An intuitive understanding                                            

Mary Stephen 

role in Michka’s films

China Me —  Editor

MF: What was your reaction, when this person you didn’t know says, “I want to make a film about China”. And not just any film, but a film about a subject that's taboo and complicated.

MS: She told me she didn't know anything about China, and she had decided to make a film there. I thought it was kind of a crazy idea, but that it could be done because she was so determined.

MF: At that point, she was looking for a Chinese person to travel with her to help with the research and interpretation.

MS: I couldn’t accompany her because it wouldn’t have been useful. I always get into these situations where I feel that, as a Chinese person, it’s hard for me to represent both sides. I had had some bad experiences with Chinese filmmakers who were not used to working with anyone foreign. I foresaw with Michka that I would be put in a position where I might have to solve a lot of these problems. And that that was not what I was good at. That’s why I introduced her to Li Hong.[1]

MF: It's interesting that you just described yourself as a foreigner.

MS: Yeah. I mean, I'm both so that’s why it’s complicated. On the one hand, I'm an outsider to China, but once I'm inside I look Chinese and I'm supposed to be an insider. That puts me in a difficult situation because if there was some sort of doubt or conflict, the Chinese would expect me to side with them.

MF: As you know, Michka had an encyclopedic knowledge of French cinema. She was impressed by your association with Eric Rohmer. She also saw a film that you had made yourself, which she found poetic. That reinforced her desire to have you edit China Me. Poetry was so important to her. So many of her films are either about poetry or have a poetic form. And China Me turned out that way as well. I know that was a big part of your influence when you were editing the film to use poetry to connect all the disparate parts.

MS: When she told me about the woman poet, it got me thinking it could be a leitmotif. We were really in sync about poetry. I took part in the Yamagata documentary dojo and screened China Me, and talked about finding that structure. It was a good example of how a film does not have to move from beginning to end.

MF: I watched it again recently and was really impressed with and moved by the placement of the poem after the sequence of the couple who stay together for the sake of the children. In several of her films, Michka would ask people to pose, and keep filming beyond their comfort level until they revealed themselves. She would then use this to end a sequence. In China Me, the couple stand with their two children. You can sense their discomfort, and the poem resonates perfectly with the sense of loss and emptiness.

MS: Yeah, absolutely. These are things that happen without planning.

MF: She gave people a lot of space to experience her films, and make their own judgements. In China Me, there’s the moment when she is interviewing the entrepreneur about his experience during the Cultural Revolution, but he ends up talking about how big his company has become. And the sequence ends with this wonderful shot where he's takes a phone call. You must have had a shared sensibility to arrive at these little moments because, for me, they're very powerful.

MS: There were other moments, too, like the girls that talked about the Sichuan earthquake. I remember when I saw that, I just thought that, oh, we have to let her talk as much as possible just to stay with the emotion and not cut it. And of course, there was the story of the father with the son who ran away.

MF: Yes, and the scene between the father and his therapist.

MS: I remember looking for reaction shots of the father, and cheating a lot to build up the scene.

MF: There is also that cheat in the interview with the students. It really looks like the young man is talking to the group, but he's not. He’s on his own.

MS: That was really a technique from fiction films.

MF: Were there any points of strong disagreement?

MS: No, never. She was pleasantly surprised that it could work with my method. I think that shows she was willing to try anything even though she was very nervous about it.

MF: You’re talking about how you work alone, and Michka normally liked to sit with the editor.

MS: I can't stand to sit in the same room with the director. Michka was the kind of director who likes to be there and do the ping pong kind of thing. It's completely two different styles of working. When she came to Paris, she knew the rule and was quite anxious about it. Luckily I had a cat and she was allergic so that was a good excuse not to come to my place. Every few hours I would send a message. It was never like I disappeared with the material for a month. So that was reassuring for her, and she found it funny. She said, “if I’d known you worked like this, I could have stayed in Montreal.” But we did get together every few days at her place. I would bring my computer and we would talk. She was so surprised that it worked out.

MF: But it must have been difficult for her all the same.

MS: Michka could do a kind of screen capture of people, and understand intuitively how they are made up. I think she knew she had to leave me alone to edit the film. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did. The leitmotif of the poet is the kind of thing I can only do when I'm working on my own. Basically I'm waiting for the fairy dust to fall and this kind of magic to happen. I get very blocked when I'm sitting with the director editing shot by shot.

Whenever I talk to young people, they ask me about my criteria for choosing projects. And I always say it's not because the project is wonderful or that it's going to win all kinds of awards. No, it's always about people. And that was certainly the case for China Me. It was a really happy experience. It only happened because she knew how to leave an open space for inspiration. I wouldn't say that’s the usual director-editor relationship. It’s more like two artists working together. She really had that trust. And maybe that comes back to what you said in the beginning that she wanted to work with me because of certain things she saw in my film. I think she did say that to me once. She didn't have a fixed idea of how this film would be put together, but, I think what we did really suited her.

[1] Lihong Kong, assistant director, research, interpretation.