Australian
Screen

Clip description

Anna Yen in long skirt demonstrates her circus skills – balancing a full tea cup, walking the slack rope. She relates a story she would like to tell her grandmother and mother, acknowledging that she has been able to pursue her dreams and has had many choices. She is a strong woman in a long line of strong women. As Yen is narrating ‘It was a quiet life’, on screen she lets the suitcase in her hand fall open and a bowl smashes to the floor. Anna plays her father in his restaurant and speaks about coming to Australia in 1942. He had a hard time, partly because Australians thought he was Japanese. He borrowed money and opened a Chinese restaurant, then bought a house in Bondi Junction. The clip ends with Yen playing her mother curled up on the floor at home, having a nervous breakdown.

Curator’s notes

There are three scenes in this clip. Anna Yen tells her own story, again beginning ‘Once upon a time, long ago, in a land far, far away’. Yen is privileged compared to her mother and grandmother. They were economically dependent and had a very hard life. She on the other hand is economically independent which means she has choices. The scene ends abruptly, disrupting the 'quiet life’ and portending disaster.

In the next scene, it is Yen as her father who tells us about his hard life and his ability to rise above it. Filmmaker Mitzi Goldman used an empty Chinese restaurant as the set as ‘memory doesn’t include real customers’. Goldman recounted that the effect of Anna Yen playing her father was profound as it allowed Yen to put herself in her father’s shoes and to ultimately play his part with sensitivity and compassion. The final scene in this clip of Yen’s mother shows the first sign of the tragedy to come.