Songs My Brothers Taught Me INTERVIEW

I was working as a Theatre Manager at the AFI Film Fest this last fall, where this film screened to a packed house. After already working several long days on my feet, I shuffled into the theatre to check the audio and visuals of the film and give my projectionist the A-OK. I had absolutely zero idea what the film even was, except that it was made by a Chinese director, Chloe Zhao. The opening scene was so beautiful, I bolted out of the theatre and asked over my walkie if everyone was okay with me watching this film. I was so tired and needed a break anyway. The only seat left was in the front row right in the middle. I sat down, neck craned all the way back and wondered if it was worth the physical discomfort of the front row. It was.

The film is a narrative document of Lakota life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The story focuses on brother and sister Johnny and Jashaun as they cope with Johnny wanting to move away with his girlfriend to Los Angeles. They also deal with their absent parents, the tribe’s collective alcoholism and lack of money and opportunity.

The cinematography, done by her partner Joshua James Richards is stunning! That is what initially caught my attention when I had stepped into the theatre. I knew right then that no matter what the story was going to be, I was already enveloped into it. Richards captures the actors and the location in a manner that feels personal and delicate. You don’t want to look away from a single frame in the whole film. The light is captured perfectly, whether from the setting sun, a fire’s flames or basement light bulbs.

While watching, I felt as though every scene could have been either fiction or non-fiction. Zhao later confirmed that several scenes often blurred those lines and she allowed for some actor improvisation. (Spoiler!) The scene of Jashaun discovering her burned down house was real, which proves Zhao’s ability to shoot honestly and seamlessly. The scene doesn’t feel any more honest than the scripted scenes, like when we see Johnny struggle at the dinner table with his girlfriend’s family.

After watching the film, I was very curious as to how a Chinese filmmaker was able to create such an accurate and intimate piece about a people that weren’t her own. As a Native, I was honestly pretty skeptical about her intentions and motivations. I was mostly concerned with Natives being represented by a non-Native, and how that came about for her. We are so under-represented as it is, that it can often be conflicting to be represented by an outsider. I was able to meet up with her a few times and discuss every lingering question I had. Her answers surprised me, and I found her to be extremely knowledgable and understanding. Zhao recently won the Best Director award at the Red Nation Film Festival, so she is clearly accepted and respected by the Native community as well.

The film was recently picked up by Kino Lorber and will be coming to select cities nationwide March 2nd. TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/153168176

DAWN: How did this film begin? What inspired you? And specifically how did you end up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation?

CHLOE: I was only in big cities like LA and New York and I think the beginning of this journey was the need to get out of New York. I wanted to go to the Old West. It wasn’t Native Americans or Pine Ridge I was interested in, I wanted to go to the Badlands, the Plains. First I was looking to North Dakota. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I just wanted to make a film out there, or just explore. I was gonna do a film set in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota.

While researching I came upon photos of Native tribes in North Dakota and I started reading about it. I’d seen Aaron Huey’s photographs, and I thought, holy shit what is this place? So I was like, OK, I need to just go. In his images, there were so much contrast between modern confinement to the Old West. The Old West that has not been touched. Any city I’ve lived in has been completely conquered by humans. The idea of a reservation, it’s such a modern confinement, but yet it exists among this total wilderness. That relationship is fascinating to me. So I went.

My first encounter was going to a gas station and seeing this young man, Johnny’s age, with an urban outfit, who rode a horse to get cigarettes. He’s a cowboy, you know. And to me that image is so powerful. That’s how it all started.

DAWN: I’m curious to know how you ended up making a film about Native Americans, as a Chinese woman. Was there anything about your upbringing that paralleled John and Jashaun’s or made you feel more connected?

CHLOE: In China, when I was growing up in the 90s, we were like in a fish tank effect, just like the reservation. Before the internet hit. We didn’t have outside media, so we didn’t know what was going on outside. John and Jashaun’s parents, when they were kids, they didn’t know either, because they didn’t have the internet. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you don’t know what’s going on outside, and I didn’t know. I thought Communism was taking over the world, until one day, when I was a teenager, China opened up. So overnight, we went from studying Mao to MTV. I had no idea that the rest of the world wasn’t in Communism, and I was so pissed off. Everything I had learned about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and everything I learned about my country, were lies. I had nobody I could trust in my society or my government. And my parents were kids during the cultural revolution, which was very similar to John and Jashaun’s parents growing up in boarding schools. They weren’t allowed to be Native American and my parents weren’t allowed to be Chinese. They were wiped away. It’s the same thing. One is boarding school, the other a cultural revolution. We weren’t raised by someone who had an identity, so we didn’t have it. As a teenager, at first it was all fine. But then when you figure out everything is a lie, and when John and Jashaun got internet, it’s the same as when China opened up. So when your hormones are already going crazy and you’re already physically seeking a new identity going from a child to a woman, then suddenly you find out everything in your world that you believed in wasn’t true. And you can’t go to your parents to get a sense of identity, and you can’t go to your country.

DAWN: While watching the film, I felt as though there was a fluidity between fiction and non-fiction. The actors seemed so natural, and I got the feeling that you were very close to them. Had I not known otherwise, I would have assumed you too had grown up on Pine Ridge with them. What kinds of things did you do to familiarize yourself with the culture and develop that kind of relationship with the people? 

CHLOE: When I first went to Pine Ridge, it was just a gut feeling, that when people were telling me stories, and they’re telling me about themselves, it was almost like they were acting. Like they’ve been asked these questions so many times. There’s been so many journalists there documenting. Especially the people who are out there ready to talk to you, they know what you want to hear, because that’s how the news portrays them. They talk about the historic stuff. There is just that one narrative that they present. Either that they’re a very spiritual person, or the struggle, or the alcoholism… At first I’m like, wow, I’m really getting to them! But after two weeks, it’s almost like everyone is telling me the same damn thing. I’m like wait, I need to know what else is going on. Like what’s your love life like? What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you listen to? What kind of stuff do you look at on Facebook? I need to know more.

They can sit you down and talk to you forever about the Black Hills, etc. It’s everything that I’ve heard on the news, and it’s such a bad cycle, because when you only put a certain kind of representation on a certain kind of people, that’s the only way they exist in the media. And these people grow up and see that, and they identify with that. It’s a horrible cycle.

The only way to disillusion [myself] from this type of understanding and to allow them to reveal themselves to me, as to who they really are, is to become their family. Because family really knows your shit. Your family knows what’s really going on. So that process is absolutely necessary, and I kind of figured that out very quickly. Unless we really are on the same level, that they know my mistakes, they’ve seen me like fighting with my boyfriend, seen me being who I am, will they allow me to see who they are. And then I have to be willing to capture that, because it may not be the most sell-able topic.

What attracts me the most, is that I’m not making a movie about a medicine man. These young people are so strong. I just couldn’t believe the amount of things that an 18 year old has gone through. Just the way the kids are and the way the kids talk.

DAWN: Can you talk about the theme of home and the importance it plays to you and your film?

CHLOE: I’m not Native, but I’m not native of anywhere. Sometimes I forget I’m Asian, and I have to remind myself of that. [I] don’t have a home, and I think that theme of home becomes something that I love exploring in my film. And there’s nowhere else that I’ve been that has such a complex and strong definition of home. It is a place that is imposed on them, yet it’s the only thing they’ve ever known. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXyQecFlymU