Fabien Tietke: One of the features that impressed us all very much about REPUBLIC was the way that it fixes its own issues. I am referring to moments like when Eryang realizes that Xi Jinping’s writings aren’t very hippiesque after all. Or when the young woman is sleeping on the loft bed and the young man that wants to have sex with her asks her boyfriend for permission, instead of her, before he climbs up the ladder. She then sets him straight and punches him. My question is, did all these moments seem as crucial during the shooting, and did you have a very specific concept for including them in the film? Or did they all just emerge in editing?
Jin Jiang: Republic as a place is based on the idea of communism and of a place where women are free and equal. That scene with the young woman happened the same day that Eryang was hit by something and temporarily lost consciousness. The guy giving consent was VT. The guy who was trying to climb up the ladder on the other hand was under the influence of LSD. He wanted to have sex with the young woman and was rejected. As you said, the young woman – whose name is Jiaojiao – beat him up. Like many other women in the Republic Jiaojiao has a very clear feminist perspective. And as she says in her own words, she is not anybody's doll and she is also not VT's possession. I knew this moment was going to be part of the film when it happened.
I was trying to minimize my impact, and protagonists let me be present while their life unfolded
FT: How can we imagine the set up of the shooting? Could you give us an idea? Were you around there all the time and just hoped for something to happen? And how much time did you spend in the Republic?
JJ: I started shooting in August 2020, and finished the last shot in February 2022. The footage accumulated to around 400 hours. So I spend a lot of time in that place. I was there for a bit more than four months in total.
Barbara Wurm: Did you feel part of the Republic while you were shooting? Do you still feel part of it?
JJ: Definitely. I also contributed to the rent for the Republic during the later part of the shooting. They had this board or council, which has somewhere between four to six members. They paid the rent every three months, split between them. I was part of the board during the final two years of shooting. I still have a very close connection with the members of the Republic until today.
FT: Your previous film, THE BROKEN RIDGE, was about an elderly couple living in their own world – namely some caves in the mountains. Eryang is living in the Republic, a very particular space in Beijing. There is a recurring theme of people creating their own worlds in your films. What fascinates you about this kind of world building, of people creating their own spaces?
JJ: Documenting people creating their own worlds has become a very important issue in my movies. When I was shooting my first two films I already knew what the next film would be. And after REPUBLIC, which focuses on young adults, my next film will be about middle-aged people in China. In the end, these four films will be about a child, about an old couple, and about young and middle-aged people. Together, they can be seen as a form of shared portrait of Chinese people today.
But the main reason why I chose to film life in the Republic and the old couple living in the mountains is because they are rarely portrayed in mainstream media. If they are not being documented by filmmakers, their stories will never be told. There are many people like them and their stories are very much worth being told.
FT: I’m a bit surprised that you regard the protagonists in REPUBLIC as typical for the way of life in Chinese society today. The way people live in the Republic strikes me as rather exceptional for almost every society – in the way they have their own space and share it, while also sharing resources like money and food and whatever else.
JJ: In one way they are kind of special, but then again not really. The media sometimes calls them a subculture, but I prefer not to use that word. Actually the number of young people living like this in China is not small. You may be surprised by that, but based on the fast development of China's economy, and because of the wealth that people have accumulated in recent years, because of the rising of consumerism, because of the popularity of internet loans, there are many young people living in a similar way or facing similar problems as the protagonists of REPUBLIC. It also echoes the time before the financial crisis in the United States. Or you can trace it back to the Beat Generation of the United States.
When Eryang had money to spend, he was rich and happy, which in turn influenced his choice of music. And when he had no money, he was poor and sad, and that influenced his music choice as well.
FT: Let me ask about the music in the film. There is a lot of classic pop, classic singer-songwriter music from the US, and jazz. I would be interested to hear if that kind of music has any special role among young people in the People's Republic at the moment.
JJ: Many people living in the Republic see Woodstock as a life guide for themselves. They watched the Martin Scorsese film about Woodstock many, many times. They're obsessed with that time. And they also mimic the lifestyle of people of that time. The music in Republic is mostly picked or played by Eryang himself, and occasionally by the guests who visit. The psychedelic guitar solo that you hear in the film is actually played by Eryang. The music is not edited in; it is part of the scene, and you can't separate it from the conversations. As in my previous films, I have not used a musical score. But I feel very lucky that the music matches with the film very well.
FT: About halfway through the film, there's a sudden change of mood. Eryang seems to be more sober and the credit card debts are catching up with him. How did that change come about? Did anything special happened at that time?
