Nowhere to Call Home Q&A

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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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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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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