Robert Kennedy – Review of Between: Living in the Hyphen

Key words for this film: Ethnicity; Culture; Individuality; Canadian Identity; Struggle

Film link: https://www.nfb.ca/film/between_living_in_the_hyphen/

Title: Between: Living in the Hyphen

Length: 43:46

Director: Anne Marie Nakagawa

Year released: 2005

         Between: Living in the Hyphen is a National Film Board of Canada documentary film released in 2005, directed by Anne Marie Nakagawa. Its a medium length film at about 44 minutes long, and mostly consists of interviews with several different Canadians. This sounds potentially dry and formulaic, but it is in fact quite an engaging film. The people who are interviewed all come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and this film gives them space to tell us their personal stories of living in Canada. The interviews are intermixed with shots of city life, and even some candid shots of seemingly randomly found people speaking to the camera. These additional scenes help to create the sensation that the interviews we are witnessing through the film are part of a larger whole which make up life in Canada. Everybody in the film has a different story to tell from their experiences of living in Canada as people of ethnically mixed heritage. It is not always for the same reason, but a common theme emerges from their experiences; that they cannot necessarily be accepted for who they are by either mainstream society or their enclave cultural group. This becomes frequently frustrating for them as while they are often misunderstood by Canadian society in general, they themselves seem to feel quite at ease with their own cultural identities.

         One man reads what is likely his own poetry on the topic (the authorship is not explained but it must be his), and he goes in between expressing his frustration with identity politics and his mocking attempt to turn the tables on monocultural Canadians. This man is Fred Wah; he has been labeled with various identities throughout his life due to his Chinese and European heritage. Does he have a Chinese identity or a White identity? He seems pretty comfortable with both, but other Canadians have not been; either labeling him Chinese or not depending on their perspective. Either way, the focus is always on which category he belongs to; people are not comfortable with just letting him be himself without such labels. As with many of the other people in the film, he was confused when people told him these things when he was a child. As he got older, he learned more about it and reflected on it and learned more about himself. However, it didn’t come easily; he needed to figure it out for himself.

         As a person of mixed First Nations and European descent myself, hearing this topic discussed by these people really strikes home for me. All my life people have been asking me questions about my heritage. It’s not like I expect people to immediately understand me, but I don’t really care for the rude questions I have been asked like: “So what are you anyway?”. The people in the film all seem to have been similarly questioned; it is helpful to me just to see that other people are experiencing this as well.

         This film is beginning to show its’ age somewhat in style, but the topic is deftly and sensitively handled and it is really as relevant today as it ever was, maybe even more so. People are often focused on needing to know things about others; and when we don’t know things we tend to make many assumptions. So ambiguous ethnicities are perplexing to many; it stops them from easily classifying them into categories. The more aggressive side of this is another situation reported by the people in the film; when they have stated their ethnicity, they have actually been told that it’s not true! This is really a crazy thing to tell someone you don’t even know, and yet I know from firsthand experience that it’s true. This film shows the emotions and feelings experienced by people of mixed ethnicities, and it shows the problems we experience. I believe it is so important that other Canadians get a chance to hear about these experiences; this film does a great job with that; everyone should watch it.