My Story by Chi Mai

I ate sugar-ed rice and drank in books (1984-1995)

chichan313_ — 2023-11-06 11:07:14 UTC

I was born in 1984, two years before Vietnam launched into its Renovation Era and opened its borders for trade. By the time I could walk, I was regularly fed rice or porridge with nothing but sugar. For the mind, I fed myself books. I read everything I could get my hands on: novels (some adult ones), newspaper scraps (cut up the placed in toilets), or the back of shampoo bottles. When I was in second grade, my teacher was a well-to-do lady who would let me borrow books from her tall and well-arranged bookcase, with books more age-appropriate to a seven-year-old. My favorite was Hans Christian Andersen's novels. There was a lot of death mentioned. Andersen gave me my first existential crisis: I cried for a week into my pillow at night, unable to fathom why we'd be born just to die.

I wanna wanna wanna zigzag-ha (1996-2002)

chichan313_ — 2023-11-06 11:49:24 UTC

When I was twelve, MTV landed in Vietnam. We went crazy. I was in a class for linguistically gifted children, so 27 out of 30 of us were girls. We split into rival groups: "The Boyzones" fans, the "991"-ers, and the "Back Street Boys" girls. But when it came to female pop stars, everyone loved Spice Girls. I got a pair of platform shoes and wore cargo pants. We were drinking Coca-Cola (Vietnam and the US shook hands again in 1995) while reciting history lessons of our battle against "Americans, our arc-enemy, the brutal colonist". 1998 rolled around/. Vietnam joined WTO. All everyone could think about was to buy made-in-China or -Taiwan motorbikes, which were much cheaper copies of the Japanese Hondas mostly used prior. Vietnam was becoming world's one of the fastest-growing economies. Everyone wanted to send their children to learn business in universities. Everyone wanted to send their children to the US. In high school, I was in a girl band, singing and dancing in unison with my best friends. In 2002, I went to Hanoi for university, majoring in International Studies - the big world was brimming with promises and hope.

Happiness is to have Sunsilk hair, Dove skin, and Maybelline lips (2002-2015)

chichan313_ — 2023-11-06 12:04:55 UTC

During my three years in university, while my friends were scheming to get jobs, marry wealthy husbands, and buying houses in the city, I read Jung. I never passed "Ho Chi Minh's Thoughts" and "History of the Party" exams before I decided to quit and move to Saigon. With a more-than-average quickness for language, I soon became a copywriter in advertising, writing zingers and ads for shampoos, soaps, detergents, and cooking oils. Women were the buyers for families - aim at women! Sell more to them. They don't want it? Make them think they need it! Sell more.

It took my father's stroke for me to make a strong decision to quit. I saw the light in journalism. Didn't last long. A friend who was a long-timer in the field suggested that she'd introduce me to her editor at Tuoi Tre, the nation's top newspaper. But she added a condition: "As long as you don't have your own opinion - or at least never show it". The light died. But I got a semi-journalistic job anyway, with Microsoft MSN, who seemed more interested in revenues and journalistic integrity. So be it.

In 2014, I made "Down The Stream" - an impromptu short doc. Somehow it marked my switch to films. In 2015, I quit my well-paid job and burnt all my savings on a one-year screening writing program in London. I've been in films since.

This film marked my first time learning what stateless meant. Little did I know many years later, it's become a subject I have pursued for a long time.

Filmmaking as journeys backward. How did we get here?

chichan313_ — 2023-11-07 06:39:11 UTC

The history of my country feels thin and shapeless as haze. Things have happened to fast. The past was dropped hastily. I moved through these dizzying years with the country's growth - and I was always leaving the workplaces, the institutions, the spaces I was in. Because something felt wrong.

And somehow, I returned to the stateless communities. I asked myself why my heart was always ready to break for them. Is that because I had always felt displaced? Does one feel displaced from history as they cannot answer to themselves: where did I come from? why am I not feeling connected to what's currently happening around me?

Bits by bits, fragments by fragments, films have become my way to turn inwards and go backwards. Stories I plan to tell about the stateless communities, wedge into oblivion, take me back to the country's history, take me to places that made me think of the war, our national identities, our healing and heritages.

And that is where I am faced with the power dynamics of the one who has the power to tell the story, and through that, shape others' memories and identities. What I may be doing about the stateless communities I am working with may bear resemblance to what some politicians did to the identities and memories of my people, my family, and therefore me.