The Invisible Red Thread – The Movie

We get a lot of questions about when the documentary, The Invisible Red Thread, will finally be broadcast on TV.  The one hour film follows fifteen year old Vivian Lum`s travels back to China to contrast her North American adopted life with that of a teen girl adopted within China. While we don’t yet have an exact broadcast date…we do have narrowed it down the month: Canadians will be able to see the film on Omni TV in March 2012.

For now, the film continues on the festival circuit and will be available for Canadian and international sales on DVD after its March broadcast.

But meanwhile: you can hear an exclusive interview on Radio Canada International with director Maureen Marovitch. Listen in for details about the challenges of making the film, and the impact the filming had on its participants.

The Invisible Red Thread at The Montreal World Film Festival with (left to right) Hubert Lum, Eve Leyerle, Vivian Lum and co-producer Maureen Marovitch

The red carpet is rolled up and the films are back in their cans after 10 days of screenings and events at the 35^th Montreal World Film Festival. But for one family who travelled to see their finished documentary for the first time, the festival was unusually special.

Eve Leyerle and Hubert Lum took a special detour on their way home to Toronto after vacationing in Prince Edward Island. They travelled to the screening of the film about their family’s unique voyage to their adoptive daughter’s homeland. The film, “The Invisible Red Thread” premiered on August 26^th at the Montreal World Film Festival.

“I almost didn’t want to come”, said Vivian. “I didn’t think I wanted to see myself on screen.”

But curiosity about the film won out. “The Invisible Red Thread” documented Vivian’s return to her orphanage and the land of her birth, along with her poignant encounters with a locally adopted girl named Shumin Zhu. Vivian and her parents sat raptly throughout the film, then later were approached by members of the audience to discuss the story and their personal journey.

“It was great. I see Shumin differently now,” said Vivian about the film and the 14 year old Chinese girl she spent time with during her homeland trip. “I understand her and her life even better now.”

“It was fascinating to experience it all over again”, said Hubert, who spent two weeks with Vivian in China.  Eve also was moved by hearing from parents in China who had given away their daughters.

Others wanting to view the film will have the chance later this fall and winter when it premieres on OMNI TV in Canada and is available for home and educational DVD sales. We’ll be posting more info on that as soon as we have it!

For more coverage of the film and the festival:

The Suburban http://bit.ly/pa1i3C

The West End Times http://bit.ly/q9gb2E   

Congratulations to Karen Wright, Laurence Gamble and Louise Adam: They each won a set of tickets to the festival premiere of “The Invisible Red Thread”. But don’t despair if you didn’t win, it’s easy to pick up tickets to our screenings at the Montreal World Film Festival- and as a bonus you’ll also catch the documentary “Tin City Voices”, by Toronto filmmaker Elijah Marchand playing with it!

HOW TO BUY TICKETS ONLINE:  Visit the film’s web page at the Montreal World Film Festival here. You can then click on the “Admission” button to buy your tickets online! On the left hand side you chose Venue Cinema ONF-FFM or use these quick links below

• For the screening August 25 at 16:40 ONF.25.3 FFM
• For the screening August 26 at 12:00 ONF.26.1 FFM
• For the screening August 27 at 21:40 ONF.27.5 FFM

HOW TO BUY TICKETS AT THE BOX OFFICE: You can also buy tickets onsite at the ONF/NFB ticket counter at 1564 St. Denis at the cost of $10 each, right up to the screening times of the film.

Bon cinéma!

Leading up to our premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival, take some time to get to know the person who made it possible for us all to understand!

One film. Two languages. The Invisible Red Thread was filmed over two continents with a ratio of English to Mandarin of about 2:1. A veteran translator with more than 15 years experience Dr. Yawei Cui was given the tricky task of creating two separate versions of The Invisible Red Thread : one for Chinese speaking audiences and another for English viewers.

Dr. Yawei Cui

Translating might seem like a straightforward process, but it’s not as easy as it looks. The script can’t just be translated word for word. There is a limited amount of space and time on screen for subtitles. Consequently, keeping words to a minimum and dealing with sayings that aren’t easily translated pose interesting problems for translators. Having everything fit, make sense, and still tell the same story are elements that Dr.
Cui must always be aware of. Translating is also known as versioning, because, each translation actually creates a different version of the film.

When translating, Dr. Cui begins by reading through the entire script without writing anything. This allows him to get a better understanding of the complete story. Once he
has an idea of how the story unfolds, he begins to translate, while taking careful notes for “those ‘hard-to-understand’ or ‘not-so-sure’ parts,” he says.

Once a first version is done, Dr. Cui then watches the film to make sure that all of
the audio-visual elements make sense with his translation. A final revision and
draft are needed to make sure the translated script is in top shape!

Dr. Cui immigrated to Canada from China in 2000. Having worked as a university
professor as well as a translator and television producer in China, Dr. Cui began his Canadian career as a freelance journalist/documentary filmmaker and translator/interpreter. He says, “Though I, like most of the immigrants, have been living in translation as soon I got here in Canada, I’ve been working in the field of translation for 15 years in total.” He most recently completed doctoral studies in sociology and cultural studies at the University of Toronto and currently works at as manager of translation and interpretation at Canadian Securities Institute.

Dr. Cui has close ties to the issues in this film. As he says, “My generation has actually ‘lived’ in this Family Planning policy.” He’s glad to see someone make an effort to show how personal tragedies are actually socially and politically rooted; “Anything that challenges the social norms gets me excited.”

“It’s a great decision to have a couple of parents, who gave away their daughters, appear in the film. However short they might be there, they powerfully told the audience the ‘why’ behind their ‘action.’ One can no longer blame it merely on personal stupidity or heartlessness.”

You might have heard about the festival premiere of “The Invisible Red Thread”,
in less than two weeks at the Montreal World Film Fest. You might also know
about the story behind the documentary: 15 year old Vivian Lum returning to her
birth land to discover the life she might have had if she’d not been
internationally adopted. Now here’s your chance to win one of four sets of free
tickets!

Just send a note under 100 words to  info@picturethis.ca telling us about your
personal interest in  the film.  Whether you have a family connection to
adoption, an interest in China, or just love seeing documentaries, we’d love to
read about it.  We’ll give tickets to the third, tenth and twentieth writers –
and will announce the winners by noon on Friday August 19th.

Screenings are all at the NFB/ ONF Cinema located at 1564 St Denis, on the corner of De Maisonneuve at these three times:

Thursday, August 25 at 4:40pm
Friday, August 26 at 12:00pm
Saturday, August 27 at 9:40pm

More Information Here!

See you there!

Whether international adoptee Vivian is at the airport gate in Toronto, exploring a Chinese marketplace for the first time, or touring the orphanage that she was adopted from, the visually impaired will be able to follow the action in The Invisible Red Thread.

Have you ever wondered what that “SAP” button on your remote control is for? On most channels, clicking that button turns on a hidden audio track, known as descriptive video.

Just like closed captioning, descriptive video helps to bring stories on screen to audiences that used to be left out by TV and film. In descriptive video, short recorded narrations fit in between the lines spoken on screen, so that the visually impaired can follow along with action that is key to the story.

Sas Harris

Sas Harris is writing and recording the descriptive video for The Invisible Red Thread, one of the final steps in post-production. When Sas started recording descriptive video in 2002, she was the first in Quebec, and only the second in all of Canada, to offer the service to production companies and broadcasters.

We gave Sas a copy of The Invisible Red Thread, which she will load into a special computer program. The software helps her to work out the timing between the character’s lines, so she knows how long, or how short, her descriptions should be.

Sas has been writing and recording descriptive video for almost ten years, and is used to working with her voice– she was a singer for 30 years before changing tracks.

Over several days, Sas will work her way through The Invisible Red Thread to plan and write the descriptions. Then she’ll use her specially-built sound booth to record the short snippets of narration.

Sas’s work requires her to be an efficient writer. There’s an art to descriptive video, she says, since each description has to be tailored to the spaces between the characters’ dialogue. There may be only a sliver of time to explain a lot of action. Other times, she says, the natural sounds in the film can speak for themselves.

“If there’s a crowd on screen that gasps,” she says, “I don’t need to say, ‘The crowd gasps.’ The visually impaired have very acute hearing. Sometimes it’s better to let the natural sounds tell the parts of the story when they can.”

Kyle records ambient sound

Our doc following international adoptee Vivian back to China had its interviews and sounds recorded in speeding trains, noisy village markets, a busy orphanage and a bustling rural house filled with the sounds of family and sizzle of hot cooking pans. Our sound designers are taking all these noises, voices and music and weaving an immersive world of sound for the film.

“What we see when we watch a film is only half the experience,” says sound editor Andreas Mendritzki, who along with Kyle Stanfield, is bringing together all the sound to form the final soundscape of The Invisible Red Thread.

Andreas and Kyle are from GreenGround Productions, a production company in Montreal. Over the next three weeks, they will be seamlessly combining all the sound that was recorded in the field in China and Toronto with music, voices, narration and sound effects from a library.

“Sound design is about creating everything that you hear when you go to see, or go to hear, a film,” says Andreas.

For a sound designer, a documentary like The Invisible Red Thread poses different challenges than a fiction film.  “Documentary in general needs a lot of cleaning,” he says. “The conditions out in the field aren’t always ideal for recording sound, like they could be in a studio.”

This means combing through the recordings to find the  “pops, hisses, and clicks,” small blemishes in the sound created by the recording equipment, or the rustling of clothing or wind on the microphones. It takes time and patience, but clean sound is essential for allowing the audience to feel a part of the world on screen.

“It’s a lot of detailed work, but audiences are very sensitive,” he says. Distracting sound, even if it’s subtle, can pull the audience away from the story.  “Sound is a huge part of film making, and I think it’s sometimes undervalued,” he says.

“It has a lot to do with how we evolved as human beings- we think very visually, but sound engages us differently.  Emotionally, sound has a different impact.  In a film, visuals tell us about the world outside of us, and tell us what to think.  But sound goes more directly to our inner world. It tells us how to feel.”

Do you have some footage you could share with us?

As we move into rough cut #2, we’re realizing that we need more ‘archival’ footage to help tell the bigger background story of this film: one girl’s journey back to China where she was born. Perhaps you or someone you know recorded some video footage of their adoption adventure to China? If so, we’d love to know about it!

We are seeking video on any format (VHS, HI 8, Video 8, etc.) filmed between 1991 and 2000 in any region of China. Ideally, we’d see a couple and/or the larger group on their trip to the orphanage where they adopted their child, perhaps first receiving the baby, holding and feeding their new child/ children, etc. If you have footage of the orphanage in general (exterior or interior) or general footage of the city and its sites, that would be very helpful, too.  And the last thing we are seeking is billboards or posters in China that promote the idea of Family Planning and the One Child Policy.

 This footage would be used to illustrate two sections of the documentary, each about 1 minute long, where we give some background on China’s “Family Planning Policy” (One Child Policy), the  rise in local informal adoptions and the opening of the country to international adoption.

If you have or know of any video footage or photos like these, please let us know! You can drop us an email at maureen@picturethis.ca or call 514-484-1145 and we’ll let you know how to get it to us. In thanks, we’ll list you in our film’s credits, copy your old video footage to DVD so you can watch it more easily and send you a signed final copy of the documentary “The Invisible Red Thread” when it’s done. 

Please spread the word and thanks very much for helping us complete this film!