SD Video, 52 minutes, 1999
English and Chinese with English subtitles
A young woman travels to China to meet her mother’s family after a 50-year separation. She discovers that her intellectual relatives have faced persecution, imprisonment, and even murder during China’s convulsive political movements. Available on Kanopy and New Day Films.
ONCE REMOVED, a one-hour documentary, focuses on three of filmmaker Julie Mallozzi’s relatives: a scientist whose life was disrupted by politics, a professor whose life was ended by politics, and a government official who works her life around politics. Weaving together dreams, historical footage, and scenes from her relatives' lives, the filmmaker meditates on the complications of remembering and forgetting the past.
“What’s important: the thing that happened,
or the thing that’s remembered?"
Mallozzi first visits her great-uncle Wang Shou-Jue, a scientist who pioneered the development of computer chips in China. He shows her his research, and talks about the Cultural Revolution, when he swept floors and fed furnaces: “physical hard work that didn’t use the brain.” The filmmaker makes realizes, “I studied the Cultural Revolution in college, but somehow it never occurred to me to think about my family living through these events.”
She then investigates the 1940s murder of her grandmother’s favorite brother, Fei Gong. A political science professor who promoted democracy in China, Fei Gong was kidnapped and murdered by the Nationalists, and later declared a revolutionary martyr by the Communists. Mallozzi retraces Fei Gong’s last steps to a foggy dock in Chongqing and the site of the chemical pool where his corpse supposedly was dissolved. “Do you think there is no chemical pool?” she asks her doubtful cousin Mimi as they walk through the desolate site. “I’m beginning to think this history isn’t true.” The filmmaker’s nightmares intensify as she gets caught in a tangled web of propaganda, family, and memory.
The film ends with a visit to Aunt Fei Shi-Cheng, the first cousin of Mallozzi’s mother and an energetic government official in the family’s hometown of Suzhou. She proudly shows Suzhou’s new development, but also cries about her father’s persecution and his parting words: “In loving my country I was not mistaken. I have not done my country wrong, or the Communist party wrong. Someday my name will be cleared.” The filmmaker prepares to leave China, realizing that, “For my relatives, the cost of remembering the past is high. For me, it’s a kind of luxury. But I need to recover my family’s past because I’m afraid of living without memories.”
PRESS
“Very inspiring.... subtle, serious, thoughtful. It looks at complex, even messy, personal and historical events without trying to resolve them.”
— Ross McElwee ("Sherman’s March," "Time Indefinite")
“A good balance of the informational and the personal... she culls eloquent images from the video footage and uses them well, with a nice, spare score by Shih-Hui Chen.”
— Betsy Sherman, Boston Globe
“Mallozzi deftly and subtly takes the personal and makes it political. She raises questions that apply to us all... Once Removed is an excellent addition for high shcool, academic, and public libraries.”
— Helen McCullough, MC Journal: the Journal of Academic Media Librarianship
“Ingratiatingly unpretentious.”
— Gerald Peary, “Review: Once Removed,” Boston Phoenix, November 29, 1999
“An amazing personal tale with a thoroughly engaging mix of historical materials and gorgeous footage of Mallozzi’s journey... this should be seen and enjoyed."
— Bruce Jenkins, Curator, Harvard Film Archive
“Filmmaker’s Debut Makes the Cut,” Boston Herald, December 3, 1999 (requires purchase)
“American Girl: Review of Julie Mallozzi’s ‘Once Removed’,” newenglandfilm.com, December 1999
SCREENINGS AND AWARDS
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
New England Film and Video Festival - BFVF Award
Film Fest New Haven
Roxbury Film Festival, Boston
Asian-American Film Festival, Boston
Artists' Television Access, San Francisco
Columbus International Film Festival - Honorable Mention
National Council on Family Relations Media Competition - First Place
Viewpoint series, WGBH-TV
Asian Studies Association Conference, San Diego
CREDITS
Director/Camera/Editor: Julie Mallozzi
Co-Writer: Rebecca Sherman
Composer: Shih-Hui Chen
FUNDERS
Center for Independent Documentary
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
LEF Foundation
Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation
Massachusetts Media Fellowship
Film Study Center at Harvard University
Private Donors
SEE THE FILM
ONCE REMOVED is available for educational use on Kanopy and New Day Films. Please email us if you are interested in streaming ONCE REMOVED for personal use.