Five Ways / Five Ways
Five Ways In Which Your Birthmother Cedes You to Fate & Five Impossible Ways In Which You Meet Her Again
is a docu-fiction feature film in progress and an etude in compassion, imagination, grief, and healing.
Credits
featuring- Yan Cui, Michelle Zhang, Lillian Wong, Crystal Bach, Mao Chen, Dung-Lan Chen
director - May Wanhua Braaten
producer- Katie Yanqing Mastriano
cinematography- Joel Puma
sound recording- Roxie Maisel
editor- May Wanhua Braaten
sound mixing- Aidan Fuller + Two Rivers Production, LLC
composition- Elán Velasquez
music performed by- Elán Velasquez (saxophone), May Wanhua Braaten (harp), Johnny Mulcahy (voice)
Ten years after the end of China’s one-child policy, Five Ways/Five Ways joins the profoundly personal – and often tragic – stories of Chinese birthmothers with those of Chinese-American adoptees. Speculation is exaggerated in the stories of Chinese adoptees; most of us cannot confirm our own birthdays, let alone retrace our birth parents’ identities. This prompts two central questions: first, Why did my birth mother give me away? and second, What if we were to meet again? Drawing upon qualitative research and personal history, Five Ways/Five Ways embraces this radical uncertainty, composed of ten reenacted vignettes: the first five depict circumstances under which a Chinese birthmother gives up her child, and the latter realize five imagined reunions between adoptee and birthmother.
The first and final scenes of Five Ways/Five Ways have been completed thanks to the support of the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute and the Mellon Foundation; the remainder of the film is a work-in-progress.
