fig. a: This is Not a Poster
As of early March of 2020, plans were in place to host the talented Canadian documentary filmmaker Yung Chang at the Film House in St. Catharines, Ontario so that he might introduce his latest film, This is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019), attend the screening, and participate in a Q & A session with the audience afterwards.
A little over a week later, aspects of the lockdown began to go into effect, including the termination of face-to-face classes at Brock University where I teach, and the cancellation of all events at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, including film screenings at the Film House, and, by extension, any and all Brock University Film Society events.
When our plan to bring Chang to town in person was scrapped for obvious reasons, I conducted a Zoom interview with him in late May 2020 instead and we figured out a way to make the film available to local audiences via the "Film House at Home" program (Thank you, Film House! Thank you, Blue Ice Docs!).
What was meant to be a 15-minute interview turned into something closer to a 60-minute one, but I managed to edit it down to a 15-minute version (plus intro) that focuses in large part on one of my favourite parts of the discussion: the intricate editing of "This is Not a Movie." If you're interested, you can find that edit here .
If, however, you’d prefer to get a sense of the full scope of the interview, what you’ll find below is a transcription, one that’s been edited for clarity and concision.
By the fall of 2020, Chang’s film was getting a wider release in the United States and receiving widespread (and well-deserved) critical acclaim. Consequently, Chang was involved in a whole new round of promotional appearances, some of them on his own, and some of them with Fisk himself. And then the unthinkable happened: Robert Fisk died, at the age of 74, the apparent victim of a severe stroke. In its obituary, The New York Times quoted from This is Not a Movie directly: “You cannot get near the truth without being there.” The choice was fitting. Not only was Chang’s film the final and most exhaustive attempt to come to terms with Fisk and his work on screen, but Chang himself appeared to have taken Fisk’s dictum to heart in the making of the film—he’d followed his subject to Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria, among other places, in order to get the story, in order to capture the man, his journalism, and his legacy.
Since that time the tributes to Fisk have continued to pour in from around the world, and This is Not a Movie has made many Best Films of 2020 lists.
R.I.P. Robert Fisk, 1946-2010.
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Hello, everyone! Hello, Film House fans! Hello, Brock University Film Society fans! Welcome to an experiment in #stayhome viewing.
Today we’ll be holding a conversation that brings together two different people—myself and my guest speaker—in two different cities—St. Catharines, Ontario and Toronto, Ontario—united on screen through the miracle of modern videoconferencing.
I’ll be talking to one of the most talented directors working in Canada today, a leading documentary filmmaker with an international profile: Yung Chang.
Chang has been making waves with his work since his feature film debut in 2007, Up the Yangtze, a powerful and poignant travelogue of a voyage by boat—on a cruise ship—up the Yangtze river—one that studied the impact of the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam on the region.
Since then Chang has continued to receive widespread acclaim at home and abroad for such films as China Heavyweight, which dealt with the rise of boxing in contemporary China; The Fruit Hunters, a film about fruit, especially exotic fruit, and the characters who obsess over them; and Gatekeeper, a film about suicide and societal taboos in Japan.
His latest film is the film we’ll be discussing tonight and which you’ll have a chance to screen after this intro, if you haven’t had a chance to do so yet. That film is This is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth.
It might very well be Chang’s most ambitious film to date. It’s a film that has broad appeal for those with an interest in journalism, in political science, in the history and politics of the Middle East, in wars and conflict zones, and in documentary form. And for all of these reasons, it’s a film that is sure to spark analysis and conversation for years to come.
fig. b: the miracle of modern videoconferencing
AK: Yung, great to see you again!
So, we’re talking about This is Not a Movie, your latest feature film. This is a film that is a number of things, but it’s essentially a profile of a single person, the journalist Robert Fisk. For those who might not be familiar with his work and the many accolades he’s received over the decades, what’s your 30-second elevator synopsis of Fisk and his career?
