wasn’t unusual to be walking down the street and some kid would yell ‘Chink’ at you. Also, when I was a child, there was this little Indian boy in my neighbourhood who was picked on a lot. And I remember specifically that there were children who were trying to knock off his turban.”
Although that sort of blatant discrimination doesn’t occur as much today, the director insists that a more covert type of racism still exists.
“At least [back then] you knew what people were thinking,” she says.
But Kwan doesn’t seem bitter about the adversity she faced in the past. In fact, it’s clear she managed to harness her experiences and incorporate those same issues into her very personal-and very Canadian-movie.
You can read Julia Kwan’s journals from Sundance at CBC Arts Online (cbc.ca/arts/film/sundancediary.html). Her debut feature, Eve & The Fire Horse, is currently playing at the Kennedy Commons cinema.
