UPBEAT MUSIC Captions by Pippa Jefferies. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC CHILDREN LAUGH, CHATTER Hagley Park is one of the places in Christchurch CBD where you can forget about the earthquakes and enjoy the beauty of the space. I came to NZ when I was 11, and I call myself Korean-born Kiwi. My parents wanted us to escape the competitive education system and be more well-rounded people. I live in CBD, which is really diverse. We have government housing, to million-dollar homes. This means that we get real diverse blend of people who have come to Christchurch to help with the rebuild. Let me introduce you to some new NZers who call the heart of Christchurch their new home. We'll meet a young man whose films bear the distinct stamp of his Slovenian culture. When I think of my films in relation to Slovenian cinema, I can see a link between the tragic themes that seem to envelop Slovenian cinema in my own films. It's part of a heritage that I try to respect, and I acknowledge that I am a part of it, even if I am in NZ. A man born in Zimbabwe shows his vision for Christchurch migrant communities. This is very exciting. This is gonna be the new location for our international market. We're gonna be having a lot of international stalls from different countries. They're selling food, products, art, craft, and we're even gonna have performances as well when the stage gets built, so... A woman from what was then East Germany traces the influence her grandmother has had on her life. This machine reminds me, OK, everything took so much more effort in the past and my grandmother had to do it all herself, so I can't even comprehend what work-intense life she led. And a Christchurch couple dish up some traditional Yemeni Jewish food. I didn't realise that I was gonna be in a country like NZ where I would need to know how to make it. In Israel you can always go out and find someone who's made some, but here I think I'm probably one of the few people who know how to make it. I'm Yoomia, and this is my neighbourhood. UPBEAT MUSIC LILTING MUSIC I arrived in NZ from South Korea when I was 11, and it was a struggle because I could not speak any English, also I had to deal with the cultural change and the insular, conservative side of Christchurch back then. And my mother thought it was a great idea to enrol us into the other side of town. There was no Koreans at the school, and I felt miserable until I discovered music. (PLAYS HAUNTING MELODY) I realised when I had the violin under my chin that I was not a dumb kid who could not speak the language any more, that the music is an international language and that power of music is so important. And film can also have universal appeal, and a Slovenian local is about to share his unique vision with the world. INQUISITIVE MUSIC I cycle to work ` use my old trusty three-speed. It's wonderful biking through an ever-developing city, though it's really something else. Christchurch really is, at the moment, a unique city to be living in and to be cycling through and to just look at. I find my gaze just straying all the time ` new things that are popping up every day. My name is Martin Sagadin. I was born in Kranj in Slovenia. I've managed to organise my life around film. I get up in the morning and I do some work towards my film, then I, you know` I have lunch and I manage to maybe watch a film before going to work, and my work is Alice in Videoland, which again is where I'm... (LAUGHS) surrounded by film and film culture. DVD stores are disappearing around the world. Blu-ray sales are dropping before the medium has properly taken hold. It's a strange limbo that Alice in Videoland manages to live in, and I'm just really glad I've been able to catch that and kind of experience it in my own lifetime. You know, it's great. I grew up in a little cottage by a farm in Zgornja Bela, which is on the outer limits of Kranj, which is the fourth-biggest city in, um, Slovenia. Me and my sister grew up and had an idyllic childhood. I suppose my parents sheltered me from all the bad things in Slovenia, so I've got this romanticised version of what it's like. (CHUCKLES) These photos perfectly show that version of events. Yeah, my parents encouraged me from a young age to be creative ` started, you know, painting, doing all sorts of stuff when I was very little. I suppose I haven't stopped since. Yeah, well, I wanted to be truck driver for a long time... (LAUGHS) when I was a kid. Then I was gonna be an astronomer, and I was gonna study dinosaurs, and film emerged as just another one of those, but it managed to prevail up to now and hopefully into the future. POIGNANT PIANO MUSIC When I went back to Slovenia, the initial plan wasn't to make to a documentary film of my experience, but I ended up taking a camera with me just in case. The film is to do with the moment... of passing. Like,... not necessarily death, but when life is there for a brief moment and then goes again, which something that I recognised in my grandfather's eyes in his daily life. I prepared myself for the worst when I came to my grandparents' situation, and it ended up being much much worse than that. And I just wanted to kind of capture that and to make it into a film because I find it very hard to properly communicate, uh, that exact feeling any other way. I've just started editing now. I'm finding it a bit difficult because of just the personal nature of a lot of it. It's really close to my heart, I suppose. It's... tough footage to sit through. Um, it deals with my own family in, I suppose, a dark time for my` for my family. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC When I think of my films in relation to Slovenian cinema, I can see a link between the tragic themes... that seem to envelop Slovenian cinema in my own films. It's part of a heritage that I try to respect, and I acknowledge that I am a part of it, even if I am in NZ. I can't get out of my own skin, I suppose is the best way to put it. What I'm doing here is I'm shooting some footage for my, uh, documentary film, um, just some fill-in shots. It's probably gonna be for the intro. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC I realise more and more that film-making is a lifestyle as much as it is about making films themselves. It's to do with the way you live your life. It's to do with the way you behave. It's to do with the way you observe. MUSIC CONTINUES In the future, I just imagine myself I suppose, just making more films, watching more films, loving films. That's all, really. I... No other big plans for me, apart from that. INQUISITIVE MUSIC This is my family ` my mother, In-sook, and my sister Yoo-Jin. And to be honest with you, I can't cook and they cook for me, and I would make a terrible wife. Is there anything I can do, Mum? Is there anything I can do, Mum? Yes. Set the table, please. OK. OK. BOTH LAUGH JAUNTY MUSIC Koreans in general are hard-working people, which has given me a great work ethic. We are called Italians of the Orient because we are expressive with our emotions and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. And we try to excel in everything we do. Whether it be at sports, academia or music, we try our best and hardest. MUSIC CONTINUES I'm really proud of 5000 years of Korean heritage that's stretched behind me. Gabi Carmichael was born in Israel, but his family comes from an ancient Jewish background who's lived in Yemen for thousands of years. REFLECTIVE MUSIC The first Jews that came from Yemen, they kept their culture and everything. And I am a third generation, so we all mix and people get married, like Yemenite married Ashkenazi, and Ashkenazi married people from Morocco and Syria. Yeah, but your father's Yemenite and he married his Yemenite wife, whereas you're` I'm still good-looking. It doesn't matter. You can still have Yemenite` That wasn't my point there. That wasn't my point there. BOTH LAUGH My name is Gabi, and I was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and, yeah... And I'm Laura, and I was born in Oxford, NZ. My father was born in Tel Aviv. My grandfather was born in Yemen. Both sides of` Both of your` Both sides of` Both of your` Yeah, both of my parents, yeah, they were both from Yemen. It's at the bottom of the Saudi Arabia` ...Saudi peninsula, so it's quite a distance from Israel. I met Gabi in Tel Aviv probably about 25 years ago? Yeah. I chose to convert because I wanted to stay in Israel, and I was there for about 14 years. So after about eight years, and I'd had quite a few years of living there without a visa, I decided I needed to get citizenship, so converting to` The easiest way to do it in Israel is because we have a law that if you are Jewish, you automatically` if you want to live in Israel, you become an Israeli. There is no` You don't need anything else; only be Jewish. You're Jewish; you can have an Israeli passport. They have a right of` a right of return, so it's to safeguard all Jews. They have a safe homeland to go to. My partner is a Yemenite Jew and my daughter is half Yemenite, so I decided it was my mission to learn some Yemenite recipes to carry on that tradition. My daughter likes eating it. She doesn't know how to make it, but I guess one day I can show her, pass that on to her. I'm making today jachnun, which is a typical Yemenite dish for the Sabbath. It's kind of a peasant dish made from quite simple ingredients ` flour, water, a bit of honey, salt, sugar, a little oil. Traditionally made on a Friday and put in the village baker's oven. Jews do not cook on the Sabbath. They would cook it in the residual heat of the oven, so it's a 10, 12-hour cook, and they'd go and collect it in the morning and have it for their breakfast. And I always really loved eating jachnun, so it's kind of a bit of a double-edged sword, really, knowing I could make it and pass on her tradition to her and also being able to make it for myself. I didn't realise that I was gonna be in a country like NZ where I would need to know how to make it. In Israel you can always go out and find someone who's made some, but here I think I'm probably one of the few people who know how to make it. UPBEAT MUSIC It took a lot of trial and error to find the right recipe to really learn how to make this well. So I think the secret is actually having the mass of it all cooking together. So whatever size saucepan you have, you need to fill it up. I think it's special because it's` well, it's very tasty. It is actually really` You know, you wouldn't believe just from flour and water you're going to end up with something that is so good and moreish. Today we're going to share it with members from the Jewish community. Christchurch has quite a small Jewish community. We do