YC: Robert Fisk… Well, he’s one of the most well-known British journalists and one of the most lauded foreign correspondents anywhere…. He writes for the newspaper The Independent in the UK. He’s the only international journalist to have interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times. He’s had a storied career. He’s 75 now—he’s working, lives in Beirut. He’s written a few tomes on his experiences as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East that have become essential readings on the region. He’s someone who often writes on behalf of those whose voices are left out of the mainstream media’s accounts of the the region, and someone who examines stories that other journalists might not.
AK: I know this project was long in the making and a true labour of love. How did this project first come together? What was the impetus? What attracted you to the project? And what were your first conversations/interactions with Fisk like?
YC: I went to Concordia University in the ‘90s. I was part of the Fine Arts community there. And I remember we would gather in this one café—Café X. That was the place where all the activists would hang out. And you could use their crappy computer and their dial up connection, and we would get on Z Net and access Z magazine and read these columns by journalists and thinkers from around the world. And specifically I’m thinking of Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein—all the prominent leftist voices. And Robert Fisk was there, too. And around 9/11 and its immediate aftermath I really gravitated to his writings. They revealed perspectives that I just wasn’t getting elsewhere at the time and that I was yearning for in my attempts to understand what was happening in response to the September 11th attacks.
Fast forward to 2016 and that fateful night of November 8 and the Presidential Election. I think the mainstream media failed us greatly on that occasion. That had me thinking about my media literacy again. That was a wake-up call. We have to be our own custodians when it comes to being informed.
And right around that time I received a phone call from the National Film Board with the idea of making a film about Robert Fisk. The two things collided and I said to myself: “serendipity.” So I went to Beirut, where Robert Fisk lives, and I met with him, and I was very nervous. I thought to myself, “It’s going to be scary to meet this giant of journalism.” And, in fact, he wasn’t intimidating at all. He’s charming, funny, witty—it was a bit disarming, actually. And I realized he’s a guy I could get along with. He’s a guy I could potentially spend a couple of years making a film about. Because that’s important. Can you foresee this connection with your subject? And I thought there was something there.
What really settled it for me was that we were walking through the streets of Beirut. And he’s like an encyclopedia. He has a sharp memory—instant recall—and boundless energy. So we’re walking through the streets and he’s able to point out specific historical references—from the days of the Roman Empire to recent assassinations. And to me that discourse was something that provided the structure of the movie—a film that could leap back and forth between times, while examining the cyclical nature of history.
So I knew I had something there, but, as for the rest, this was the first time in my career that I had no idea how to make this film. I don’t know the subject of the Middle East. So I had to learn, and being able to be there [Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere] was really important. And as Robert says, I was something of a blank slate. The fact that I wasn’t coming in with preconceived judgments was a good thing.
Sorry, that’s a long-winded answer.
AK: That’s okay. Continue.
YC: I got a lot of encouragement from my producers. They told me, “You don’t have to know how to make this film. Go in and go with your instincts.” And what happened was that the film was very rigorously structured in the editing room. I worked with a remarkable editor, Mike Munn—he cut Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell and Peter Mettler’s Picture of Light. He’s very patient and detail-oriented. He carved out these very layered, organic moments where subtext and theme would just roll into the next scene.
For me, when I watch This is Not a Movie, it doesn’t really trip me up. It’s layered, and it’s this long essay, in a sense. It’s a profile of Robert Fisk, but it’s a film that’s also meant to spark discussions and debates amongst friends and family on the nature of truth and the truth about journalism.
AK: This is a film that’s very much about the Middle East and its politics, and how this region and its tensions are covered in the media by journalists. It’s also film about being a foreign correspondent whose beat is wars and conflict zones. But more generally it’s a film about the art, the craft, and the ethics of journalism. What was the most surprising thing that you learned about journalism from the making of this film?
YC: For me, what was surprising was realizing that journalism is essentially storytelling. It’s very subjective. For Robert, he’s always looking for that arc.
