Nanjing
Event Review
Sixi Screening Project | Documentary Film Screening
Separated by a language barrier, the granddaughter Nicole never learned the Engping dialect, and her grandma GUIÁN never picked up Spanish. They lived under the same roof, yet might as well have inhabited two parallel linguistic universes. It was not until grandma passed away that those unasked questions became the very reason to embark on a journey.
On December 27, at the screening held at Sixi Museum - a documentary by Chinese diaspora director Nicole Chi Amén (who has mistakenly called her maternal grandmother "grandma" since childhood) — entered into an intertextual dialogue with the exhibition When language fades into obscurity across time and space, only "presence" remains the most truthful narrator: the roads beneath our feet, the villages of Engping, and the daily rituals of life.
Perhaps the most touching part of the film lies not in the outcome of this "root-seeking" journey, but in the journey itself. As Nicole states in her closing narration: "It was you who brought us all together."
At the end of the film, the camera lingers on a photo of grandma hanging on the wall of their home in Costa Rica. This is a belated conversation — one where we seem to join hands, attempting to cross linguistic borders and piece together the fragments of our identities.
