Lesley Loksi Chan has been haunted before, but never quite like this.
Over the past 20 years, the Hamilton-based artist has made short films that glimpse into the lives of others. Her subjects — some real, others fictional — loom large in her mind, and she sees her role as a kind of medium for their stories.
For her latest project, Chan was given a small archive of unreleased video footage made by the late Toronto-based artist, writer and activist Lloyd Wong, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1994. The tapes included an uncompleted segment for the cable access TV show Toronto Living with AIDS as well as a collection of Super 8 snippets documenting Wong’s everyday life as a man caring for himself through illness.
Chan was entrusted with the videos by Wong’s friends and peers, who hoped she might make a restoration. The invitation came with “a deep sense of responsibility,” Chan says, and she spent years working with the archive. At times, it felt like she was working with Wong himself. Now, three decades after his death, Chan has brought the late artist’s work back to the world.
Lloyd Wong, Unfinished premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the Golden Bear for short film as well as a Teddy Award (the longest-running LGBTQ prize at any major film festival). It has screened at more than 20 film festivals globally, including the Villa Medici Film Festival in Rome, where it was named Best Film. Later this week, it will play at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and on Oct. 8, the filmmaker’s work will be the subject of a survey program, called Handmade Autofictions of Lesley Loksi Chan, at Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox.
More than 30 years after Wong put his story to film, it is being embraced by the public. “Sometimes, it takes a while for people to be ready to listen,” says Chan.
For much of that time, Wong’s videos languished in storage. After his death, the tapes were kept by filmmaker friend Helen Lee. At some point, they lived in the basement of renowned video artist Richard Fung. Wong’s work entered the ArQuives — Canada’s largest independent repository of LGBTQ materials — when Fung donated a box of his old films, unaware it also contained the late artist’s work. They were rediscovered and digitized by historian Ryan Conrad while researching the cable access show Toronto Living with AIDS. When Chan’s mentor, filmmaker John Greyson, suggested she should work with the material, he concluded his entreaty with the line: “The correct answer is ‘yes.'”
Chan had never heard of Wong before. She watched the videos with mixed feelings. “I was drawn to Lloyd, but at the same time, I was afraid to tackle such a project,” she says. Even after wading into the work with a residency, she wasn’t sure she was the right person to tell his story. But she could not step away either. Wong had already begun to inhabit her thoughts.
“You’re haunted,” Greyson told her.
“I was kind of surprised he said that,” recalls Chan. “Then, I [realized], I guess I am. I’m dealing with something that’s known, but invisible. I think it’s such a gift to be haunted.”
She started to see the project as “queer inheritance.” “It came to me through the community, and that’s why I feel this responsibility,” Chan says. It took her time to recognize that such an act of remembrance was a burden too heavy for a single person. Instead, she could make a film that was more open, vulnerable and guided by the community. Her work didn’t need to be the document on Wong’s art and legacy; rather, it could represent an opportunity for many people to remember and learn about him together.
All of the footage in Lloyd Wong, Unfinished was made by Wong himself. The only frames Chan added are a few spare notes. These textual addendums provide some context on her caretaking of the story as its editor. Otherwise, she gives Wong the screen to show viewers into his world.
“The way Lesley intervenes and interacts with this footage is very interesting,” says Aaditya Aggarwal, curator of the upcoming Chan survey at TIFF Lightbox. “In some ways, she takes a backseat and lets the footage play itself. But really, it’s her hand guiding and punctuating what we are seeing and structuring how we are interacting with the ghost of Wong.”
In a main scene — from the uncompleted Toronto Living with AIDS segment — Wong demonstrates how to prepare an intravenous infusion of antiviral medication at home. “He wanted to represent self-determination and self-reliance in relation to health and health care,” Chan says. Performing in front of a green screen, Wong inserts a TV cooking show as his backdrop, likening his demo to more familiar, mainstream instructional formats.
The section is shown in split-screen, contrasted with more intimate Super 8 footage, showing scenes from Wong’s daily life at home and in hospitals. “Both of them I think speak so powerfully to self-representation,” Chan says. “[He was] really trying to show what was hidden at that time — and is still now, I think, very hidden.”
In another scene, Wong shows his mother putting a videotape into a VCR, which plays a clip of the artist telling a story about a time when his illness made him feel invisible and misunderstood. “That shot was really important for me because I started thinking about how intergenerational witnessing was such a huge part of the project,” Chan says. “I really started seeing myself as a witness.… Watching his mother [view the footage], I felt like, ‘OK, he wanted to be seen, he wanted people to know, he wanted people to hear him.”
Through this posthumous collaboration, Chan has developed a kind of relationship with the late artist. His presence has been a source of comfort and reassurance whenever she’s felt uneasy, she says.
“When they called my name [at the Berlinale] I blacked out, and then I was standing on the stage,” Chan recalls. “I thought Lloyd was holding me up. I was bawling, like I was not expecting it at all. I was also really tired and overwhelmed. All of a sudden, I just felt this person holding me. (It was the host.) But I swear, in that moment, I was like, ‘Oh my god, Lloyd was there.
“I’ve had so many of those moments working on this project where I’m like, ‘OK, he’s here. He’s with me.’ And somehow, that makes it easier for me.”
The film survey Handmade Autofictions of Lesley Loksi Chan runs Oct. 8 at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto. On Oct. 11, Lloyd Wong, Unfinished will screen as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival.