Big Brother is Watching
What must it be like, to live in constant fear of a government you escaped from but can never truly abandon? C35 Film’s Yi Chen explores that question in her latest film to grace the film festival circuit: “Dissidents.”
Chen remarked that this is “a human story about three dissidents’ pursuit of democracy, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to seek asylum, [where] these basic human rights are challenged by authoritarianism.” The film follows an artist, an unhoused protestor, and a leader of the Democratic party of China, each exiled for speaking their mind and holding their government accountable via art, democratic protesting, and peaceful demonstration. Chen notes that “it is important to share these stories for the voiceless and marginalized communities who are fighting for democracy.” As they pursue justice from a Chinese government that refuses to grant it and asylum from a country that cannot help them in the United States, we soon realize that the power to change does not come from the entities above, but within our own communities.
Time and again we see these dissidents suffering through Chen’s guerilla filmwork and we are powerless to raise a hand as the film rolls forward: Publicly sourced newsreel snapshots from Tiananmen Square in 1989, archival footage from the ’90s to early 2000s showing dissidents extradited out of their home country, artwork created and destroyed with the arrival of the 2020 pandemic. We see firsthand how governments and police forces are indifferent and sometimes violent to peaceful protests. Chen, behind the camera, is forced into the thick of it. She recalled instances when “the [American] Secret Service would ask me to translate for them, and sometimes they would order me not to film even though it was public space.” She chose to engage with them as little as possible, but realized how important it was to include these moments in the film, to showcase how the right to protest was being challenged even in the United States.
As the archival footage catches up to the present day and reveals the lengths the Chinese government takes to silence its opposition with espionage and manipulation, we are dealt a bitter, yet effective call-to-action to help the Chinese diaspora. We see the ineffectiveness of governments in healing individual traumas, but we embrace the camaraderie that comes from a shared community and culture trying to help each other.
“Many people told me they cried because for the first time they saw their struggles and hopes represented in the film,” Chen said of her film’s premiere at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival in May earlier this year. “Like many Chinese diaspora in the US, I also feel invisible, but art can make us feel heard and understood. That’s an important step to healing and empowerment.”
Like the validating community support at her film’s premiere, Chen’s documentary follows a similar course in its completion. Messy, emotional, and hopeful; we have front row seats to people trying to be better people and doing so together. A dazzling work on the spirit of human optimism, Chen highlights the lengths people will go to have a taste of what freedom could and should be.
“Dissidents” is screening at the 47th Asian American International Film Festival.