The filmmakers Martyna Czaplak, Nicolas Ayerbe Barona, and Gregory Czaplak discuss their CBC Short Doc documentary A-Yi, with Joseph Planta.

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

A new film, now out from CBC Short Docs, is A-Yi. It means aunt in Mandarin, and in Taishanese, the dialect spoken by the subject of the film, Li Yinshun. She is an elderly woman in East Vancouver, who for a number of years now, goes about collecting the empties in her Hastings Sunrise neighbourhood, especially from one house where they were never in short supply, across the alley from her apartment building. The so-called Whale House was inhabited by a number of younger housemates, who liked to drink. Soon she sought to park her collecting cart underneath their balcony. And later, she began gardening in the backyard of this house, with these young people. We first heard of this story last year in a Jenny Peng piece in the Star Vancouver. As she wrote, one of the housemates, Martyna Czaplak was set to make this movie. She joins me now to talk about the film she’s directed, as do the film’s producers Nicolas Ayerbe Barona, and Gregory Czaplak, who is also the film’s cinematographer and editor. I’ll ask them about this remarkable person, A-Yi, this house, and the relationship that was forged between the housemates and their neighbour. You can see the film on CBC Gem as well as on YouTube. It’s a lovely piece that shatters a lot of the prevailing narratives in Vancouver over real estate, community, and race. It’s also just a lovely film to see in this time when a lot of us are isolating due to Covid-19. Seeing the movie might give us some thoughts about this Coronavirus era, as well as how we view one another during and after it. Visit www.cbc.ca/shortdocs for more information. The Twitter handle is @ayithefilm. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program Nicolas Ayerbe Barona; Martyna Czaplak; and Gregory Czaplak.

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