The next time, I went broader, to go out and film outside of my village. Is social media ready for a Covid-19 vaccine? I was really excited, because I became pregnant. Directed by Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang, Jialing Zhang. Later, after she'd moved to the United States and had a son of her own, she decided to look deeper at the policy she'd grown up with. ONE CHILD NATION 4 Timeline of the Policy When Mao Zedong seized national power in 1949, he initially argued that having a large and rapidly increasing population was a blessing for China, rather than a curse. How do we cover it when it’s happening here? It was a real discovery of the past. After moving to the United States and getting pregnant with her first child in 2017, Wang returned to China in an effort to "explore the direct effects of the 'population war' on her family... acquaintances from her rural village, midwives, family planning officials, journalists and artists". When I would go, she would monitor me using a GPS so she could see where I was, down to every second, every minute. She says that she and Zhang, whom she met in graduate school in the United States, were "surprised to realize how much of what we'd internalized and normalized now seems bizarre and shocking. Why didn’t they assert some kind of opposition to this policy?” As you worked on the film, did you come to an answer about that? But I think the other probable reason was I wanted to know her experience and what she witnessed, and wasn’t asking her to criticize the policy. [2], The film opened at one theater in New York City and one in Los Angeles and grossed $22,244 in its opening weekend, with Amazon reporting "sold-out shows throughout the weekend". Her own parents had two children, since the law made an exception for families living in rural areas, as long as the children were at least five years apart — but not until after her mother narrowly escaped involuntary sterilization. Yes. It received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary. So I started asking my mom what it was like for her when she was pregnant with me — what she experienced and what she witnessed. The Trump legal team’s failed Four Seasons press conference, explained. After that, they actually invited me to show my second film in China, so I knew that it passed through censorship. The policy’s mental, physical, and emotional toll on the country, especially its women, was tremendous. I went in expecting what she would say. So I went with my husband and our 2-month-old infant. She explores the truth behind her own family’s personal tragedies, the pervasive propaganda and “good for the country” mindset that led local villagers to implement the national policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations of their neighbors. Sign up for the Your subjects had to deal with them too — how did you approach them, knowing you were asking them to take a risk just by participating? How did you approach that topic, especially knowing that American audiences would be watching the film, too? I remember when I first came to the US and learned about the restriction on abortions in the US. I figured I could use that opportunity and take the trip to present my second film, but also film more. How are you doing?”. Election week memes turned the 2020 presidential race into K-pop-style fandom, Alex Trebek’s last episode of Jeopardy will air on Christmas Day, Jeopardy host Alex Trebek has died after 36 years of hosting the show, SNL’s cold open took some parting shots at Donald Trump, The songs that made America dance in the streets this weekend. [Without that outside exposure,] there was little chance that Hooligan Sparrow would be seen there. [Note: Wang’s 2016 documentary Hooligan Sparrow tells the story of a Chinese activist who must flee local governments, national secret police, and her own neighbors after seeking justice for six girls who were abused by their elementary school principal.]. You may opt-out by. With our producers, we created some emergency plans for if I lost touch with her for two hours, or three hours, or 12 hours — for each situation, we had a response, like a list of on-the-ground people who could help me if anything happened. She cries when she imagines the childhood they might have had together, saying, “I hope someday she'll come back.”. Sometimes people couldn’t see how forced state abortions and the state limiting access to abortions are quite similar; they are both the government trying to control women’s bodies and trying to control women’s reproductive rights. [5], David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a valuable record and a sober but frightening illustration of the dark side of this government-controlled experiment" and praised the editing and musical score.[2]. Making this film, I also had a lot of conversations with people about the topic, and I was surprised. Some people might watch the film and ask, “Well, why didn’t people stand up against the government? She spoke with a former family planning official named Jiang Shuqin, who proudly recalls her years as a “creator of family bliss” by implementing the one-child policy. ", Some of that propaganda was superficially benign — one slogan stenciled on the side of a building, for instance, read "Fewer and better births, happiness throughout your whole life" — but much of it was threatening, and even grotesque. There was a possibility that the government would not allow me to enter the country. When I first saw One Child Nation, it was with an American audience, at the Sundance Film Festival. I recently spoke with Wang by phone about the risks she took making the film, the hot-button topics it confronts, and what she learned about propaganda while she worked on it. The lack of agenda in a film like this is striking, because you do have a point of view about the policy, but you’re focused more on the human toll of the policy, both in China and around the world. [6], Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=One_Child_Nation&oldid=960411993, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 June 2020, at 20:26. We both lived in the same village. Get our newsletter in your inbox twice a week. I was the executioner. It was a really complicated process. Her home is filled with tokens of gratitude. And then if the situation escalated, we would have an outer circle of institutions and funders in the US that we could reach out to. And that’s also why I felt it’s really important for Chinese people to understand their own history. So when I went to see her, she was really, really happy. It wasn’t like I went with an agenda or something. What choice would I make? She spoke with a former trafficker who says he sold as many as 10,000 babies to state-owned orphanages, and, ironically, would eventually go to prison for it. Like many of … And I think the biggest lesson that I learned — there were so many surprises and discoveries that I had while making this film, but the biggest lesson was that I have more awareness of how propaganda works and how a government could manipulate and shape people’s minds to advance its own agenda. After a while, I decided to test the waters and see how the government would react if I went back. The state gave the orders, but I carried it out." And most people probably don’t think about filmmakers having to deal with these sorts of risks. Our leaders were prophetic. She continues, "I was the one who killed. So the first question I asked was, “How many babies did you deliver throughout your career?” And I expected that she would be very proud and say, “Oh, I delivered this many people, this many babies.” Instead, she didn’t remember. The Chinese government boasts that the policy, in place for 35 years, helped to prevent 400 million births, and ensured a higher quality of life for those children who were born. It always felt like a big family. Like many of the people she spoke to, including her own family members, she simply accepted the policy at face value. So I think that probably also made her feel comfortable to talk about it. Looking back, I think she was open partly because we know each other and I was an insider. How did you think about who your audience was, and how did you want them to be affected? So, I really hope that Chinese people can see the film and be aware of what happened, because that’s the first step of any change: to have awareness. Everybody has the same last name. Digging into this policy poses a lot of risks for you, personally, as well as for the people you talked to. 10 ways Biden plans to fight climate change, with or without Congress. What surprised me was how open she was. If everyone who experiences an atrocity first-hand dies, or is sent to prison, Wang says, invoking the Tiananmen Square protests as one example, then future generations will know only what the state wants them to know. I even thought I was going to ask her a bunch of warm-up questions and try to get to the difficult ones later. Wang traveled to China twice during the making of One Child Nation, spending two weeks there on each trip. The idea was, I’m not going to try to film outside of my family or in public. One Child Nation is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang about the fallout of China's one-child policy that lasted from 1979 to 2015. The amount and depth of propaganda each person was exposed to was horrifying. One Child Nation begins with Wang sharing her own biography as a Chinese national who was born in 1985 and spent her formative years being propagandized by the Communist Party.
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