O ma + Madam

Two films, two letters, two stories that dare to come out. O ma revolves around a secret: Mengzhu Xue has been in love with a woman for seven years. She recounts this in a letter written in English to her grandmother – the text is transcribed into Chinese characters so that her grandmother can read it aloud without understanding the content. When spoken, the characters are phonetically transformed back into English. Language is both a barrier and a liberation: the unspeakable finds expression without needing to be understood. Madame is also a cinematic letter to the grandmother who died 15 years ago. Whilst she asserted herself as an independent businesswoman against the gender expectations of her time, her grandson struggled within his upper-class Geneva family against heteronormative expectations and for the acceptance of his homosexuality. Drawing on a wealth of archive material – Super 8 films, diaries, answering machine messages – the film creates a dual portrait exploring gender roles and self-determination. (df)