Video-audio story of grape-picking, my village Tuchan, and a man named Momo
1999, I want to make a documentary
about the grape-picking in my village, Tuchan. Actually, I want to make a film about the people who pick the grapes in my village. In 1999 the village is stuck in the peace of no Internet, no smartphones, no tarmac on the village roads, no central heating in most homes. A perfect, rural and once-upon-a-time place.
I have no idea how to film anything, and the only camera I have is a Kodak 1960s Instamatic bought in the flea market. The film is going to be called Le Temps des Vignes - In the Time of the Grapes.
The main characters are six men from different backgrounds, some from the village, others migrants, with one thing in common - they belong to Roberto’s clandestine drinking club.
Men,
drinking,
camaraderie.
I imagine filming their drinking stories at night and their grape-picking stories in the day. I hear the clack, clack, clack of the cutters and the sing-song in the vines.
I show the draft to my friend Benedicte, herself a filmmaker, who helps me bring the synopsis to life. I then send it to the Conseil des Arts du Canada which, like many art councils, accepts projects from beginners like me who have no track record of anything, except one short story published in the Malahat Review.
They refuse me.
Do I mind? Yes, I am heartbroken. I pound my Montreal hood with a heavy heart, forgetting the essential point. I have never made a documentary nor written a non-creative story. However, there is nothing more satisfying than crying over something you wish for so deeply, like blue eyes when yours are brown, or a singing voice when yours is dull in the throat, or racing feet when yours falter at the bend.
I finally come to terms with the fact that I have just received my first ever rejection from the art funders. Strangely, it takes me a long time to realise that I do not need any money to make my documentary - this is a total falsehood.
I only need time,
to learn my craft.
Time slips by,
and I begin my new life as a Montreal immigrant, and manage with no luck, just hard hustling and a mean motivation letter, to get into the art-edgy film school at Concordia University, The Mel Hoppenheim. I spend the next years working on Montreal themed projects, and do get funding for each project I submit, yet I do not forget Le Temps des Vignes. It slips from its hiding place each time I go back to Tuchan. It waits in the dresser draw, next to Louis Beziat’s wartime poems, a villager and dear friend who was captured during the First Indochina War. There are only three pages of text which tell the entire story, and then it goes back again, as I will never be in Tuchan for the time of the grapes, which is in September, for I am a single mother with a young daughter at school and work in a busy clinic.
Time.
Time - the God of documentary.
Twenty years later
Roberto’s drinking club is now a village legend, a part of the Tuchan fable. Drink leaves him gnarled and tiny like the grape roots he pulls up to toss into his wood stove. The other clandestine clubbers move on or out, which is a shame. Only Momo remains unchanged. He retains his tipsy self, and lives by renovating Tuchan houses or clearing homes for bric-a-brac, gardening, telling tall tales in the bar for a drink or two, roofing, and drying wild herbs to sell in the market, he also collects unusual hats - even tea cosies!
Our Momo
When I leave for Montreal, he rents my home for a peppercorn, as no-one should keep a home empty in a village. The dust becomes careless, then it somehow makes holes, holes house critters, and then bigger ones, such as country rats who come and nest in the non-running pipes; plants invade from the cracks, a leak becomes another leak, and of course an empty house waits for a winter squatter.
Momo keeps the house happy, busy, warm and safe.
China 2015-2020
I now live in China, life seems forever, I am so happy, and working in a film school by the sea. I am finishing a film about my mother - The Seahut - I have wonderful Chinese friends, engaging students, and share a home with a Chinese family. These are the times we want to stop life so it becomes like that photo in sepia we see in old tarnished albums. Qingdao, China, is one of my most precious lives.
Then something difficult happens; difficult things often happen when one is happiest - our test.
In May 2019 I am diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumour which is life-threatening if left untreated. I have the operation in China - not in Europe.
video-tale
Tuchan
I recover physically very quickly, and the film school gives me six months with full pay to come home to heal emotionally. It is February 2020, I am in Tuchan, in the bar, when the first images of the Covid pandemic smear the screen from Wuhan, China. At first I do not take it seriously, until later when my friend Ying tells me it is a disaster. Within a week, all airlines cut their flights to China, and by March most of the world follows. I am stuck in France.
Up in the attic which no-one goes to, as I have told Momo and family members that there are ghosts up there, I make my home within my home, the home with no TV, no Internet, only the radio and a log fire for warmth.
I bring out all my Chinese mementoes and make my desk into a working desk.
I am back home - glorious, glorious home.
I take Le Temps des Vignes from its usual place; it sings from the pages. I don’t have my good camera, it’s stuck in China, I only have a small Canon camcorder. I do not have the drinking gang, but I have another gang, and the most important thing is I have TIME! As my dear friend and mentor Stanley Lewis would say to me - “If not now, when? If not me, then who?”
It’s now!
I spend four months getting to know the new gang and head out in September with Momo and his team to film the grape harvest.
I begin editing in 2022.
I finish one year later!
I do not call the film Le Temps des Vignes because if you Google this too many variations pop up, and my documentary is about the people who pick the grapes, not the wine production. So, I choose Le Temps des Vendangeurs, which translates directly as The Time of the Pickers, but for more clarity it is simply called, in English, The Grapepickers - all one word, without the hyphen.
End of 2023
I am proud to say it, the film has gone to two festivals and done very well, with more to come …
But the biggest moment will be next Friday night at 8pm when it screens at our cinema in Tuchan. Now that is the cherry on the top, or the best grape in the wine! I have lovely messages from so many Tuchanais. ‘Can’t wait, oh, look, our Momo, he’s a star!!!’
I am taking Vivi, my granddaughter, with me. Momo tells me we might have to have two screenings and all proceeds will go to the local primary school, my daughter’s first school.
Afterwards, Momo is organising a knees-up in the bar. I am also pitching for the sequel - Le Temps du Rugby - The Time of Rugby!
So ends my story twenty years on. And the moral is - another Montreal quote, this time from Cohen: You can leave Montreal, but Montreal will never leave you! - You can leave your creation, but your creation will never leave you!
Thank you for reading and, as always, supporting my work. It means SO much to me …
And thank you Tuchan for your kindness, support and love!
Have a great few weeks ahead.
May your Christmas be wonderful and merry, no matter the circumstances. If you do not celebrate Christmas, may the end of the year and passing to the next be peaceful and love-filled.
Jeanne
WWW.SCATTERFLIX.COM for more information on film workshops
Your writing is as evocative as your film. Quel talent!