Imagine opening the family history closet late in your life and discovering a huge, fascinating secret. For example, it turns out that your great-grandfather was a trained magician and acrobat from China who toured the world in the 1920s and '30s with his own performing troupe. Not only that, but your Chinese ancestor publicly married an Austrian woman in 1908 at a time when mixed race marriages were both rare and forbidden in some countries.
This is the amazing family story that Vancouver writer, director and filmmaker Anne Marie Fleming stumbled on to a few years ago. Her grandmother, who died in the 1980s, had told her a bit about her father and about her own role in a family vaudeville show, but she was always hazy on details. In 1997, Fleming found an old film in her grandparents' basement. It was a family travel reel that followed a tour of the juggling, contorting, magical troupe of Long Tack Sam during the 1920s. His name appeared on theatre marquees in countries as far away as New Zealand, the U.S., Brazil and Germany. The discovery started Fleming on a trail of detection.
"Wherever there was a clue, I went," she says, and she describes the process in her film, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. The Sunshine Coast Film Society will bring the film to the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons on Tuesday, April 6, and Fleming will be at the screening to answer questions and meet the audience.
Over the years, she had made over 20 films, many of them short and experimental and all more or less personal, but this, her third feature-length production, has proven to be very personal. It took her six years; she started the research and travels in late 1997. But China had gone through changes with many records destroyed during the revolution. However, she did locate an elderly mouth artist, a performer who mimics natural sounds, and a man who remembered Long Tack Sam and was able to tell her of his apprenticeship with a venerable Chinese magician. Other clues were unearthed from a newspaper interview in 1915 and another published story in 1932. Gradually, she learned what Long Tack Sam's magic act had involved - juggling, somersaults, jumping through a ring of sharp knives or having his wife pull a string of nails from his mouth. Fleming, who has a knack for animation, first pulled the story together in a comic book format with artist Julian Lawrence, and then made it into a film. Much of the film is told in animation, making it suitable for younger audiences. "The over eight-year-olds will like this film," she says. "It's playful and children are enchanted." However, it is primarily a film for adults, which tells the audience much about the politics and racial attitudes of the times. It premièred at the Toronto Film Festival and has since earned an award for Best Asian Canadian film. The day after the Gibsons screening, Fleming is travelling again - this time to show the film in Hong Kong.
She's proud of her grandfather: "He transcended barriers," she says. And she is happy with her film. "It's made me believe in magic." The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam screens at the Heritage Playhouse on April 6 at 7:30 p.m. As a special event, it will cost Film Society members $10 and others $12.50. Call the SC Film Society at 604-886-1579 for more information.
