20080711/纪录片《中国的宗教信仰复兴》幕后

1 Comment

1. jackjia (Post author)2008 年 07 月 24 日 at 6:28 下午

   Making a doc under China’s watchful eye
   GUY DIXON

   From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

   July 22, 2008 at 3:30 AM EDT

   Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, China’s proclaimed openness to foreign media is being sorely tested, as a Canadian documentary film crew found in the heart of Hebei province.

   It happened when the filmmakers were interviewing a priest on camera. As he answered their questions about the state of religious freedom in China, Father Lu Zhi Zong, a priest in the Catholic enclave of Donglu, a village 150 kilometres south of Beijing, kept glancing over at three local authorities who were monitoring his every word.

   Authorities keep close tabs on Father Lu because his village is a major pilgrimage site, given its shrine to the Virgin Mary. The site, honouring an apparition of Mary that was reported in 1900, annually drew huge crowds of pilgrims before a mid-1990s crackdown by authorities.

   During the interview, the officials videotaped the priest behind the back of Canadian filmmaker Diana Xiaoping Dai. “When I did the interview, I noticed that Father Lu was very nervous. He answered my questions, but I could tell he was nervous,” she said. “Honestly, if I knew they were filming him, I would probably have asked less tough questions.”

   Diana Xiaoping Dai is one of three filmmakers who contributed to the documentary China’s Leap of Faith, which airs this week. (Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail)

   The interview is a key component in the two-part documentary series China’s Leap of Faith, broadcast tonight and tomorrow on Vision TV. The series explores the explosive revival of religions in China and the central government’s policy of recognizing only certain religious groups while at the same time clamping down on any large gatherings or mass pilgrimages.

   Authorities are also interested in what information gets out.

   The local officials “were hanging around, almost crowding in on us, to make sure they heard every word and to make sure we knew they were listening to every word – and that Father Lu knew they were listening to every word,” said Christopher Sumpton, one of the directors of the doc series. “In fact, the officials said they didn’t want us to use some of his answers and that they would like to take the tape. We refused, and we went through a number of negotiations. Eventually, we got out of there with the tape.”

   He added that the encounter wasn’t hostile enough to get physical, “but I was concerned it would get to that.”

   Dai’s ability to conduct interviews in Chinese and her sensitivity to the political nuances were essential. “She is able culturally to know how far to go and to see how people were reacting, and to push them a little further,” Sumpton said, but added: “As responsible filmmakers and fellow humans, we don’t want them to get into trouble. So if we egg them on and make them say things that can be troublesome for them, that’s not good for us to do. However, we want them to reveal as much as they comfortably can. So that kind of a dance had to be danced the entire time during the interview.”

   Yet at first, the documentary-makers had an easy time getting permission to shoot in China.

   The Chinese consulate in Toronto had smoothed the way, largely due to Dai’s reputation as the former host and producer of Omni News’ Canadian Chinese-language news broadcast. Then China’s State Administration for Radio and Television, which among its many oversight duties handles foreign media, got involved. It assigned local fixers (often filmmakers themselves) to make flight arrangements for the Canadians, book hotels and secure film permits in each province and locale.

   “The bureaucracy at every level had to be contacted,” Sumpton said, “and for these people from the State Administration for Radio and Television, that was the job for which we paid them. At the same time, they accompany you everywhere, and they are there to make sure you stay within the pre-arranged envelope.”

   Still, “there are so many regulations, and the laws are often unclear … Everything is up for negotiation,” he said. “And that’s how it was when we were shooting. We would know that we were not supposed to talk to this person, but we might go over and talk to them on the spur of the moment. It might make our fixer uncomfortable, but he would kind of look the other way.”

   Dai, Sumpton and the series’s other director, Paul Webster, were granted the highest level of co-operation when they were permitted to interview the central government’s minister of religion, Ye Xiao Wen.

   “We were extremely surprised that we were allowed to do it,” noted Sumpton. “We thought that we would be turned down. So I think that demonstrates something. Four or five years ago, we couldn’t have done this, for sure. Every year there is change and more freedom, and more openness to the outside.”

   And yet there’s a wide gulf between top-level officials and local cadres, and it’s the hurdle more foreign crews will face as they fan out beyond Beijing, leading up to and during the Olympic Games. Those behind-the-scenes political mechanics could affect what gets reported by foreign media this summer and how it’s reported.

   “The local level and the national level may not be on the same wavelength,” Sumpton said. “The local officials may be fairly old-fashioned, more conservative or traditionalist – and frankly more driven by power and ego. They have the latitude. It’s their zone. They are the bosses in that area. It doesn’t matter what the national government says in some ways.”

   China’s Leap of Faith airs on Vision TV today and tomorrow at 9 p.m.

   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080722.wchina22/BNStory/Entertainment/home

   登录以回复 ↓