This week kicks off Milwaukee Film's Dialogues Documentary Fest, which brings indie films, filmmakers and panels to the Oriental and Downer theaters.
Thursday night includes a double feature exploring similar themes that come with immigration: the promise of something better, what gets lost along the way and reconnecting to family and culture.
The two filmmakers are Madeline McGuire and Eddie Sánchez. McGuire is a graduate of UWM's film school. Her short film "Little Madeline McGuire" examines her relationship with her grandparents, who for most of her life, have lived in Taiwan.
Sánchez's film "MEXICANAMERICAN" profiles his parents' immigration journey and the lives of him and his brothers growing up.
WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez talked with Sánchez and McGuire about their films.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I feel like so often, stories of immigration, especially recently, have been about the trauma and spectacle, and not the nuance of what goes into the family dynamics. What parts of the immigration story did you want to bring out and tell in the story?
Eddie Sánchez: I agree with you, in that as I was making the film, I wanted to make sure that I did center the agency of my parents. Because I do feel like the narratives that are actively going on right now, understandably, because they center on policy and the politics of the issue, don't really represent what actually goes on in a person's head when they are going through this kind of experience.
What I wanted to show was the thought process and the emotional process behind what it means to leave a family behind in another country and to start a whole new life somewhere, where you don't speak the language. And, I didn't necessarily come in with a game plan.
I knew growing up, some people are very curious about who their parents are and everything, but sometimes you also just don't even realize that they are people, you know what I mean?
They're your mom and your dad. They just exist as that.
Sánchez: Exactly. And I was very much in that mindframe until I became an adult. And I'd always noticed just how different my life was from the lives of other kids that I went to school with. It took me a while to actually even invite friends over to to my house because I just felt like, "Are you going to be uncomfortable with just how different my family is?"
It feels like the staple of this film, which you do such a fun job of, is slicing the found footage with old commercials, telenovelas...to create this stamp of who your parents are. But as I was watching this, I'm like, "Who is your dad recording for?"
Sánchez: The reason he filmed so much was because he had an entire family back home that for years he couldn't freely visit before he was a citizen. Even when you're a resident, you have to spend a certain amount of time in the United States, but even when you can freely go back and forth, it's expensive. And they can't visit you.
My dad's family, my mom's family, they didn't have visas to to come and travel. And my dad, who is obviously very proud of his family, proud of the life that he built for himself, this was his way of of sharing that with his family back home. This was FaceTime before there was FaceTime, right? He had to film all of these things and mail these tapes over the border to be able to share the life that he built with his family back home.
[Madeline,] what I really like with your story is you explore identity, diaspora, family — but how would you describe this project?
Madeline McGuire: I mean, this thing was a — it's a passion project of mine. I think I became really interested in kind of like who I am and how I fit into my family.
When I was super young, when I kind of realized, like, I don't really know too many other people like me, and it kind of became like a weird, I don't know where I fit in. So I think I kind of also wanted to speak to other people who kind of feel this way, and other people who are like me, and even like people who aren't, and just kind of don't feel like they fit in anywhere.
How did your family receive it?
McGuire: Oh my grandparents are — they were funny when they saw it, because my grandma loves American movies. But she likes the more action-packed fights and, you know, blood, guts, all that. This is not that.
That's a different kind of family story!
McGuire: Yeah, so I know that they liked it because they told me, but I think that they weren't really expecting it to be the way that it was. But my mom, I think, took it the hardest because I think she kind of she struggles with the fact that she never taught my sister and I how to speak Mandarin, and I think that still kind of bothers her.
And I know that that's something that I've kind of touched on in the film a little bit, that I don't know how to speak Mandarin. So I remember the first time I showed her the final, before I even turned it in. I just remember her just sobbing, and I felt so guilty. But, I don't know. I think that just kind of brought like, all of my mom's feelings to the surface about how I feel about our culture, and how I feel like I don't fit in, and I feel like she thinks it's her fault.
I feel like everyone can connect to the story of wanting to connect with your culture, with your grandparents. Is it ever too late to do these things? Is there anything that changed for you?
McGuire: Going into making this film, what I had expected to happen was, I guess I was hoping to feel more connected to my culture and to my family, but that did not happen, and I was honestly very disappointed. But I think what I learned was that it's OK to kind of feel like you're in between two cultures and you don't have to, like, try to push yourself into a place where you're you kind of don't really feel like you belong in there. At least for me, I'm OK with kind of being in that in-between space for now.
"Little Madeline McGuire" and "Mexicanamerican" are showing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24 at the Oriental Theater.
Milwaukee Film is a financial supporter of WUWM.
