SUZHOU 蘇州插曲 INTERLUDE

sū zhōu chā qǔ

a feature film political psycho drama [est. budget, 22.5mm] release @2027? Audience: metro\worldwide + Chinese diaspora

Concept & Origin

SUZHOU INTERLUDE is based on my numerous years of experience in Communist China for the purpose of sharing its often subtly ‘traumatic’ effects upon one.

At around age 45, I got a new lease on life, artistically speaking, when I made my first trip to Communist China in 1991 to photograph a national dance festival at the invitation of 北京舞蹈學院, The Beijing Dance Academy. During a week and a half, I photographed ballet, folk, and Chinese classical dancers, was shown around the capitol city and saw part of The Great Wall of China. That 10-day experience totally enthralled me. I was “hooked”! Months later, back in USA, I was taking courses in Chinese language at University of Maryland and teaching ESL, while voraciously reading books on Chinese history. In 1993, I returned to Communist China, and began teaching English at a major university in HeBei Province.

However, after my first year there, my love and enthusiasm for ‘the peoples republic’, was severely tarnished. Despite having some remarkable experiences, including travel and photo-journalistic, I couldn’t help but notice—and be affected by—the discomfort of realizing there were “snitches” who occasionally followed me around town; by the creepiness of “tapped telephones” in the dormitory; by the disgust I felt when some Chinese man called my close female acquaintance a “whore” simply because she was walking with a foreign man while speaking English. All of this is exacerbated by a sense of claustrophobia and lack of privacy where foreigners stand out amidst the masses of Han.

Here’s a scenario that was typical during the early 1990’s: one of my former students invited me to her primary school where she had begun teaching. I was to give a brief English lesson to the children—except there was a POLICE RAID. Yes, the local police raided the school and interrogated the school’s headmaster for not advising them a 外國人(foreigner) had actually been invited there!

…..a primary school!! Why?

During those post ‘TianAnMen Square Massacre’ years, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] was totally obsessed and preoccupied about foreigners sharing information on ‘sensitive topics’ such as,

Freedom of speech

Taiwan

Democracy

Mao ZeDong

Tian An Men Square Massacre of 1989!

Foreign workers were warned in advance to avoid discussing, sharing books, even having lengthy private conversations with Chinese people in such a politically claustrophobic environment; yet, we were never told of the consequences to ourselves or to the Chinese.

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So, SUZHOU INTERLUDE makes all this scary. The protagonist, Duvalier, is a second generation far-left intellectual who touts Marxist-Lenin theory and Communist China as the epitome of egalitarian society; he is so confident in his beliefs that he moves from Quebec to NanJing in mid-1989 to prove it. His timing couldn’t have been worse.

During his first week as a newspaper editor, Duvalier is harassed by local police because he is a foreigner—and black—and because of the political turmoil in Beijing. But why don’t his credentials as ‘Québécois’ member of the Communist Party grant him carte blanche?

Something has gone wrong. Way wrong.

Stare…only stare from her large alien-like eyes.

Now it’s become a game of control. She’s the captor, Duvalier, the captive…who cannot resist the psychological, nor sexual allure.

And now forces him to become part of the madness of Mao’s 1960’s China that he so ardently cherishes!

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