have a synagogue, just recently rebuilt after the earthquakes, and we're going to take some there and see who turns up. UPBEAT MUSIC PEOPLE CHATTER OK, be'tei'avon! Jachnun. PEOPLE CHATTER Gabi's father came to visit us here, and he didn't really like the food in NZ. And he, of course, keeps kosher, so it was quite difficult for him to feel comfortable eating anything, because keeping kosher is not just about the food; it's also about the plates. One Saturday morning, I said, 'I've made breakfast. Come to the table and have breakfast,' and he got a big surprise, didn't he, because he didn't know I'd made jachnun, and he was so excited by it and he was so happy and he ate it, and then he said, 'Don't ever tell Gabi's mother, but it was better than she makes.' And I never ever would tell Gabi's mother that I made jachnun better than her. MOURNFUL STRINGS MUSIC I was in Christchurch for the February big earthquake. I was safe, but my violin was stuck in a big building which is where I stand right now and which is now a car park, and I could not get to it for four days. MUSIC CONTINUES I convinced a Singaporean soldier to enter an abandoned building to rescue my violin with me. He tried to kick the door open for 10 minutes, but it was not successful. So I begged him for the last time to please try to open, open the door for me. It was just right here, and the violin meant so much to me because it travelled around the world with me. I begged him, 'Please. Please try for the last time,' and he broke the door open, and I was reunited with the violin. I've never been so grateful in my entire life. Sometimes the greatest things in life cannot be replaced with money. Katrin Richter carried her sewing machine halfway across the world in remembrance of her grandmother. REFLECTIVE MUSIC My grandmother was a wonderful woman. She was lovely. She was just so modest and strong. I think she never reflected on it, even, but she raised four children on her own. Her husband got lost in the war and she ran a farm on her own with four children, and I admired her for that. MUSIC CONTINUES My name is Katrin. I was born in Germany, uh, in East Germany, the communist part of Germany. PERCUSSIVE MUSIC Our childhood in East Germany was actually quite peaceful. Everyone was quite equal. We didn't have extremely rich people. Everyone was quite down to earth. When my brother and my family visited my grandmother, she would always` very early in the morning, she would knock on the door and say, 'Look I made some biscuits for you.' Too early. Everyone was like, 'OK, how can she be up so early?' but that's what she` she couldn't wait to` to, uh, surprise us. So that's what she did, and then she went away and we had the biscuits. And then she` Her house was full of interesting things, like, from past. She had little sculptures, and her furniture, that was also interesting for us. And we would go for walks. We actually had some tramps together because she lived in a wonderful area. GENTLE MUSIC When I was a child, I always loved my grandmother's sewing machine. I just admired the mechanics on it. It was such a beautiful object to me ` interesting, how does it work? And I admired this, uh, so much, and my grandmother knew that, and since I started my own household, my grandmother actually passed her sewing machine on to me, and I was really happy about it. LILTING MUSIC So, I love the noise that it actually makes. It's just so mechanical, and you can imagine you get` you can just get transported in the past and how it all was and that was noises from the past. I just loved watching her using it, and I loved the sound of it, and I loved the fact that you don't need any power, so you can use it any time. This machine reminds me, OK, everything took so much more effort in the past and my grandmother had to do it all herself. It was not just sewing things. It was also her farm and the kitchen, the household, the cleaning, so I can't even comprehend what work-intense life she led. GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC I came to NZ after I spent a long holiday in NZ. At the same time I was very very busy in Germany working, and I was a bit` I felt a little bit trapped in a hamster wheel, just working, working, working, and I just had the feeling I need a big change; I need something different in my life. And this holiday in NZ inspired me to come to NZ because I so loved the place. I grew up amongst strong women, and my grandmother was, of course, one of them. My mother was quite strong too. So every woman had their own careers. It was not a question, so we truly lived equality. That's how I grew up in East Germany. I would say my upbringing sparked my interest in women's rights. My grandmother would be astounded to see me here in the Christchurch Women's Centre working with women. She would not find that possible, because in her time, such things that women can get support to that extent would simply not be thinkable. So she was so self-sufficient and so used to not to complain and not to ask for help and not to want anything for her, but I` I think she would be proud of me. GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC MUSIC SWELLS New Regent St is one of the last remaining blocks that's left of the city. My family own this building over there. Other owners have got together to preserve and restore what's left of the city. MUSIC CONTINUES I have been back to Korea only once since my arrival, and I felt like a stranger there because even though I do look and speak Korean, I thought of myself more like a Kiwi. The contrast between the cultures can be daunting for the new arrivals who settle here. A local man from Zimbabwe is determined to help them. REFLECTIVE MUSIC When I'm in the CBD, I mean, I can't help but notice that there is a lot of work to do. Always in the back of my mind I think of the things that we can do, what is possible here. I enjoy the murals that are around. Some of the art projects I think are fantastic. I really love the people of Christchurch, and I think that we need to keep that hope alive for the city. That community spirit needs to remain, and, yeah, I can't say anything bad about this place. I think it's got a lot of opportunity. It can only get better, that's what I can say for Christchurch, yeah. My name is Tazvitya Mukorombindo, commonly known as Taz, and I was born in Zimbabwe. When I graduated, I worked for a year in Zimbabwe, but I just couldn't see a way forward for myself there or making a life there. But I do remember that the reality of moving far from home soon hit me quite hard. Initially, being in Christchurch, I thought I must be the only African. I saw no Africans. It just hit me all of a sudden. I just had this thought, 'There's no Africans here. I'm the only African here.' So I was, like, kind of panicking, thinking, 'Oh my God, yeah, it must look so obvious.' And I remember calling home and thinking maybe I should return because I didn't know if this was such a good idea. I remember Mum saying, 'Well, what are you going to come back to? You just have to stay and make it work.' My childhood ` it's full of different memories. This was a time when I felt a little bit disconnected. I had my cousins and my auntie, but I didn't have my parents there, so I remember that time. And I remember growing up in a family when my father and my mum came and took me in, into Harare ` change of city, became a city person. It was a good life. It gave me enough of a start to come out here. I got involved with the Zimbabwean Association, and I met a lot of different immigrants, and I started to get into the papers and things. I met different people. But it started to dawn on me that there was a problem with immigrant employment in general. Initially, I thought that it was something that might have affected me cos maybe I'm African maybe I'm different, look different. But I realised now that actually people from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds who are affected by this, so it was a personal decision to try and do something to help people. The Canterbury Business Association ` that's a registered charity which I started in 2007 with a goal to help other immigrants find work, which was a personal desire of mine to do something to help people. What we've got going on at the moment is really a transitional market. That was the pitch we put to the city, that, 'Let's get the market started as an outdoor thing and get it to work.' So I'm pleased to say that we've just managed to finalise an agreement with the RSA Papanui to run the market in Papanui on a Saturday, and we're exploring the city, a central city site in Peterborough St, for the Friday market. CHIMING MUSIC This is very exciting. This is gonna be the new location for our international market. It's at the RSA in Papanui, surrounded by a lot of shops around here, but we're gonna be having a lot of international stalls from different countries. They're selling food, products, art, craft, and we're even gonna have performances as well when the stage gets built, so... Hello. Good morning. How are you? What are you guys selling today? Hello. Good morning. How are you? What are you guys selling today? Oh, we got a lot of things. What are you selling? What's in here? What are you selling? What's in here? This is vegetarian sauce. This is chicken with rice. Rice and some chicken. Yeah. Yeah. This is samosa. What's in the samosa? What's in the samosa? Samosa is minced meat and spices. Yeah, it's very cheap, and that is mandasi. It's like doughnut but not too much sweet. Right. I must thank the Christchurch community, because they have been so behind this concept, but I do believe we can actually make it a market for Christchurch. I think it's gonna be something that adds this flavour, this taste, this destination, a place to go for local people and that it supports microenterprise; it supports other people. My greatest satisfaction is just to see how far we've come in our city, accepting immigrants and ethnic people. I mean, I'm even more comfortable living here, so I think the attitude shift is` what I'm trying to say is it's not purely our effort or not solely our effort, but I think it's something we've seen as part of the journey which is very good to see. LILTING MUSIC It's taken a long time, but Christchurch CBD is slowly coming back to life. It will never be the same again, but I hope one day it will be exciting, with new energy and new character with everything that's happened here. MUSIC SWELLS I hope that Christchurch will be an increasingly diverse and accepting place that welcomes newcomers, just like I once was, in the years to come. Captions by Pippa Jefferies. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015