'Bring back a wife' : a director comes out to his Chinese parent
❤
Click Hangzhou Expat ↖to follow us
Documentarian Hao Wu’s latest film, All in My Family, focuses on Chinese family tradition, gay relationships and children born using surrogacy through an extremely personal lens.
The film – set for release on Netflix this Friday – was shot over a series of Lunar New Year trips to Chengdu, in southwest China, from New York, where he settled 20 years ago.
Filmmaker Hao Wu has directed a very personal documentary, All in My Family. Photo: PRPP
We watch him agonize over when and how to tell his grandfather that he’s gay, married to his Chinese-American husband Eric and has two children: a boy and a girl born through surrogacy.
“I wanted to show the challenges for gay people of Chinese descent, what kind of cultural and generational barriers and differences they have to negotiate in order to build a family of their own,” Wu said.
This place is supposed to have the ducumentary, but we faild to find it on Tencent Video (the only source wechat allow to embed video )
Anyway we found it for you, and have it on Baidu Cloud Storage. 百度网盘,
https://pan.baidu.com/s/1n34hONXOBcNgwUmsEaSokw
the code is ok85
BTW, I am downloading it now.
This is the first time Wu has turned the camera on himself and the view is intimate. He uses a handheld camera. Editing and special effects are limited, and many of the scenes are raw.
This stands in sharp contrast to his 2018 critically acclaimed People’s Republic of Desire, a slick, dystopian, special-effects-laden documentary about social media in China.
Despite its focus on LGBT issues, All in My Family captures many of the issues and emotions faced by families everywhere.
Wu fills us in on which family members are allies, his mixed feelings about Lunar New Year and a long struggle with his demanding and cleaning-preoccupied mother.
He said he saw the film as an opportunity to move the conversation beyond The Wedding Banquet, Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s 1993 feature about a marriage between a gay male landlord and his female tenant, by tackling seldom-discussed gay surrogacy and its challenge to Chinese tradition.
A starring, if unseen, character is the rapid social change that Chinese society has weathered – arguably among the most accelerated in human history – as we watch Wu’s parents and grandparents struggle to understand their Westernized adult son’s choices and values.
Being gay, in a same-sex marriage and having kids through surrogacy even a decade ago was unimaginable to many older Chinese people, who are now confronted with globally minded millennials.
Wu’s quest for approval and acceptance from his grandfather, who pressures him to produce an heir, highlights China’s deep patriarchal roots. “You must bring back a wife for my birthday, not a girlfriend,” his grandfather tells his only grandson part way through the film.
I never imagined my son would change into that
- Hao Wu's mother
At one point, Wu tells us that what he hated most about the new-year family gatherings growing up were “traditional Chinese values” such as saving face, respecting elders, parental control and the lies and pretenses used to avoid sensitive issues.
Some of the strongest footage in All in My Family is of his headstrong, extremely direct mother reflecting on her son’s homosexuality. “I never imagined my son would change into that,” she admits at one point, tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t accept it. Very painful.” This only redoubles Wu’s determination to live the way he wants.
Hao Wu’s mother and father in All in My Family. Photo: Handout
Family members grapple with whether to tell 92-year-old grandpa that Wu is gay – and how to explain the grandchildren who suddenly appear without a woman in the picture.
Wu enlists other relatives’ advice on crafting evasive answers to him and neighbors: say their mother is dead, or an illegal immigrant, or too busy in America to come. His mother scoffs at the suggestion they tell the truth. “No way, absolutely not in China,” she says.
The narrator concludes that there’s no single right answer when balancing family harmony and being true to yourself.
“When you are young, the truth is more important than anything else,” Wu says. Only later do you realize that people’s feelings are equally important, he adds, “as long as I don’t have to live in a lie”.
While All in My Family remains studiously subjective, it draws fuel from the broader social context, including China’s legal, moral and social environment surrounding LGBT issues as Beijing further tightens its grip on gender and various related social-rights groups.
A poster image for Hao Wu's documentary, All in My Family. Photo: Handout
Wu concedes that his film is likely to draw criticism from gay activists who believe the entire LGBT community should come out to everyone in order to broaden awareness.
“That’s definitely going to happen,” Wu said. “I understand where those people are coming from. But come on, we are a big community. We shouldn’t have everyone think in one particular way.”
There’s much more peer pressure in the village
- Adam, a father of babies born through surrogacy
While traditional opposition runs deeps across China, there are differences in how parts of the country have warmed to accepting homosexuality.
China’s megacities are often far ahead of its rural areas.
Adam, a married father with two infants born through surrogacy, said his parents quickly embraced his same-sex marriage and decision to have children, in part because they’re from Shanghai.
“It’s less about what you know than where you live,” he said. “There’s much more peer pressure in the village.”
Adam, who declined to use his Chinese name since he hasn’t come out at work, said All in My Family had little chance of being distributed officially in China given the government’s de facto policy against gay-themed films. But he expects it to be widely viewed through unofficial channels, bolstering support for LGBT issues in China.
“From the government perspective, I don’t expect anything to change,” he said. “But in terms of knowledge gained by ordinary people, this will be powerful.”
Wu said he hoped the film would spark a debate, particularly among the Chinese-American and Asian diaspora’s gay communities.
“Especially coming to be a father myself, I understand how much love and energy and time my parents have invested in me,” he said. “At the end of the day, families are strong, as long as they can accept their differences.”
Source: Ink Stone News
https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/all-my-family-outlines-chinas-resistance-gay-relationships-and-surrogate-births/article/3008250
1
Looking for a JOB ?
A stage to show your talents !
2
If you boss ask you
to post company ads on your wechat moment
3
If you want to buy wines - Lakeside Mart
^
Follow us to keep you updated about
what's happening in Hangzhou and what the expat community concern
杭州的外国朋友，海龟，外企白领都在看
..............................................
Anything to share with us ?
有什么与我们分享，吐槽吗？请添加加小编微信