Just to rewind a little bit. The structure of the film is also built around the arc of a character—and that is Robert Fisk’s transformation from a young, idealistic journalist to a jaded, grizzled journalist at the end of the film. And part of that arc was his connection to [Alfred] Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent and cinema and storytelling.
AK: That’s a great moment in the film, too.
YC: Yeah, I love that moment. It’s not in the movie, but initially [Fisk] was going to become a film critic. So he knows everything about cinema. He knows about the French New Wave—that’s his favourite film movement. He really knows his stuff. So he understands editing, and the construction of story. And certainly in terms of the written word and language, he’s an expert. And so he’s very attuned to storytelling, and for me that was quite illuminating. “Oh, yeah, [when we’re dealing with journalism,] we are in a way telling stories…”
But he’s created for himself a rigorous approach to journalism, which is defined by his reporting on the side of those who suffer and to question authority. These ideas have become a mantra for him, they are what keep him grounded—to the point of controversy. He’s willing to go to that edge because that’s what he believes—that’s his integrity. That was something that I learned that was surprising to me, and that makes him so unique as a personality and as a journalist.
Someone like Fisk can push through all the muck and mire of truth online because his system of gathering knowledge goes well beyond the Internet.
AK: There’s that one moment in the film that I really like where he’s talking about the voice of his journalism, and how when he writes a piece he’s thinking about it in a conversational sense and he really wants to be as clear as possible and to really communicate with his reader and to not make things impenetrable. I found that interesting—his concern with just being understood and reaching a vast number of readers. He wants to be a public intellectual in addition to being a standup journalist.
YC: Yeah, that’s true. He’s close with Noah Chomsky. Edward Said was a very close friend of his. These are his inspirations—mentors, even. If you’re not familiar with his work, I would recommend his books—Pity the Nation and The Great War for Civilisation. They’re emotional, raw, eloquently written. And you can access all the work that he references in our film—all the columns he’s written—are available on the Independent website. Just search “Robert Fisk Independent” and you’ll come up with all the articles—and I recommend reading through those. In addition, on the Independent website we have included some deleted scenes from the film, one of which we had to cut because it didn’t fit the overall tone of the film. But it’s a car chase scene and it takes place on the streets of Beirut as he’s pursuing an environmental story. And in it you get to see Fisk in his element, wanting to get the story, being the detective.
AK: I want to come back to the issue of editing that you mentioned earlier. The editing in the film is oftentimes breathtaking. The first time my breath was taken away was in the opening minute-two minutes of the film. There’s that transition between Iran in the early 1980s and Syria recently, in the last few years. And it’s just such a subtle cut—the first time you see it—and such an incredible transition. It sets a tone. The editing right from the start is impressive. One thing that struck me—it’s the only example I can think of in your work where you were working with archival material a lot. I wonder if you could tell us about that. At what point in time in the project was it obvious that it would have that archival element to it? What was the archival material that you had access to? And did that aspect of the project influence the original material that you were shooting? Or did that archival angle come up later in the game?
YC: That’s a great question. Mike and I approached the story with the idea that we had two pieces of archival material—maybe three—that were essential. One of them was this series that Fisk was involved with as its host in the early 1990s called From Beirut to Bosnia. That was a crucial piece. We had three different archival films that documented Fisk in different eras in his life. We had the BBC documentary that he did in Northern Ireland—when he had long hair and kind of had a resemblance to a Woody Allen-type character. And then we had the ‘90s with From Beirut to Bosnia. And then we had our contemporary material. And then in between we had another documentary about the Times of London—the one where Fisk talks about [Rupert] Murdoch. So those we had as sources, but we had no idea how to fit them into the film. But we knew we would want to be able to jump between times. And the original impetus for that was that I wanted to be able to interview Fisk and get him to talk about things and reference something—and then we jump to some footage that related to that reference. And it was impossible to figure out how to do that. And quickly we realized that the form had to grow out of the editing process organically.
