Writing your own story by telling someone else’s

On February 10th, The Gallery went to the movies to watch something special. The film was the documentary The Observer, directed by Rita Andreetti, a filmmaker and film critic who is also a valued member of The Gallery community. Like many of us, she is an expat partner, and I am proud to call her my friend.

Leaving the theatre, I felt inspired. In that room I met 3 personal stories that were somehow connected and, in a strange way, connected to me as well through the screen and the conversation that followed.

The film tells the story of Hu Jie, a Chinese documentary filmmaker and artist who has spent decades documenting the unspoken and often darker chapters of Chinese history.

His method is simple but powerful. He interviews elderly people whose stories might otherwise disappear if no one records them and amplifies their voices.

His work is considered politically sensitive and therefore cannot easily be screened.

At times he is even unable to film at all, and when that happens he returns to art to convey the messages of the past. His belief is simple: we must understand the past if we hope to change the future.

Through Rita’s eyes, we meet Hu Jie.

When she first encounters him in Nanjing, he is already a respected documentary filmmaker. She, meanwhile, is a filmmaker by profession who is searching for a story. The moment she meets him, she immediately feels that someone should tell his story to the world.

Important to note that, at that point in her life, Rita is actually feeling a little lost.

She has arrived in China as an expat spouse. She knows she is a filmmaker, yet she has not quite found her place. And perhaps that is exactly why she is able to make this film.

She is present. She is a foreigner he can trust. And in her he seems to recognise something of himself. In this way, they give each other a voice.

As the film unfolds, we also meet Hu Jie’s wife, Jiang Fenfen. It quickly becomes clear that she is a remarkable woman and that without Jiang Fenfen there would likely be no Hu Jie, the documentarian. She is the partner who keeps the machine running. Watching the film, and listening to Rita speak afterwards, it becomes evident that Rita sees Jiang Fenfen clearly. Perhaps because, in many ways, expat partners understand what it means to hold things together quietly in the background.

Jiang Fenfen is a change maker by supporting an often difficult journey and bearing the family sacrifices it requires.

In the end, the film reveals three different ways of creating change. For Hu Jie and Rita, it is through telling other people’s stories. That choice matters greatly, because whose voices are amplified shapes how the world understands itself. For Jiang Fenfen, the change happens through enabling the work to exist at all.

As Rita opened the event she quoted Hu Jie saying that the task of planting seeds is something we must never pause:

• Seeds of understanding

• Seeds of kindness

• Seeds of respect

  
  

Rita carried those words with her. And now I carry them too.

To me, the true message is that we all have the ability to plant seeds of positive change.

And this can happen anywhere and anytime.

As expat partners, the lack of a linear path can sometimes feel unsettling. The absence of a clear long-term plan can seem professionally frustrating, even unambitious.

But this story shows that these moments can also place us exactly where something unexpected becomes possible. Because you happen to be in that particular place, at that particular time, perhaps feeling a little lost, you suddenly find an opportunity where a seed of change can grow. Like water finding its way.

And perhaps that is why the task of planting seeds should never pause.