The Home Song Stories (2007) M

Director: Tony Ayres
Stars: Joan Chen, Yuwu Qi, Joel Lok, Irene Chen
Duration: 103 minutes

The screening will be attended by former Deniliquin local and co-producer of The Home Song Stories, Michael McMahon. Please join us for a Q&A after the film.

A man remembers his childhood and his mother, a Chinese night club singer who struggled to survive in Australia with her two children.

The Home Song Stories is a largely true story, (based on the childhood of writer/director Ayres), which makes it even more shattering as a portrait of a family. Ayres describes it as an autobiographical tearjerker, or ‘weepie’, but that is perhaps his way of controlling the story’s power. The script, he has said, took him three years to write. He imagined he was trying to write a film about his mother; eventually he realised it was a story about a boy’s loss of innocence.

Beneath the family drama, it is also a story about migrants, and the speed with which children adapt. ‘Home’ has at least two meanings here – there is the home in China, the mother country, and there is the lack of stable sense of home in Australia.

Screening for members with doors opening at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Join via our Membership page beforehand to beat the queue or you can join on the night and pay online or with cash (give yourself time to do this before the film starts at 7pm).