First Person Plural

alicia — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine having three different names and three different birth dates. Deann Borshay Liem asks the viewers of her documentary film First Person Plural to do just that as she tells the story of her adoption in 1966 from Korea by American parents living in California. The film traces her childhood in America and desperate drive to assimilate perfectly into American culture, which—to all who looked at her—would say she accomplished quite successfully.

Yet, upon moving out of her parents’ house, Liem becomes haunted, literally, by memories of her past in Korea, a past that included a mother, father and four siblings. After the ghost of her father startles her by appearing in her car’s passenger seat, Liam knows that she must return to Korea and discover the truth about her adoption.

Once there, she meets her mother, brother, and sisters (her father died when she was an infant) and finds out that her real name is Ok Jin and that her identity had been switched with a girl named Cha Jung Hee (whose father had claimed her within the orphanage just weeks before her adoption was finalized). The remainder of the film chronicles her decision to have her American parents meet her Korean family because she believes this is the only way that she can hold both families together in her mind simultaneously and not have to choose between them.

The film, running at sixty minutes, follows a steady and even pace, intermixing photos and home videos from her childhood along with interviews with her American father, mother, sister and brother, and footage of the meeting between her American and Korean families. Beyond the film’s technical proficiency, its emotional impact is its greatest strength.

Her subjects are candid as they recount their reactions to her adoption and their current relationship to her, and the authenticity with which they express themselves is both refreshing and moving. For instance, Liem’s American family—in their well-meaning attempt to reassure her that she was a “real” member of the family—repeatedly dismisses the significance of her past and given name. Throughout the film, her father, mother and sister each assert that Liem’s “real” name is Deann or Cha Jung Hee, not Ok Jin, shrugging it off as a technicality. Liem’s dismay at this reaction is palpable.

Perhaps most touching is Liem’s difficulty discerning who her “real” mother is. Both of her mothers are gracious and supportive of their daughter as she struggles with this decision, and Liem comes to the realization that the only way to become closer to her Korean mother is to acknowledge that she is not, in fact, Liem’s mother after all. The scene in which Liem’s Korean mother tells her that she only gave birth to Liem and that she should do everything possible to make her American mother happy is heartbreakingly honest. Overall, the film touchingly explores the nature of identity, memory, and family, as Liem struggles to fuse her three names and two families into a cohesive whole.

While glancing over Mu Films’ website, I discovered that Liem has followed up First Person Plural with her latest documentary In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, released in 2010. In it, she returns to Korea and the orphanage out of which she was adopted to track down the girl with whom her identity had been switched. Given the quality and power of First Person Plural, I’m sure that joining Liem on this next phase of her journey to piece together her identity will be just as rewarding.

Written by: Dr. Jennifer A. Smith, February 14th 2011

Dear Pyongyang

mandy — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Yonghi Yang

Typecast Releasing

Yonghi Yang and her parents are Zainichi, meaning a Korean who lives in Japan. During the division of Korea in 1948 and the war that followed, the Zainichi took sides just as those who dwelled on the peninsula did. Yang’s parents had never been to North Korea, but were so enamoured of communism and the country that in 1971 Yang's father sent his three teenage sons to live in Pyongyang, the capital, as part of the Zainichi “Return Project.” This emigration occurred between the 1950s and 1970s when “Returnees” hoped for a better life in the “fatherland.” This better life never materialized, yet Returnees were forbidden to go back to Japan.

What Yang’s father's decision regarding his sons meant and still means to the family, and how her father now feels about his decision, form the core of this remarkable documentary (much of it shot in first-person POV, a rare occurrence in cinema). Yang interviews her septuagenarian father several times in homey circumstances. He jokes, laughs, sings, banters with his daughter, and gracefully accepts being made fun of. Yang teases out superbly this non-ideological side of her father. His decision about his sons was appalling—frightening in its implications of how political ideals distort the mind. Yet he’s likable and so loves his wife, daughter, sons, and grandkids that it’s almost possible to forgive the tragic mistake he made that his sons live out to this day.

An important thread of the story is Yang’s fortune compared to her brothers’. She was the youngest child, and only daughter, and so remained in Japan where she listened to the Beatles, took up videography, and decided that she had the right to choose her own career. By contrast, the brothers and their families lived in the pinched, highly controlled, and stagnant environment of Pyongyang. Footage that Yang shot as a schoolgirl when she visited her brothers several times over the years is deftly incorporated into the present-day journey to Pyongyang of her and her parents, and plays a crucial role in this contrast.

I won’t reveal the outcome of the narrative, but suffice it to say that Yang’s father's love for his daughter doesn’t fail when she needs an important answer from him. Criticisms? Well, toward the end, Yang’s camera shoved in her father’s helpless face shades into a passive-aggressive assault.

The film is DIY to the max, so its technical aspects can be roughhewn. Yang apparently shot the present-day footage on a consumer-quality digicam. The limitations of this kind of equipment and shooting do crop up. Sometimes the image is overexposed or underexposed. Occasionally the camera work is deliriously shaky. Sometimes the dialogue is not synched properly, and sometimes it’s obscured, for example, by wrapping paper being scrunched because the mic isn’t well placed.

Yet Dear Pyongyang—a sad and ironic title—tells so compelling a family tale with so many political ramifications that its production flaws don’t matter a whit. This “little” film has a big mind and heart. Though it often seems as if it were made for six dollars—all right, make it ten—it’s worth a dozen megabuck Hollywood blockbusters.

Written by: Neil Flowers, November 26th 2010