JJ: I usually stick with the chronological order in which things happen. To me that puts documentary film closer to reality. I don’t think that as a documentarist I should control or influence my protagonists. So what seems like a script is actually representative of reality. Eryang’s lifestyle led to what we see. He took an internet loan that he could not pay back. Then he took another loan to pay back his previous one. And after a few loans, he could not sustain his lifestyle anymore. The financial chain was doomed to collapse one way or another. That happened in the middle of 2021, about halfway during the filming. That change was so sudden because the collapse of his financial sustainability happened very suddenly. Once there's one internet loan company that refuses to give you money, then the other companies will instantly know, and all of a sudden you have no financial sources at all. The change of mood is very easy to explain. When Eryang had money to spend, he was rich and happy, which in turn influenced his choice of music. And when he had no money, he was poor and sad, and that influenced his music choice as well. So his changes in mood influenced his lifestyle, and that in turn influenced the film.
FT: You said that you joined the board of Republic for the final two years of the shooting. In the theory of documentary film, there's this huge debate about how involved a filmmaker should get with his protagonists or the things he's shooting. What is your position on these questions?
JJ: It's a very subtle question, because your relationship with the subjects you’re filming is a very crucial part of making a documentary. The way I deal with it is that once I pick up the camera I never, or seldom, speak with anymore, so that people in front of the camera know that I am filming. I developed this method when I was working with children in my first feature, SHANG’AJIA. Children are so active that they always want to interact with you. So whenever one of the children wanted to interact or play with me, I would turn off the camera and stop working. But after a few rounds, the kids understood that they were interrupting me. So after a while, they stopped interacting with me when I was shooting and I was able to work undisturbed. I used the same method in the Republic. I was using a very small camera and was shooting alone. Thus, even though it is a very chaotic place, my method of film-making was respected. In this way I was able to film freely, observationally, without being interrupted and without interrupting what was happening. I was trying to minimize my impact, and protagonists let me be present while their life unfolded.
Let me add one thing: what might seem like a transaction to me is the bare minimum of what a friend can do in these situations. The elderly couple from my previous film were lacking almost everything up there in the mountains. So when I was shooting there, I always brought flour or oil. After all, I was living in that place as well and had to eat and drink. In the Republic, I felt that paying the rent was the least thing I could do. Because just like before, I was living there for some time, and I was eating with them. To me that's not a transaction, it's just the relationship between people, between friends.
BW: We all really liked the way REPUBLIC captured life in a community that is some kind of alternative to a harsh reality. At one point Eryang is very openly talking and asking questions about freedom. He is referring to the lack of freedom of speech. Do you see your film as a comment of this absence of freedom of speech in the People’s Republic? Do you think about censorship when you make a film like that?
JJ: I grew up in China and went to school and university there. From the way I grew up, the control of freedom is deep down in my brain. It almost feels like that part of my brain has been cut off. Because of my education in China, I do not think that the way I understand society is the same way liberals in the Western world understand it. That’s something that cannot be compensated for in any way, because that's how the reality is. That all has a great impact on my filmmaking and on every single of the decision I take as a filmmaker, like how to frame this shot, or what to avoid.
When making a movie, I always keep a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities, like a turtle ready to hide its neck. Fame or respect is not what I’m after. All I want is to finish my work safely. After completing the films in China, I may face pressure to leave. I understand that I am not superman, and like every Chinese person, I cannot undo the effects of censorship on me and others. I can only express myself through making films, and the pursuit of freedom, I have to accept the fact that my films can never be showed on big screens in China – they will never get past domestic censorship.
You have to consider that the film was made during the pandemic. It was a time during which the Chinese government had shut down many cities, and the authorities controlled the freedom of speech very harshly. So what happens in the Republic and in the film is a kind of freedom, because compared to what other people in China were experiencing during the pandemic, they were comparatively free. But I do not think that the protagonists in REPUBLIC actually understand what true freedom is. It's almost like you cannot imagine the taste of a hamburger if you never have tasted one. They all grew up in the same environment as I – and everyone in China – grew up in. The way they are affected by the censorship and the political context means they have not found their way into freedom. The freedom that they constantly talk about is not the same freedom Western people speak about. What they are experiencing is not real freedom. It may seem as if they are talking about freedom and living it. But it's not the same, because the ideology is constantly in the back of their mind. Just like it is in my mind.
Interpreter: Ningxin Xie
