Monday 16th February 2015
Frontline Club Screening
Nowhere to Call Home - Q&A with Director Jocelyn Ford
http://www.frontlineclub.com/
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| tibetaninbeijing.com |
Jocelyn: thank you all for watching and before we start with
questions I just want to thank a few people. My editor is here. She took the
first pile of material and said oh gosh, I’ll get you something in three
months. Anyway, years later, we have a film. Also I believe some Kickstarter
donors in here too. I had a lot of support from other colleagues in Beijing,
some of whom are here. Mary’s sitting in the back, she went to yoga and every
time I had a terrible problem with the film, she was there to listen. So
anyway, thank you all very much and if you do have any questions.
Q: It’s really
impressive how much access you gained to Zanta and Yang Qing’s everyday life,
not only with their families but also their schools, the more institutional
areas. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the different obstacles
you faced gaining access, not only in the village but in the city.
As you may have noticed, I have never made a film before and
I had no idea how to go about it. But what I was told is that you must have one
important thing, and that its trust from the person in your film. And so Zanta
gave me that trust within 20mins of our conversation unbeknownst to me, for
years. That she thought because I sat down and talked to her that we had this
connection in a past life. And I honestly did not know that for many years
after I started working with her, and started the film. But with other people
in Beijing it’s a lawless sort of place so, I would show up at the police
station and they would have to figure out what to do with me. They could have
shooed me away, they could have told me I couldn’t do this but I don’t know if
you noticed when she goes to get back her items at the police station, the
authority never looked at me once. He brought her into the back room and said
‘who is that woman’, she said ‘it’s a reporter’ and then he came out, and I
think he did a performance. He wanted to show that he was being fair, because
when he didn’t establish eye contact with me once, he pretended I wasn’t there
and when we exited the police station a bunch of Han Chinese street vendors
pleaded with us to go back in and represent them because they were going to be
charged a fine to get back their items. So, that’s just one story. I was just
there and I did what I thought I should do.
Q: Once the police
knew you were a reporter, was it a concern for them who you were a reporter
for? Who you were reporting to?
So, as many of you in this room know, in Beijing you’re
required to register as a reporter and so the police would come and look at my
card and call up their colleagues and I’d have to write down all my details. So
they knew who I was with but I don’t know if that made a difference.
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| filmplatform.net |
Q: Was this is
Chinese Tibet, rather than TAR, did you have any feelings of things out there?
Thank you very much for that question. Often times in
screenings I like to point out that Tibet is a huge area, the size of Western
Europe and there are many different cultural groups within it, many different
languages, perhaps 50. When is started the film someone told me there were 25
different languages, now I’m told there are 50.Not a lot is known about it
because there are a lot of restrictions on journalists or outsiders going into
the area.
This was actually filmed in Sichuan. There are more Tibetans
living outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region than there are living inside of it
and that is also I think, not very well known. There are several provinces with
a lot of Tibetan communities so when I went to her local area – and according
to official rules, journalists are supposed to be able to travel there without
impediments or without registering in advance, to the Tibetan areas outside of
the TAR. You need special permission to go to the Autonomous region. That’s
often not upheld as many of you know, but that was the official rule and this
was in 2009 and the Olympics had just come along. I spoke to the local police,
who did call me into the police station and said well the rules say ‘I’m
allowed to be here’ and they said ‘yes, we know that. You’re here for a family
visit so, be good’.
Q: Firstly that was
brilliant thank you so much, I really enjoyed it. You said this was in 2009 so,
6yrs later, are you in regular contact with Zanta?
Yes, Zanta just sent me a few WeChat voice messages. She’s
in her village for new years as we speak. There was a big religious ceremony
there today and she and her son went back. This is the second time that her son
has gone back since that agreement which both sides broke. When he was younger
she was very reluctant to allow him to go back because she thought she might
never see him again. He might not be allowed to come back to education. But
he’s now 14 and he can take care of himself.
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Q: And how’s he
doing, is he doing well at school?
His English is excellent, his math, (gestures ‘not so
much’). He’s had a lot of difficulties in school. The teacher has been very
unwelcoming towards Tibetans and has told other children not to associate with
him and I think, she’s trying to force him out. But I should say that he’s now
in a public school and has been there for about three years and you do not see
that school in this film.
So it’s not been easy but last week I believe, maybe a bout
ten days ago he actually asks his grandfather if he could have his ID because
he would like the study in the United States.
