20/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: Visual artist Fiona Tan attempts a deeply personal reconstruction of history and cultural identity through contrasting words and images

Of Chinese-Indonesian and Australian-Scottish descent, growing up in Australia and making her home in the Netherlands, visual artist Fiona Tan has made a vital mark on both the arts and the cinema scene for the last two decades, often exploring and reconstructing history, memory and cultural identity, sometimes drawing on her own multinational/multiethnic experience. All of these themes are given extensive scope in her third feature, Dearest Fiona [+see also:
trailer
interview: Fiona Tan
film profile], a worthy and befitting participant in the ever-adventurous Forum section of the 73^rd Berlin International Film Festival.

“4 September 1989. Liefste Fiona. I’m writing this letter in a little desert national park 100 kilometres north of Hamilton. Plenty of birdlife, wild flowers in bloom, and the weather’s good.” So begins one of the fortnightly letters written by “Paps” back home in Australia while his daughter studies Art in Amsterdam in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And it continues: “What’s happening now in Russia could well be more important than the October Revolution. It would be interesting to hear the comments of the intellectual left.”

According to her director’s notes, Tan recently found the letters by chance and was struck by the seamless flow between everyday life events and historical occurrences, and how soundly her father reflected on them off the cuff and in the moment. The topics move back and forth between the fall of the Berlin Wall, Uncle Johan’s successful heart surgery back in Jakarta, the Tiananmen Square massacre and the ailing health of Heidi, the family dog, as well as the presidential inauguration of Mandela and the shenanigans of infant grandson Nikolas. Recited thoughtfully and warmly by Scottish actor Ian Henderson, these letters form the film’s voice-over narration, which is gentle, contemplative, poignant, sometimes humorous, and emanates a father-daughter relationship of deep affection.

The seemingly contrasting visuals consist of archival footage from the turn of the last century, courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, which has also commissioned this work. Images from the Dutch countryside show people at work in the fields or dressed in their Sunday best, displaying plenty of folkloristic elements – windmills, tulips, clogs, the traditional dress with the lace cap. Gradually, the scenery moves into the cities, with the 20th-century urbanisation process in full swing. This unique footage, some of it beautifully tinted by hand, merges with the letters, displaying a historical background to Fiona’s new place of residence, incidentally connecting with her birth roots when a few Indonesian faces flash by.

Through “Paps”, we hear about her staying with relatives, moving into a place of her own, celebrating New Year in London, driving to Florence, preparing for her first exhibition, attempting to write in Dutch… Again, as per the director’s notes, the aim has been to enable “a journey both personal and universal [...] while hovering somewhere between dream and reality”. Or why not between cinematic feature and gallery installation. For Dearest Fiona can easily be appreciated as both.

Dearest Fiona was produced by Dutch outfit Antithesis Films.