Nowhere to Call Home

The lovely team at The Frontline Club hosted a screening and Q&A for Jocelyn Ford's 'Nowhere to Call Home' on Monday this week. Jocelyn was told to expect some challenging questions, but she wasn't the only one who wasn't always sure about what to say.

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'Nowhere to Call Home' was a moving testament to the power of mass media and to the way that Tibetan villages seem to have managed to shield themselves from it. Zanta is a Tibetan widow, who migrated to Beijing to sell her jewellery and create a better life for her son, away from her possessive in-laws. With her husband gone, Zanta is not only troubled by racism from the Han Chinese in Beijing, but also has to deal with the added pressure of her father-in-law, who wants her son, Yang Qing to return to him.

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One day, Zanta was selling her jewellery on the streets of Beijing and radio reporter, Jocelyn Ford came along and talked with her. Two years later, Zanta contacted Jocelyn and asked her to take her son, she could not afford to feed him. Jocelyn, perhaps against her will at first, became more and more involved with helping Zanta and getting Yang Qing into a school and forced by the pleas of her producer and colleagues, she began filming. Jocelyn helped Zanta out of trouble with the police, she helped her argue with racist landlords about the right to rent a room and she even travelled back to Zanta's village with her, to meet her family - and Uncle Aba, the grandfather who resists sending Zanta the ID for her and her son. And all the while, Jocelyn was unsure, all the while she maintained the view that she didn't want to get involved. Too late for that Jocelyn!

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The film threw up many questions for me. As a journalist, it is perhaps the first rule in the book, not to get yourself involved with personal affairs and promise to help people where you are unsure of the outcome - in essence, not to meddle - but then I've never been one for rules. Jocelyn went ahead. With the support of her producer she captured the times she spent with Zanta on camera and even the voiceover allows us to see how unsure she was that she was doing the right thing at first. It seemed that her heart wasn't in it. I was conflicted as an audience member in trying to see whether what Jocelyn was doing was to help, or to make a film. I'm still not quite sure that even Jocelyn knew the answer to that along the way. The ethics of the film really stirred up uncertainty in me and I found it hard to appreciate some moments in the film because of that. even when young Yang Qing began calling her mama Joce, I was unsure if that was as heart-warming as perhaps it should have been. I was conflicted - which I suppose took me somewhere towards understanding Jocelyn's own conflict.

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Of course, I am not saying that Jocelyn doesn't care. She did for Zanta and Yang Qing what most Tibetan women would give anything for. She helped. And the power of having a foreign journalist by your side in a dispute is far greater than Zanta was, at first, aware of. It is clear by the end that Jocelyn is more invested than she was at the beginning and not just in monetary terms. She has indeed become, mama Joce to Yang Qing and a dear friend to Zanta.

Zanta is incredibly frank and Jocelyn, incredibly candid. The two hold nothing back from the audience in sharing their anger uncertainty or sadness. Yang Qing is charming to watch on screen, as although he is surrounded by controversy, his aim is still to do the things any child would do. He does share an emotional awareness for his mother's well-being, beyond that which I have seen before, comforting her and telling her not to cry. He is still however, just a child and that shines through impeccably within the film as he rides his bike around Beijing, and plays with his cousins in the village.

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There are some nice undercover shots of Chinese employers bullying Zanta as she is Tibetan and is often wearing Tibetan clothes. I think that to me was worse than the police officers and landlords targeting her - no wonder she ends up in tears. It really is heart-breaking to watch ad know you cannot do anything to stop them. I can understand why Jocelyn felt compelled to help.

Similarly there are some nice moments where Zanta bears all to the camera, she does not hold back. Truth be told, the camera work was a little shaky in places, but as editor Gigi says in the Q&A, 'the essence was there'.

Although she may not have wanted to take on the filming in the first place, Jocelyn's nature was of course, not to decline. It was to help and then report back. The film was an achievement on her part and a great testament to the skill of her editor Gigi. She may have, at times, added jeopardy to the events that were unfolding, particularly with Uncle Aba, but ultimately she did what any of us would try to do. She helped and the film that comes out of it, is not only heart-warming because of that, but also deeply affecting when we spend so much time with our widowed mother and witness her sheer sense of will to protect and provide for her son, Yang Qing. 

Click here to see the Q&A session with director Jocelyn Ford at The Frontline Club: http://watchinabitotheatrenstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/nowhere-to-call-home-q.html

And here's the trailer:

Nowhere To Call Home: A Tibetan in Beijing (trailer) from TripodMedia on Vimeo.