The opening sequence was actually built around a bit of audio on cassette that Fisk had in his archives. He had all of these field recordings that he did. And I listened to them all and I found the bit that we used in the opening. But all we had was just sound—analogue sound—with no image. And we were struggling to find a way to visualize it. I didn’t want to do recreation. Anyway, one day in the editing room we received a hard drive. We put it in and turned it on, and here were images related to the actual moments caught on that audiocassette, and you see Fisk in it. This was archive material from the BBC. Fisk realized that at the time that the audio was recorded he was with this cinematographer named Gavin Hewitt—a journalist—who was filming. It’s not exactly in synch, but we managed to find the moments where it felt like it was aligned, and that’s what you have there. It was a remarkable moment—to discover that.
We knew we wanted to punch in pretty quick—bring you right into the story of Robert Fisk’s career very quickly and succinctly. And that magical edit to the present really defines the structure of the movie. It signals the way the film is going to flow. It gives the audience a sense of the way the movie is going to move back and forth across time. So to me, that really is one of my favourite moments in the film. And that’s the story behind it.
The editing process itself—it took one year to edit. I did 16 hours of interviews with Fisk and that’s the foundation of the voice of the film. That series of conversations determined where we could go with the film—that, combined with what we filmed with him in person and on location.
Thankfully, Mike Munn is so detail-oriented in his editing that he cut everything we shot into scenes, and logged it so meticulously, so that we could easily move things around so that we could figure out how to structure the film. It was a puzzle that we had to figure out.
I often say that it’s a relentless film because there’s so much information coming at the viewer. But we had to figure out ways to build in breaths to allow the audience to let the material sink in and do so in such a way that they add to the next moments.
I learned a lot through the editing of this film.
AK: It’s an intricate film. It’s clear that a lot of work and a lot of thought went into it. The transitions are oftentimes fascinating. Both in terms of where they take us, but also in terms of how they’re constructed. When you’re looking at its form, it’s a really interesting film to study on that level.
I’m conscious of the time, so I’m going to move things along a bit and ask you a question that’s a little shorter.
For me, one of the most lasting impressions from the film has to do with Fisk’s office, with his filing system, and with his meticulous approach to researching and archiving. Do you remember the impression this system of his left on you the first time you witnessed it? And I guess the follow-up question would be, have you become more organized since meeting Fisk? [laughs]
fig. c: Chang’s office and his ever-expressive hands
YC: As you ask me this, I look around me [laughs at the sight of the clutter of his office]…. I just moved into this house in Toronto. Actually, it’s been about a year. So I’ve got boxes and boxes of my own personal archives, and they’re not organized as meticulously as Fisk’s. And I also do not have a PhD, so I haven’t adopted the methods of research and organization that he did.
He’s built this cataloguing system that’s perfect for his way of approaching his writing and his research. He recalls and remembers where everything is. He knows where to find something and he can pull that item out—immediately. And like he says in the film, he has documents that do not exist online. Not everything is on the Internet, believe it or not. So I think his system is invaluable. And that, to me, was illuminating.
He has this analogue approach to work that is extremely valid, but it is overwhelming to walk into his office like that [because of its clutter and its enormous number of files]. Fisk struggles with technology and his computer as remarked upon in the movie. His desktop on his computer—he actually doesn’t like to put things in folders because he worries that it disappears—and so everything is on his desktop—thousands of documents! But that’s how he finds things…
This is an archive film. And, ironically, in making this film we learned that the hard material—the actual analogue material—is often the best way to archive something, rather than to digitize it and put it online. That’s a whole other conversation.
Another long-winded answer: “Robert’s Archives.” [laughs]
AK: I just love those scenes with his files and his filing system. And the way you captured it with the camera was amazing. It really gets you to think about what choices we make when we archive things.
YC: Yeah, and that relates to the final note of the film. The film follows the arc of this character who’s become a jaded journalist by the end. And the least that a journalist can do is keep a record so that nobody can question whether something did or did not happen. I think that’s crucial.
