Ways of seeing
Lihong Kong
role in Michka’s films
China Me — assistant director, research, interpretation
A Great Day in Paris — assistant
LK: Since I didn’t know Michka, she invited me to a screening of Prisoners of Beckett. I went because I like to see a director’s work before deciding to work with them. Her film spoke to me a lot, and I thought maybe she was someone I could work with.
Afterwards, I went to her place in the 20ᵉ arrondissement, not far from Place Gambetta. It was May Day[1], so I stopped at the florist. When Michka opened her door, she saw a Chinese woman with a bouquet of mimosa. She thought I must have known that mimosa was Tunisia's “national” flower but I didn't! At that moment, she said to herself, "She's the one I want to work with!" It was thanks to the mimosa, but it was a coincidence.
MF: I don't think so. She was quite superstitious. I'm sure she thought it was fate.
LK: Yes, I believe that, too.
MF: So then you talked about her China project.
LK: The starting point was an article in Libé, which talked about Huo Datong’s psychoanalysis work in China.[2] She absolutely wanted to meet him. She started to read a lot. Talking about your own psychology is taboo in China. People have problems, but they are hidden. She wanted to focus on the stress caused by rapid economic development over the past thirty years and how society and people, like Huo Datong, were helping these people.
MF: Do you think it was easier for Michka to tackle a taboo subject because she was a foreigner?
LK: I think it helped. If you talk to someone from your own culture or someone you know, you fear being judged, right? She was a woman as well, which could have also played a role. And she was very sweet in her own way. She didn't speak loudly. She had a modest presence by and large, without ever imposing herself. For all those reasons, people told her very personal things.
“She saw everything, she heard everything.”
MF: Still, she was not alone. You were there. And you are Chinese. All communication was filtered through you.
LK: I was acting as a medium because I wasn't just translating. The question that Michka formulated in two sentences took me ten minutes to translate because I had to reassure the person. When we talk about something sensitive, it's always scary because there's censorship, especially because maybe the film will cause problems. That's why I had to tell people they shouldn't feel ashamed to speak. If the person did not want to answer, they told me.
MF: We only see the final film, and not the process. The answers people give often seem to come easily. But it must have been much more difficult, like, for example, for the students who lost family members in the earthquake.
LK: Yes, but the interviews with the students were more manageable for us. First, they are more educated. They could judge for themselves whether they wanted to talk or not. Most of the time, we didn't need to reassure them because they knew very well what they could or wanted to say. People living in poverty — like the migrant workers in Shanghai or Beijing — were in a more precarious situation. They risked a lot if they said the wrong thing. In fact, they didn’t really know how to assess the risk they were taking.
MF: Did migrants ever say things you thought might be dangerous?
LK: Luckily we were there in 2006 and 2007. Today, most people won’t even accept to be interviewed. Often people who say something in an interview are arrested. In 2006, it was not like that at all. People were relatively free. Of course, Michka didn't talk too much about the Cultural Revolution, but we did interview a person who often traveled to Tibet. This is always politically sensitive. We couldn't ask direct questions because we didn't want to cause any problems. There was also a lot of self-censorship. Once Michka asked a question along those lines, and the answer was completely off. In the end, we didn’t keep this person in the film because either the answers were not honest or would have been problematic for the government…
MF: Did a lot of scenes in the film come about by chance?
“Because she was a foreigner, she could play the innocent.”
LK: We found most of the characters on the Internet. We had to contact them well in advance so they would agree to be interviewed and then to be filmed. On the first trip, we met them. And we said that we would come back the next year to film. Of course, there was also chance involved. For example, we were in Beijing for the symposium on the suicides of peasant women. Xie Lihua, who was there, is still dealing with this issue. We met a few women who had attempted suicide. One of them was going home to a village not far away. We immediately decided to follow her in our car. It was not planned at all.
MF: Even though Michka didn't speak Chinese, she understood body language well.
LK: Yes, better than me. I focus on verbal language. I don't pay too much attention to the physical level. She saw everything, she heard everything. While I was talking with students or elders, she was focused on their physical language.
MF: It's also in a way the subject of the film — the language of the unconscious.
LK: Yes. I think that interested her as well.
MF: But how did she react to the answers she didn't understand. How did you manage to convey the content of what was said?
LK: Michka had a list of questions. Often, the person did not have much time and we had to finish quite quickly. In those cases, Michka told me it was not worth translating. That means that I asked the question and the person answered me, then Michka asked a second question, and so on. Often, she didn't need to know the answer to continue. But sometimes she asked for a short summary so she could rephrase her question or dig deeper. It depended on the questions, the moments, the time pressure. Do we have to go fast or can we take more time? It also depended on the interviewee, if they were tense or not. There was no single rule for every situation.
MF: Let me go back to this idea of Michka as an outsider, and how that might have helped the process. From what she told me, there were times when she also used this status, pretending to be naive to get what she wanted.
LK: Yes, I believe so, especially at the level of questions. Because we – Chinese people – censor ourselves and sometimes avoid these questions. Because she was a foreigner, she could play the innocent and ask questions as if she didn't know it was a sensitive subject, to see how people reacted. They were free to choose whether to express themselves or not.
Michka could also afford to ask questions that were sometimes a little too obvious for a Chinese but not for a foreigner. Very often, we thought the person was not going to answer, but sometimes they told moving stories. And that's how we got something real and touching.
MF: Michka does not judge their answers but we, the viewers, understand a certain irony. I am thinking of the various “providers” of psychological services.
LK: There was so much demand for these services that some people saw it as a good opportunity to make money. We saw that during our shoot, and Michka also wanted to show this side of it.
MF: There’s the man who talks about offering psychological services but is interrupted by a call, and the scene ends with him on his mobile. It becomes a comment on the entrepreneurial nature of the services.
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LK: At the same time, this man surprised us because he told us about his traumatic experience during the Cultural Revolution. It is something very touching. Suddenly, he becomes more nuanced.
MF: I go back again to body language. In one interview, a migrant woman laughs as she talks about her marriage. The laughter becomes more important than what she says.
LK: She was embarrassed... We met her and her husband by chance. In the end, it was a couple who really confided in us, which was a nice surprise.
MF: Did other things surprise you?
LK. Yes, especially on a personal level. During the first shoot, I was in charge of so many things and completely stressed. Maybe I was near burnout. I had shut myself down as a way to hold it together. I wasn’t even aware of it. A few weeks after returning to France, I recovered and started seeing people again. It was Michka who told me what I was like during the shoot. It was a complete shock. She thought I was never going to talk to her again because I was mad at her. But then she realized that I was completely unaware of how I was. During the second shoot, I was more careful and knew how to manage this stress. In the end, it turned out well. The process allowed me to discover myself, to know myself a little better.
MF: How so?
LK: On a personal level, Michka opened many doors for me. Before I met her, I had no idea how people dress, for example. We went shopping and chose clothes that I didn't really like but that suited me well. At first, we might not like certain things because we can’t see ourselves. We’re trapped by our narrow vision. She opened my eyes. I find most people are trapped in themselves in some way. But not Michka. When you meet a person like that, you realize you’re a prisoner, and she helps you escape.
MF: That's exactly what Spoon says in his film.[1] He thinks we all live in our own prison and that we have to find a way to break free. I think Michka held the key for a lot of people.
LK: Between traveling and filming, she was the one who helped me open my eyes to my own country, my own people and my own culture. She gave me another way of seeing, or rather, other ways of seeing.
