By Susan Broili

DURHAM, Apr. 3, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
Durham filmmaker Josh Gibson had to go halfway around the world to find the North Carolina subjects of his most recent documentary, "Siamese Connection," being shown at 5 p.m. today at the Civic Center on the first of the four-day Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Gibson had been in India working on another film when his mother called to say she had purchased a Chang and Eng figurine and wanted to know if he knew anything about these Siamese twins. He didn't know much. A few days later, he found one of the figurines in a junk shop in Bombay. That clinched it. His curiosity clicked in and ultimately sent him to Thailand and Mt. Airy. In Thailand, he visited the village where the twins were born in 1811. Today, people light incense at a statue of the twins made by a local sculptor who believes they were supernatural beings, Gibson said.

The filmmaker attended family reunions in Mt. Airy, where the twins, who had taken the American last name of Bunker, settled in the late 1830s, married sisters, Adelaide and Sally Yates, and fathered a total of 21 children. At these reunions, Gibson met a number of descendants, including Raleigh resident Milton Haynes, who appears in the film.

In a telephone interview, Haynes said he's looking forward to seeing the film for the first time today at the festival.

"I'm on Chang's side," Haynes, 72, said of his paternal great-great-grandfather. "I've always been very proud to be a descendant of the twins."

But growing up in Raleigh, Haynes never knew about the twins until age 10 when his parents were discussing famous people and he asked, "What are we famous for?"

His father replied, "You can say you're related to the Siamese twins."

That's all his father ever said. Only within the past decade has Haynes learned what his father knew and communicated in a letter to a cousin, who was writing a college paper on the twins. Most descendants had similar experiences because their families didn't talk about the twins, Haynes said.

"It was a taboo subject because of the sexual connotation," Haynes said.

If Haynes could speak with his famous ancestors today, he would say, "I would like to say thank you. And, as Rex Yates said at last year's reunion, 'And, thank those broad-minded women who married them.' "

Haynes did inherit, from his father, items that had belonged to the twins, including a small leather Bible and a ledger in which the twins meticulously recorded expenditures and income from public appearances from 1833 to 1839.

Haynes donated these and other items to the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Papers include slave bills of sale and planting information pertaining to the twins' North Carolina properties, according to collection listings.

The filmmaker drew on some of this material for the documentary, edited by his wife, Shambhavi Caul.

"They actually became Southern gentlemen," Gibson said of the Bunker twins.

The Mt. Airy community accepted them despite the fact that they married sisters in 1843 when it was illegal for someone of another race to marry a white woman, Gibson said.

The filmmaker believes the twins' world-renowned status had much to do with their acceptance.

"They had met kings and queens. They were huge celebrities," Gibson said.

The twins were quite wealthy from their tours here and abroad. In large halls, they displayed wit, demonstrated feats of strength and even performed somersaults, the filmmaker said.

Success took a while. At age 17, the twins were essentially sold by their mother to an American explorer and English sea captain, who paid them a pittance and reaped large profits from showing them in the United States. They did have a contract, however, and when it ended, they embarked on a career that made them wealthy.

"They represented this amazing American rags-to-riches story," Gibson said.

Not to mention the fact that they went through life sharing a liver and attached by a small band of skin at their lower rib cages. After their death at age 63 in 1874, an autopsy showed that Chang died first of a stroke. An expert Gibson cites in the film believes that the clot then went into Eng's veins and caused his death about three hours later.

"It's really quite a remarkable story. They lived a whole life connected and they learned to adjust," Gibson said.

While the twins' domestic adaptations kept their descendants from talking openly about them, those descendants treasure heirlooms that include Chang and Eng's handmade bed in which a descendant named Eng currently sleeps. "I recall him saying it was more than standard size," Gibson said. Eng's brother is also named Chang because they were the first twins born in the family since the Siamese twins. While both were born without any abnormalities, their names were anything but and they were teased as children, one says in the film. Today, they seem comfortable with their names and namesakes, the filmmaker added.

---

FILM INFO

Josh Gibson's "Siamese Connection" will be screened at 5 p.m. today in the Civic Center as part of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in downtown Durham. The screening begins with Jesse Epstein's "34x25x36," an inside look at the Patina V Mannequin Factory.

---

Today

Carolina Theatre, Cinema 2

2:30 p.m. "Diaries (1971-1976)"

Carolina Theatre, Cinema 1.

10:45 a.m. "Marcela"

1:15 p.m. "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts"

4:45 p.m. "Of Shadows and Men" and "Sally Gross: The Pleasure of Stillness"

Carolina Theatre, Fletcher Hall

10:30 a.m. "Blindsight"

1:30 p.m. "Forbidden Lie$"

4:15 p.m. "Up the Yangtze"

8 p.m. Opening night film. "Trumbo"

11 p.m. "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One"

Civic Center

11 a.m. "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai"

1:45 p.m. "The Last Conquistador"

5 p.m. "34x25x36" and "The Siamese Connection"

Weaver Auditorium, Durham School of the Arts

11:15 a.m. "Don't Get MeWrong"

2 p.m. "Sud (South)"

4:30 p.m. "Left in Baghdad" and "Lioness"

Durham Arts Council

11:30 a.m. "DaNADIE"

2:15 p.m. "Sewing Woman" and "Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter"

For updates, visit www.fullframefest.org

Newstex ID: KRTB-0052-24235771