AK: Especially these days when truth is under fire.
Clearly we’re in the era of #stayhome cinema right now, otherwise we’d be conducting this interview on stage in St. Catharines. There would be an audience in front of us. The downside is that we’re in different cities—we’re not together and we can’t interact with each other directly. And there isn’t an audience with us in the moment. The upside is that we’re able to overcome geography and many more people have the opportunity to witness this discussion. But people are actively looking for good material to watch these days, and many people who watch This is Not a Movie will surely be looking to watch more of your films. Any tips on how they can do so?
YC: The easiest way is to just go to my website: yungfilms.com. You can find links to things there, and you can find all the work I’ve done. What would we do if didn’t have the Internet during a pandemic?
I’ve got a question for you, Anthony. You’re the music expert. [ed: Umm, not really…]
U2 wrote a song about Robert Fisk.
AK: Oh, really? I didn’t know that.
YC: It’s at the end of our film, during the end credits. It’s called “Cedars of Lebanon.” Bono loves Robert Fisk, and he wrote this song for him.
Some of the lyrics are a little bit off, but some of them are so perfect. I have my thoughts about U2. [laughs] I know you do, too. [ed: Yes, indeed.]
Bono gave us the permission to use the song. He wanted us to use it. But actually we had to go to Harold Budd and Brian Eno because the song involves a sample from an album they had done back in the day—a beautiful album. So the music is quite nice because it’s literally a Brian Eno and Harold Budd tune.
You didn’t hear that song at the premiere at TIFF because we didn’t have it at that time. We got it later for our international premiere at IDFA [International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam].
AK: Okay, that makes sense, because when I watched the film again the other day, I didn’t remember that song. That’s interesting.
Lastly, what’s in store for Yung Chang? What are some new and/or upcoming projects that you can tell us about?
YC: So I’m going back to China now. China, having been through what we’re going through now, and having come out of it to a certain extent, is opening up to filming. So I just got greenlit for a new China-Canada co-production and it’s about hockey in China. This is going to be a pretty wild story. It’s got great access. It’s going to follow the rise of a major sport in China up to the 2022 Olympics where the Chinese national hockey team is in Group A with all the top hockey teams. And the people involved in creating the Chinese team include Wayne Gretzky, and a general manager from Toronto who works with a Russian oligarch. It involves billionaires. It involves Chinese-Canadians who have to give up their Canadian passport in order to play on the national team. There’s a lot at stake in the story. I’m interested in modern relationships between countries, and I think this story will be a microcosm of that through what we’re calling “hockey diplomacy.”
AK: Actually, I wanted to ask you. I recently watched China Heavyweight again, and there’s one scene where one of the Chinese boxers was wearing a Habs [Montreal Canadiens] cap. Was that a gift from you?
YC: [laughter] That was definitely a gift from me! I’ve had my obsession with hockey, and certainly with the Habs. I’ve had to let that go a little, because that obsession can become painful.
I recall being in China not so long ago and following the Habs in the playoffs. I’d be putting on my jersey at 3:00 a.m. in China and trying to find the Internet connection to watch these playoff games.
Anyway, it’s called Red Stars. That’s the working title. And hopefully there will be something good that comes out of that.
And I’ve got another film I’m working on: a pandemic film. Actually, there’s two projects. One that I worked on with my partner that you’ll see in the next few of months [that film is Pandemic19 , directed by Yung Chang and Annie Katsura Rollins] and another longer film that I’m not allowed to talk about yet that I’m hoping will be quite moving and revealing.
AK: Excellent! Thank you so much, Yung!
YC: Thanks, Anthony! Great to see you! I shaved my moustache. Dang it! I wanted to go against the whole pandemic shaving thing. I could have decided not to shave, but I couldn’t do it. I thought if I do that I’m going to sink deep into a funk if I let myself go.
AK: It would just be a “playoff beard.” Don’t worry about it. [laughter]
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THANK YOU!
BON CINEMA!
aj