Filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan had never gotten emotional voting in municipal elections before. But after working on a documentary about the Chinese Canadian head tax, she did.

“I was teary-eyed when I handed in my ballot because I thought of all the veterans that fought so hard for us to have the right to vote,” Chan said by phone from Hamilton, Ontario. “I mean, we didn’t get the right to vote until 1947. It’s was just like 63 years ago. That’s crazy! And I never really thought of that. I just took it for granted. It wasn’t until I worked on this project that I learned about how people had to struggle in order for me to do that.”

Redress Remix explores the impact that the Chinese Head Tax (imposed in the early 1900s on Chinese immigrants, who had to pay $50 to $500 to enter Canada) and Exclusion Act of 1923 (which banned all Chinese immigrants) has had on the Chinese Canadian community. Among the interviewees, who hailed from Vancouver and Calgary to Montreal and Halifax (and even Boston and Hong Kong), are local figures such as Trevor and Matt Chan of hip-hop act No Luck Club, author Jen Sookfong Lee (The End of East), Canadians For Reconciliation founder Bill Chu, and Head Tax Families Society of Canada president Sid Chow Tan.

Chan, who isn’t related to any head-tax payers, knew very little about the subject until university and sought to learn more. After embarking upon the project, she discovered that the issues involved were incredibly multifaceted, as reflected by the diverse opinions of the community. “As I was making the film, I think I also realized that it was important that I didn’t represent Chinese Canadians as one unified voice. It’s important for us to show our collectivity, our collective spirit, but also that I don’t want to erase our differences, because I think that’s where the humanity really comes in.”

She also points out that the official apology (by Prime Minster Stephen Harper in 2006) and redress ($20,000 paid to survivors or spouses of head-tax payers, but not descendents) meant different things to different people.

“Before the project, I really only knew redress as about monetary compensation. And I think that my understanding is really much broader now,” she said. “And yes, I do believe that monetary compensation is an important part of redress but it’s not the only way that people have approached the apology. And I think after speaking to all the different participants, it’s taught me to be more open-minded and aware of what an apology can mean to different people. And that really I think it’s important to discuss the differences, and that there’s going to be conflict and disagreement no matter what and maybe that’s okay because that’s kind of a starting point for us to become involved.”

In order to best represent the diversity of thoughts and perspectives about the issues, the film is accompanied by a website where visitors can watch videos and post responses to what they have seen.

“We call it a ”˜living documentary’. And we really see the film as more of a launching pad for on-line and ongoing discussions and interactivity with the issues that are raised in the film,” she explained. “As we started doing research and interviewing a lot of people, we found that we were totally overwhelmed with the different opinions, and we started to understand how the documentary film is actually really limiting because the issue is way too complicated and we really wanted people to continue to explore the complexity of the issues beyond the film.”

Chan also regards the site as a social time capsule. “What’s cool is that the website, when people respond, the website kind of tracks how we think about racism as our society changes and as the cultural landscape changes. The way that we think about anti-racist strategies, the way we think what racism is, how to fight racism, is always going to be changing, and so the website can really track this historical change.”

Although some critics might feel the issue has been dealt with, Chan pointed out that for other people, there’s more to the story. “The official apology was made in 2006, but it doesn’t mean all the issues around it are dead. In fact, there are people like Sid Chow Tan who works so hard every year to continue to fight for redress in the way that he and his organization understands it. So there are people who have moved on to different endeavours, but there are people who still aren’t satisfied, and that’s their right, to voice their opinion about it. So I think that issues are never over and that’s why the website is really important because we can continually post our collective conversation around it.”

The lack of education or awareness about the topic, as evidenced by posts to the site by visitors, also suggests that there’s still more work to be done. “I think it’s also important to ask, ”˜Why haven’t we heard about it? Why isn’t it accessible to us? And what are the consequences of the silence around it?’” she said. “There are so many questions that can stem from those posts that are on there that say, ”˜I don’t understand’. We need to keep pushing those frustrations or questions even further because then we can learn a lot about ourselves, about the country, about human nature.”

On Sunday (November 7, a discussion with Chan and Chinese Canadian Historical Society’s Larry Wong, facilitated by Schema Magazine’s Alden Habacon, will be held at 1 p.m. at the Fortune Sound Club (147 East Pender Street). The film premiere (an edited version previously aired on Chinese-language TV) of Redress Remix will be held at 4 p.m. at Cinemark Tinseltown (88 West Pender Street) at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, which runs Thursday to Sunday (November 4 to 7).