At its core, Felicia Lowe’s new documentary, Chinese Couplets, is a story about a mother and a daughter.
Lowe’s journey to find out more about her grandfather took her to Cuba. The quest also brought her closer to her mother, Louie Gum To, whose adopted name is Kam Sau Quan . The filmmaker described her mom as growing “harsher and dictatorial” as she got older.
“While my mother appeared modern, her values were traditional Chinese,” Lowe said. ” ‘Do what I say, be obedient.’ Most of her Chinese friends parented in the same way, but it was hard on us who saw other parenting styles, idealized images of White parents on television. We were not told how much we were loved. Instead we were asked, ‘have you eaten, yet,’ and well provided for.”
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Lowe was the oldest of five children. Her sister died when she was three. Both parents worked and that meant babysitting her siblings and supporting and guiding their path through higher education.
She admits to being “rebellious” as a teen. She defied her mother by dating a Japanese American guy – not to spite her mom, “but because he drove a cool Corvette.”
After graduating from San Jose State, Lowe went away for a special program in broadcast journalism at Columbia University- again defying her mother’s wishes for her to stay at home and attend the University of California, Berkeley.
Despite what you might expect, Lowe says her mom was very supportive of her career choices. In the 70’s Lowe became one of the first Asian American television reporters in the San Francisco market. Her parents didn’t quite understand her passion for story telling, but trusted she knew what she was doing. When Lowe moved to New York to study film, she said her mom “shrugged her shoulders and hoped for the best.”
Through the years, her mother rarely talked about her family history. It was Felicia’s daughter, Alana, who broke the ice.
“What she succeeded in doing was pry information out my mother she’d kept to herself most of my life,” Lowe said. “Alana asked an innocent question about why a photograph of her as an infant was taken. And the surprising answer; that her father had left for Cuba BEFORE she was born and that she didn’t meet him until she was a teenager blew us both away! It inspired the making of Chinese Couplets.
Lowe’s first documentary, China: Land of My Father, received public and critical acclaim. Chinese Couplets is a companion piece to that story 36 years later.
“Every family has their own story, often unspoken or not discussed and I’m told Chinese Couplets has helped open doors to those conversations,” Lowe said. “Beyond that, this is a cautionary tale about immigration and identity and who is an American in the 21st century.”
Chinese Couplets will be shown as part of CAAMFest San Jose this Saturday at 6 p.m. at Camera 3 Cinema. For ticket information, go to the CAAMfest San Jose website.
