Jennifer Moreau of the Burnaby NOW chatted with Simon Fraser University's Jordan Paterson, director of From C to C: Chinese Canadian Stories of Migration. The documentary is showing on Saturday, Nov. 5 as part of the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. From C to C earned Paterson a Leo Award for best one-hour documentary.

Jennifer Moreau: Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you?

Jordan Paterson: I've been making films for approximately the past 15 years with a continuous interest in what we call "documentary" in its many forms. My recent films have focused on issues of migration related to social justice and broader questions about Canada and its self-image. I also work at (Burnaby's) Simon Fraser University in the Teaching and Learning Centre as an educational media producer.

JM: Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of your documentary, From C to C?

JP: These stories outline the injustices faced by Chinese migrants during the last century and the little-known effects of migration on the families and communities of migrants. We contrasted these histories with the views and experiences of contemporary Chinese-Canadian youth, in order to hopefully lead us to reflect on the meaning of exclusionary legislation for those who experienced it, as well as for those who did not. So we gain the understanding that history is not isolated in the past but part of a living present we often take for granted.

JM: Why did you decide to make this film?

JP: The film was funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada's Community Historical Recognition Program. My background and interest in migration issues connected me to the project through the Teaching and Learning Centre at SFU. This might sound rather rhetorical but I, and the project team, simply hope that by calling attention to the diverse and transnational nature of contemporary Chinese-Canadian identities, the film promotes an inclusive vision of Canada that values members of all communities as global -rather than solely national - citizens. You could say this question of citizenship has always been a question of Canada, that in fact traditional notions of a loyal nationhood have gone hand in hand with discriminatory practices by government and society at large. It is a question anyway.

JM: The film deals with a lot of issues Chinese Canadians faced as new immigrants, including some ugly history around the Chinese Head Tax Exclusion Act and Vancouver's race riots in 1907. Why is it important for you as a filmmaker to highlight that history?

JP: It's about social justice. It is clear to me that the discrimination Chinese-Canadians faced was perhaps the worst legislative discrimination in Canadian history outside of the tragedy experience by our Aboriginal peoples. We can learn a great deal from the legal history alone. It is our historical fight for "civil rights." There are already some excellent films on this subject focusing specifically on the head tax redress issue - which is very important - but we felt that by framing this film in "nation building" and "citizenship" perspectives would allow more people to understand and identify with the issues in and outside of Chinese-Canadian communities.

We interviewed over 20 people from China and Canada on camera. It is a wide range of voices with varying perspectives on this complex history. What was interesting was the differing accents on the history between interviews in Canada and China. I felt it was important to pull these perspectives together into a kind of virtual dialogue, and I think the film benefits from this dialogue. Interviews include Charlie Quan, who is 104 years old and the oldest head tax payer in Canada to my knowledge, George Chow a Second World War vet who saw combat in Normandy, local activist Sid Chow Tan and new immigrant youth from Guangdong, China.

JM: Many of the immigrants who paid the head tax to come to Canada have passed on. Did you feel you were trying to preserve their stories before that personal history was lost?

JP: Of course oral histories are at the center of this project, and we did our best to document what we could within the project. But there are those in the film like professor Henry Yu in the history department at the University of B.C. that are really defining new pedagogical approaches to history making in this regard. Video becomes a kind of writing for youth who wish to document their elder's experience. A documentary does this as well, but it can be confined to what documentarian Alan King called the "tyranny of genre," which in some ways ostensibly restricts what you can offer an audience in terms of a proper ethnographic oral history or experimentation, etc. Every filmmaker has to address this problem but sometimes you question whether you have actually overcome this "tyranny" at all. But I think the value of oral history is there in the film, and certainly the veterans, the elders we interviewed in China and Mr. Charlie Quan's stories are invaluable in this regard. It's not every day you get to hear the life story of someone who is 104 and has been as politically active as Charlie in the head tax redress campaign.

JM: Your film includes the younger generation of Chinese-Canadians and the stories of their parents and grandparents. What disconnect, if any, did you see between those generations? Do the younger kids understand how hard it was for their families?

The disconnection is ultimately one of communication or the lack of opportunity for communication for those who share a common migration or ancestral history but today are very different in terms of their identities. New immigrant youth that we interviewed clearly understood the gravity and importance of the experience of long-time Chinese-Canadians they met, but the youth do not identify with the same kind of individual loyalty to nationhood. I don't want to generalize too much on this because some youth feel intensely "Canadian," while others do not. But the idea of national identity bound by multiculturalism is certainly in question here, at least from my perspective.

JM: What was the biggest piece of learning for you while making From C to C?

First, how difficult history can be to interpret and then present within a film, let alone a one-hour film. Second, the vast legal history that defined the experience of these people. There is just so much discriminatory legislation at the civic, provincial and federal levels. It really opens your eyes to how policy can slip into discrimination with "the best intentions."

Third, how we have only begun to share our histories between Canada and China and how surprised people are at some of the historical facts on either side of the Pacific.

JM: What is the most important message for you as a filmmaker working on this project? What do you want the viewer to take away from this?

JP: Remember and respect the profound contribution of Chinese-Canadians in the building of this country and don't think for a second that we are out of the woods. We all have to address our own racism and think about building an inclusive Canada that doesn't discriminate racially, economically or physically. It's a tall order, but we can set an example. We are still a young country defining the rules in the emergence of a complex century.

JM: Where can our readers see your film?

JP: The Vancouver Asian Film Festival will be screening the film this Saturday, Nov. 5 at 11 a.m. at the Cineplex Odeon Tinseltown theatres in Vancouver's Chinatown. The film is part of a larger program of Asian Canadian Films and a panel on the importance of oral history with UBC historian Henry Yu and filmmaker Karin Lee.

For more on Paterson's documentary, visit www.sfu.ca/fromctoc.