Feeling love is simple but communicating it is incredibly complex. There is no single form of love, which makes conveying the vantage of the “giver” and “receiver” even more complicated. Filmmaker Hang “Olivia” Zhou’s Apart, Together seeks to display the emotions of a scenario rooted in China’s single child policy. In order to manifest the emotions of the main characters, Olivia obtained Lucia Zavarcikova as the film’s cinematographer.
This duo skillfully crafted a film which garnered a plethora of awards at such events as the 44th Asian American International Film Festival (Excellence in Narrative Short Filmmaking), The Windrider Short Film Showcase (Part of The Sundance Institute), Best Foreign-Language Short at Indie Short Fest, and others. The visual language of Apart, Together is paramount in depicting the layered mother-daughter dynamic of this film; Lucia’s contributions are inseparable from the emotional tone and impact of the film.
With this film, the multifaceted repercussions of a wide sweeping social policy are given a face; specifically, China’s policy of only one child led a woman named Jia to give up her first born daughter named Mei. When Jia gives birth to another female child, whom she names Yuri, she cannot bear to repeat this sacrifice. The years torture Jia over the loss of Mei but when she discovers her first born is living in the US with her adoptive parents, mother and Yuri travel there in hopes of a reunion. It’s a meeting that irritates Yuri in a different manner.
As the story evolves, we witness the remorse of a mother and the fear of a daughter who feels she is not enough to fullfil that mother’s heart. The story’s emotional core was inspired by Hang “Olivia” Zhou’s own personal experience of having a sister who died at an early age which brought about the myriad of complex feelings in such a loss.
Olivia reveals, “This is not only a film about Yiru, but about any of us who once might have felt lost and invisible, ashamed of ourselves and have felt hatred towards others when all we hoped was to be discovered.” She adds, “Selfishness is part of the complexity of humanity, sometimes we end up hurting the ones we love by holding on to them out of fear of losing them.”
Establishing a conduit of emotional intimacy and vulnerability is a layered combination of directing, acting, and cinematography. Scenes such as the one in which Jia (played by Shavvon Lin) practices the speech in English that she will give to Mei or when Yuri tearfully runs out of the church; these have the potential for sincerity or to be mundane largely dependent on the visual approach. Zavarcikova’s preference for spherical lenses rather than anamorphic lenses imbues this film with a softer/gentler look.
This seemingly minor facet gives the huge effect of making the audience see the world that is presented through the feelings of a young girl such as Yuri. The lighting design was integral as well. Lucia describes, “I wanted the lighting to support this soft look and play in unison with the lenses while being expressive at more emotionally intense moments of the story. For example, at the motel during the first night, when Yiru is secretly looking up Mei on Instagram while her mother is sleeping right next to her, there is this slight ‘shimmer’ on the wall within the lighting pattern that’s created by the classic vertical LA blinds.
This signifies Yiru’s anxiety and comes back when she hears her mom crying in the bathroom and is deciding whether to tell her that she found Mei, torn between her own fear of being replaced as a daughter and feeling heartbroken hearing her mother cry. The color design in our film is very saturated and expressive. We wanted LA to feel very colorful to be in stark contrast with their home to signify the main characters feeling out of place.
Olivia explained that she felt that way when first coming to LA and the colors present everywhere in LA made her feel more isolated.” Color designs are also covert emotional cues to the audience with pink motel walls, orange lights, and Jia’s red umbrella. These warm tones are a stark opposition to the bathroom bathed in blue where Jia stands, speaking to Yiru who is surrounded by warm pastels; a visible delineation of the emotional space between mother and daughter.
Witnessing the film in its final form reminded Lucia Zavarcikova that her decision to pursue cinematography was well founded. She confesses, “I chose cinematography to tell stories that make people feel something, so they can relate. Shortly after releasing this film to the circuit, we were nominated for the GSA BAFTA awards. Slowly over weeks, we were watching our film be amongst the semifinalists, and ultimately finalists.
As we all tuned into the ceremony that happened online, we watched our film take home the prize for best Live Action Short. We felt the same joy when we were selected to be a part or VIFF 2021, Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival, LA Shorts International Film Festival, The Urbanworld Film Festival, and many others. It’s so incredibly difficult to create a film, every stage of the process. For me, it means that all the effort, planning, blood, sweat and tears were worth it.”
Writer: Coleman Haan