1999/52mins/English
Winner: 1999 AFI Awards - Best sound for non-feature films
Director: Tony Ayres
Producer: Michael McMahon, Megan McMurchy
Script: Tony Ayres, William Yang
Director of Photography: Tristan Milani
Sound: Pat Fiske, Livia Ruzic, Peter Walker
Cast: William Yang as himself
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"Sadness" is a film version of William Yang's theatre piece of the same name. The film was made by Melbourne film maker Tony Ayres, after he saw the theatre production in Sydney and decided it could work on film.
It is a very moving and at times humorous look at identity, family, and grief.
William Yang is a social photographer in Sydney. The idea for his monologue "Sadness" came about in the early 90s when he looked back over his diaries and realised he had been to more wakes than parties over the years. In the film he says he felt compelled to tell the stories of his friends in order to unburden himself of the things he had seen.
The film begins with Yang looking at slides of friends who have died of AIDS. It then shifts focus to explore issues of identity in relationship to family.
There are two sides to this story, Yang tells us: the Chinese and the gay and they have come together over grief.
The film counterposes the stories of his friends who have died of AIDS, and his photographic documentation of them - from happy, healthy people, to sick frightened people all of whom died from AIDS - and the struggle to come to terms with his Chinese background which was constantly denied by his family.
In the film Yang goes travelling north to find out about his heritage. He is especially interested in one member of the family, William Frank Nguyen, his uncle by marriage, who was murdered in the 1920s in far North Queensland.
He struggles to understand why his mother seemed so ashamed of being Chinese and brought her children up "in the western way". There is a revealing scene where he recalls being taunted at school for being Chinese and goes home and asks his mother if he is Chinese - she replies that he is and his brother joins in that he had better get used to it.
Yang's adventure into the wild north - provides some great moments on film. He interviews the various family characters, mostly elderly aunts and uncles, about the death of Frank Nguyen and is provided with wildly different accounts of what happened.
What is clear is that it seemed OK to murder a Chinese man and get away with it in this period. Yang explains that this may go some way to understanding why his mother kept them from being proud of their Chinese heritage - he says she may have been trying to save them from the fate of Frank Nguyen.
There is some beautiful photography in the film - Yang's photographs and some still shots of scenes he visits on his travels.
Moving between the different stories - the tragedy of AIDS and the search for family history works very effectively. The film is essentially a monologue by Yang accompanied by his slides and a documentation of his trip north.
"Sadness" screened nationally on SBS 14 November 1999 - it was made by SBS Independent and Film Australia's Victorian branch. It can be purchased from the marketing department of Film Australia in Sydney by phoning (02) 9645 5970.
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