Holmquist, Pea and Suzanne Khardalian, &Jouko Aaltonen
2000 From Opium to Chrysanthemums (Fr…n opium till krysantemum). Brooklyn, New York: Icarus Films.
Notes: VHS color 75 minsReviewed 10 Jan 2005 by:
Raymond A. Bucko <bucko@creighton.edu>
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USAMedium: Film/Video Subject
Keywords:Hmong (Asian people) - Thailand - Social life and customs
Hmong (Asian people) - Laos - Social life and customs
Opium poppy growers - Thailand
Floriculture - Thailand
Divorce - Thailand
Women, Hmong - Thailand - Social conditions
Shamanism - Thailand
Hmong Americans - California - Sacramento
Hmong American families - California - Sacramento
Hmong Americans - Minnesota - Minneapolis
Hmong American women - Minnesota - Minneapolis
Hmong Americans - Cultural assimilation
Hmong Americans - Ethnic identity
ABSTRACT: This ethnographic film follows the career of Swedish journalist Pea Holmquist, a filmmaker stationed in Thailand and Laos during the Vietnam War. Holmquist befriended the Hmong, and in particular, a villager named Lao-Tong. Thirty years later, he returned to renew his friendships and make this documentary.
This splendid, complex ethnographic film centers on career of Swedish journalist Pea Holmquist, a filmmaker stationed first in northern Thailand and later in Laos, during the Vietnam War. During that time, Holmquist developed a deep appreciation for the Hmong, an ethnic group whose homeland straddles mountainous regions of several nation states. In particular, he became friends with a Hmong villager named Lao-Tong. Thirty years later, in 1999, the filmmaker returned to Thailand and Laos to renew his friendships and make this documentary.Lao-Tong remains the head of his village, but over the years, the Hmong population in Southeast Asia has been reduced by death and out-migration. HolmquistÆs film follows some of these people to the United States, specifically San Jose and Minneapolis (Hmong locations in Southeast Asia http://www.peopleteams.org/miao/location.htm).
This film opens with a young man presenting himself to a council of elder males to confess his drug addiction and ask for their help. The film threads though a vast array of complex issues in cultural survival, drug production and use, the rights of ethnic minorities, gender issues, and the challenges of modernization. At points the villages actually discuss these with the filmmaker, making this an interesting exercise in self-reflection.
Holmquist presents his material as reminiscences of the past and explorations into Hmong life today (2000). Watch the film as carefully as you listen. Often visuals go without comment. (In a very poor Hmong hut, the camera focuses on a calendar with the King of Thailand; a shamanic healing ritual is filmed, but the narrator notes only that he himself sponsored the ceremony for the Hmong who were too poor to pay for it.) The filmmaker silently leads you to interpret a lot of actions and their meanings as the film progresses.
Looking back toward the Vietnamese war, the film documents these events carefully with some political commentary and explains the role and situation of the Hmong in dealing with the conflict and especially with the Americans. Looking forward, the filmmaker tracks down Hmong refugees living in the United States, and showcases the very different lives they now lead.
The genius of the film is its entr‰e into a range of cultural, political and economic issues: drug production and use, reorienting drug producing economies, the operations of village societies, the political rights of ethnic groups in nation states, warfare and colonialism, residual landmines and unexploded ordinance plaguing these countries today, and finally the right of individuals and societies to both maintain and transform their own cultural world. No single topic is examined exhaustively, but the film manages to make its points with economy.
For example, Holmquist provides a fascinating and well-executed juxtaposition of two divorced Hmong women. A Hmong divorcee in Thailand states that without a man a Hmong woman is nothing. The divorcee in the United States also struggles. She has high status because of her ability to negotiate American culture and has important work with her own people. Nevertheless, the larger Hmong community sees her as having no status because she has no man, while simultaneously recognizing her new status in the American context. This vignette is used to demonstrate the many tensions between tradition, modernization, gender roles both within a single society in different societies, as well as larger issues of human rights.
The film is beautifully made, with gorgeous visuals of highland Thailand, Laos, California and Minnesota, and more importantly, the arresting beauty of the Hmong themselves. It is enriched with lovely audio such as queej ( http://www.hmongnet.org/hmong-au/qeej.htm) playing, chanting, storytelling, and the Hmong language itself. There are displays of fine traditional clothing during special events like the New Year ceremony with its ritual games, and village shamanic healing rituals. The subtitles are carefully paced and easily visible.
The only caveat about classroom use is the length (75 minutes), and the fact that it is impressionistic and associative rather than logical and analytical. Costly at $440.00, it can be used in not only courses on cultural anthropology but also for history, medical and religious anthropology, and political science. The film makes a superb companion to a remarkable book frequently used in the College classroom, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman, herself a journalist.
This film was produced by First Run / Icarus films (http://www.frif.com/). The site provides a synopsis of the film as well as links to related films made by this same company ( http://www.frif.com/new2001/opi.html). There is a rich variety of sites on the web dealing with the Hmong.
* Use offer code ARD07 to receive a 10% discount when buying this title from First Run/Icarus Films.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Bucko, Raymond A.
2005 Review of From Opium to Chrysanthemums (Fr…n opium till krysantemum). Anthropology Review Database. January 10. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1862, accessed February 9, 2010.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)