So this is very much in play. Apparently the last message I
received is that the grandfather, Aba, had agreed. And said, ‘I wouldn’t give
it to you if it was that lousy foreigner who wanted you to go but if it’s you
who really wants to go, let’s go’.
Q: And how would they
afford it?
There’s a little bit of a back-story. When I screened, did
the premiere in the US at the Museum of Modern art, I got a phone call from
somebody who says, ‘hi’ – perfect American accent – ‘I’m in Queens, and Aba is
my relative’. Yeh, no way! He said ‘yeh, we want to go see the film’. I said,
‘well I’m sorry it’s sold out but I’d like to meet with you’. And so I went to
their house and the person who called me was the 25yr old son of Aba’s cousin I
believe, or something like that. And so, his dad grew up with Aba and they
left, the 25yr old, left the country aged 10, walked to India and somehow they got
their family – and almost died on the way, aged 10. Somehow the family got to
the US, I haven’t heard the whole story and seven years ago, the 25yr old man
managed to get from India to the US where he is now a marketing manager for
Horizon.
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Yeh, wonderful kid and I mean, I was so impressed with him I
said ‘wow, I want what he’s having’. His English was great, he understood
American ways of thinking about things and knew something about his village but
was quite shocked when he actually watched the film. He had no idea what life
was like.
So, then they said, ‘what are you going to do about the
kid’s schooling’ and I said, ‘they are not a lot of great choices out there’.
So he said, ‘why don’t you have him come to the US’ and I said, ‘he doesn’t
have his ID’ and the 25yr old’s dad said, ‘actually, I visited my village a few
years ago, I’m the one who convinced Aba that education is good and that he
should allow his son to continue studying in Beijing’. He said, ‘I can get that
ID’.
It’s a long story, I won’t go through all of it but needless
to say, Aba was not very happy with all this. There were a lot of negative
messages going to Zanta but the guy in the US was saying everything’s fine.
Anyway, it might be cool, it might be fine and if so, I will probably be
looking for a home stay family for Yang Qing because the neighborhood that his
cousin, or whatever the relationship is, lives in, is not that great and he’s
quite busy and I wouldn’t want, I don’t think Zanta wants him in the city
wandering around. So then he went and
had all these ideas about America.
Q: How far back does
this prejudice against Tibetans go?
First of all I’d like to say it’s quite mutual. From what I
can gather. Are there any Tibetans in the audience? Are you interested in
answering?
Audience: Well I mean obviously the invasion in 59, I guess it
predates that really.
So the words that are used in Mandarin, tend to be
‘barbarian’, not very complementary. Going back way back in history. Anybody
who was not Han Chinese - and what is Han is a whole other debate we’re not
getting into tonight - was considered to be inferior in terms of culture. So I
think that’s a deep-seeded sort of feeling.
When I do these screenings in China, I often bring up one of
the Tibetan saying which I don’t know if you know, there are a couple in her
village that go like, ‘there are as many good-hearted Han Chinese as there are
white crows’. And I don’t know how old this is but I think it goes back pretty
far. So I think there’s a lot of work to be done to build mutual respect.
Q: When did you
decide to do the film?
I didn’t actually decide to do it, my producer decided I
should do it. I have a producer, who is also a filmmaker and a jack of many
trades, who basically twisted my arm into making this. I was his idea.
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I had done, just before the Olympics, technology was
changing and cameras were coming out that were small enough and cheap enough
that I could afford them. And I thought oh let me play around with them so I
did a series of five videos for a newspaper on the Olympics and one of them I
brought Zanta and Yang Qing to a field hockey game. They’d of course never
heard of field hockey, hadn’t heard of any of the countries that were playing
or anything but I swear they were the happiest people in the entire audience.
Yang Qing wore a western suit, Zanta put on her best Tibetan clothes and they
had a wonderful time.
So he saw this video and a bunch of old street journal
colleagues watched it and said ‘my god, this in 3mins encapsulates so much more
than you could ever say in print. You must do a documentary’.
So, I said ‘no, I have no idea how to go about doing it’ and
I considered myself a professional so I wasn’t going to do something I didn’t
know how to do and my producer said, ‘oh I’ll give you everything, a cameraman,
you don’t have to raise money’ and I was like, well how can I turn that down.
Of course, then he got busy and the money ran out and I had to do all these
things I didn’t intend to but essentially he got the ball rolling.
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Q: So you had to do
the filming in the village, but the filming in Beijing, you had a cameraman?
On two or three of those occasions I had one but most of it
I actually ended up doing myself, as you can probably tell. I had no training.
The cameraman was supposed to go with me to her village and I was off in Acha
(China) doing a story on the tsunami anniversary, and I got this phone call
saying, ‘sorry, I have a paying job, I can’t go with you. You’re on your own’.
So I arrived back in Beijing in the morning, picked up a camera I didn’t know how
to use, asked, ‘what could possibly go wrong’ and headed off. And yes, the
camera did stop working while I was there but we managed, I had a backup.
Q: Thanks it was
really great. Can you give us some examples of reactions you’ve seen so far,
both on the Tibetan side and Chinese side? How has it been received?
I’ve had both but I must say I’m very pleased that I’ve had
more positive reactions than negative, on both sides. A lot of Han Chinese are
totally shocked because the media says ‘we treat Tibetans so well, we give them
all this money, what are they complaining about?’, there really is a lot of Han
Chinese that do not understand where this animosity comes from. ‘Why don’t they
appreciate what we do?’ – I consider this very media driven. So when they see
the film, they have to come to grips with the difference between what they
thought before and what they see here. Because Zanta is amazingly frank, she’s
incredible, and because they don’t see this as a propaganda film.
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So, a lot of times I’ve been really pleased with the
younger, especially the high school kids, the Han Chinese high school kids in
Beijing. A lot have said, ‘Well gosh, we see there’s a problem, what do we do
about it? Who should be responsible, is this something the government can fix?
Can I as an individual do anything?’ I’ve had an outpouring of people actually volunteering
to help Yang Qing with his studies, or help Zanta with her jewelry sales and I
must say I’ve had more volunteers among Han Chinese than any other group, if you’re
going to talk about that, whether it be Westerners or Tibetans. So, I’m
encouraged by that.
I had the privilege of doing a screening one day in the same
afternoon, both for the Chinese academy for social science ethnologists, some
of them who are advising the government, and then the high school kids. The
ethnologists, some would come up and say, ‘oh you must have missed our policy
that we send all migrant children to school’ or something like this and I was
like, ‘no, what happens on paper doesn’t really happen like that in reality’.
So I had some comments that ran along for 5-10 minutes, from Tibetans and Han
Chinese where they’re not quite sure what they’re trying to say but I get the
feeling they’re very uncomfortable. And sometimes it’s like ‘our policy is not
like this’. On the Tibetan side I’ve had young Tibetan, men have come up to me
and said, ‘thank you so much for making this film’ and one said it reflects his
mother’s experience but she’s not in a position to talk about it or have it
heard. And some have said, ‘you can’t make this film because you’re supporting
the Beijing government’s propaganda that we’re less developed, that we’re a
backwards society’ or ‘you’re distracting attention from what is really
important to us, or to those people who are making these comments which are the
bigger political issues’.
And after long conversations with people who disagree often times
I find that they often rethink things so, if that’s helpful…
Q: did you have to
get permission to show this in Beijing, and the reason I ask is thinking of the
theme there, of two warring clans, that is often the propaganda you get from
the Chinese government about why they
invaded Tibet otherwise they would have destroyed themselves through civil war. In some sense that theme
comes back.
As a foreign correspondent we don’t need to get permission. So,
if you think this could really get permission from the state apparatus I’d be,
I’d love to know your connections. I know that on Chinese producer, after
seeing the film was so excited he actually went to the state TV, CCTV, much to
my surprise and they said well, if I’d been a Chinese person getting involved
it would be a great film, but I’m not so no thank you. They saw it as Western
propaganda. I find when I speak with people who have a political stance, often times the Americans
will say, ‘oh my gosh the Chinese are going to use this as propaganda’ and the
Chinese will say, ‘oh my gosh the Americans are going to use this as propaganda’
so I feel like I’ve probably got it about right.
Q: Thank you very
much, your film was very different from other documentaries that have been made
about Tibet, which was really interesting. A couple of things, when Zanta was
first talking she said there were 1000 Tibetans in Beijing and I don’t know if
you’re still there but I was wondering if there’s a bigger influx now and how
the racial the aspect is changing, if at all, within the city?
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And just in regard to
all the self-immolation that’s been happening, whether there’s a kind of stir
within the city, and within the Tibetan community within Beijing?
Well I’m hoping that by showing the film and talking about
racism and prejudice and by bringing in documentary films from other countries
that deal with these issues, that we can raise the issue. Because unfortunately
I must say I haven’t noticed any awareness, racism and prejudice are things
that happen in the United States, not there. People I show it to in China say,
‘oh no, it doesn’t happen here’. They’re just unaware. There are about 100 [Tibetans]
from her [Zanta’s] community. Basically, after the Olympics, almost everybody,
all young people came out. And some of them have now gone to other cities to
sell at trade fairs and stuff like that, but there are very few people left,
young people, left in their village.
They, to the best of my knowledge, the self-immolations are
not foremost in their minds. I think that surviving, and economic survival is
at this point, what’s of most concern to most of the people in her community.
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Q: I was curious. It
says her husband was from a neighboring village, but then you see in the film
that it’s actually a long way away. I just wondered how they’d met.
Yeh, it says next door, in their context that’s not that
far. Actually they were picking the grass worms used for Chinese medicine in Qinghai,
I believe when they met. So they were in yet another location. She left, when
she first left to do this, she was about 14 and they got chased across the
plains by the locals in Qinghai, the local Tibetans and she was quite afraid
for her life because they had guns and they had two days til they could get to
a town. So she’s had quite a lot of drama in her life.
Q: Thank you I
thought it was an absolutely fantastic film. You said at the beginning, you
were very candid through the whole film, that you didn’t know what you were
getting yourself into and it became very clear as things were going on that
circumstances were changing and consequences were unknown. I was originally
going to ask the question…the story so far seems to have had a happy ending,
would you have, if you went back to the beginning, would you still go ahead
with the film? I suspect you might say yes to that. So, my question is more,
were someone in a similar circumstance to you when Zanta first approached you,
would you advise them to follow the same path, would you advise them to get
involved and if so, what advice would you give them, about exercising caution,
about how to interact?
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So Yang Qing is not the first child I’ve sent to school, I
think I have sucker written on my forehead somewhere. I guess that many of you
have worked in the field and been approached by people like this and personally
have decided that, if I’m capable, if it’s within my means to help somebody and
it doesn’t cause me too much disruption then I would do it. Now, this caused
much more disruption than I was up for but I think, I’d still do that, if
someone is in need and they approach me. I mean I’m not going to go out , I’m
not an NGO, I’m not a bank, despite what some people may think, but if it’s
something I can help somebody figure out. I mean they also have to invest in
it.
I mean when I first found him a school I first suggested to Zanta
that she call an NGO and see if they could provide something. Well, she did
that and they said sorry we can’t do anything for you. And then, I said ‘is
there a migrant school in your neighborhood’. She said yes and she went, and
this was on a Sunday and the next morning at about 7am she called me and said
‘I’m at the school, it’s fine, let’s enroll’. So by noon the child was enrolled
and I asked her to pay 100, or 200 Renminbi (about £20) for the semester, just
to make sure that she was invested in it. So, the approach that I’ve taken is…
Q: It was more,
certain actions you took to try and help, it didn’t seem at all certain that it
would have helped, I mean it did in the end for example, taking the legal
document to Aba, did you not think that could have gone horribly wrong or even
going along with Zanta to police stations and to her village, did you ever
think my involvement in this situation could have… I suppose my question is, if
people find themselves in this situation, wanting to help, wanting to do
something, wanting to get involved but are scared of entering this alien
environment, would you advise them to proceed with that and if so, what advice
would you give?
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Yes I’d rather not be asked for advice but I must say that
even today, I don’t know if what we have done, or what we’re doing here or even
my very words, could have a negative impact. I consider her a risk-taker. She
offered to give her child to a complete stranger, I mean how risky, how much
riskier can you get? And I consider myself a calculated risk-taker. So we try
to be informed and I’ve asked her on many occasions, you know, my involvement
has also created a lot of jealousy in her community and given her a lot of
grief. Is it worth it to you?
I mean on many steps along the way I tell her what I think
the stakes are and I tell her I don’t now what the impact will be. And she’s
always decided to go forward.
Having said that, she is planning to leave – she just
arrived in her village because they had this special religious ceremony, but
she’s planning to leave tomorrow – and she doesn’t know if she’s going back.
And I don’t really know what’s happening as we speak. She did tell me she
wasn’t going to take photographs because a woman shouldn’t be seen holding a
camera in her village. I don’t know what other pressures she may be under and I
know that she won’t tell me as long as she’s there. So, I’ll just have to wait
until tomorrow or a few days from now and hope that she can, she will tell me.
Q: How did they
respond to you and how did the respond to the camera? You had some amazing
shots and I just wonder what their initial reaction was.
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Zanta to me is exactly the same on and off camera, it
doesn’t seem to impact her at all. But when she came back and she translated
things, sometimes they would say ‘oh Jocelyn’s ready now, ohhh Jocelyn’s
running the camera now, we’re in the kitchen you better look your best’ or
something like that. So in general I thought there was not really much of a
reaction and I think that because they grew up in an era without mass media and
are not necessarily aware of the power of story and the power of film, it was
very difficult for me to try to explain to them what was happening- because Zanta
would always say – or what I thought the impact of the story might be.
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But Zanta would always say, ‘who’d be interested in me,
no-one’s ever paid any interest in me whatsoever, they’ve just walked all over
me’ I mean she has no status, so for years she would say that. And now I think
she’s finally beginning to understand because she’s seen the reaction and she’s
come to a few Q&As and she’s seen that people like to buy her jewelry a
lot. So it’s been a long process in trying to explain that.
Q: My question is
about the filming, I mean you just went there with the camera, not exactly
Hollywood stuff, and I think you had just a one time chance to be in the
village. Did you feel yourself afterwards, missing something from the record,
or did you just record everything?
So I’m a glutton for information, I tend to over-record.
Gigi [editor] will tell you. I asked her so many times how many hours of
footage, she still hasn’t told me.
Gigi: Too many!
Too many, that’s the answer. Was anything missing?
Gigi: Quite a lot of good stuff but the essence was all
there, you can’t have everything in the film.
Yeh I mean it’s a lot. I could make several other films, I
have enough material for several other films. Gigi may be moving onto bigger
and better things. I’m planning on making small clips, not large, long films
but maybe if I could do a curriculum or an online – for either a Chinese
audience or international audiences – put together issue-based footage. I could
do three minute or five minute clips, that could really get into some of the
issues and then have some text to go along with it I think that would be a
great thing to do, if I can find people who’re interested.
I have raised the possibility of doing ‘tolerance,
anti-racism training’ shall we say, in China, for teachers, for other people
who might be interested. I have a couple of people, anthropologists who are
interested in collaborating on something. We have yet to figure this out. But I
think if I could do that then some of the material might be re-worked and
useful in that context.
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Q: When I was there,
which was before the uprising in 2008, Tibet was incredibly fashionable amongst
educated Beijing-ers. They were all going either to become Buddhist or to go to
nightclubs. I’m just wondering when you showed this film to people in Beijing,
for some of the more philosophical aspects… because so many people in Beijing
are challenging some of the materialism, there’s such a huge growth in religion
and all sorts. Do people actually engage with it at that level?
In one way or another. The first screening I did for a
Chinese audience, people who I didn’t know. What seemed to upset some of them
most, they didn’t tell me, I had a Chinese friend come with me to help with the
screening. They all came down to her and said, ‘oh my god, that is so untrue’,
they felt incredibly hurt by the comment that Han Chinese seemed to respect all
the wealth and not respect the poor, that really disturbed them.
And yet you see it in Chinese media or Chinese online
discussions all the time. So I think that has hit a chord with some. Is that sort of what you mean?
Q: After 2008, that
whole fascist Buddhism crash…so hang on a minute this Buddhism is really rather
a sham because they believe in violence and so that whole interest in Buddhism was
fundamentally shaken. Not that people thought that the alternative materialism
was fantastic, but there was significant change in the amount of interest.
Actually, that’s not been my experience at all and it’s been
quite the opposite. I was recently in a small village and I asked a young kid
where he would like to travel most, he probably was a junior college graduate
or something, and he said Tibet. I mean Tibet among young people is incredibly
hot, I would say today. It’s exoticised and people are looking for the
spiritual. So I mean it’s not been my experience but then I only know anecdotal
tales.
It was large, an
amount of business people who had invested a lot in Buddhism, in going there
and building relationships…
I’m not aware of that level, but I am aware that a lot of
the people who are trying to help Zanta with her business, also have an
interest in Buddhism but I don’t have numbers.
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| tibetaninbeijing.com |
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