Framing the Games:
April 5, 2008
With the passing of the torch from Athens to Beijing on March 25, the countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing has officially begun. All eyes are on China as it prepares to host the summer games, and documenting the preparations are five international filming units, covering the United States, Brazil, Africa, Jakarta and Germany. These teams will put together the official 2008 Beijing Olympics film, which will be permanently preserved at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Sweden.
Heading the U.S. filming unit is Weimin Zhang, a San Francisco resident and assistant professor in the cinema department at San Francisco State University. Born and raised in Beijing, Zhang has had more than 15 years of experience as director and cinematographer, working on feature films, television series and documentaries in both the U.S. and China. Appointed as U.S. unit director for the film by China Central Television, Zhang is leading a team of seven American and Chinese crew members.
Zhang said the film will focus on the athletes and how they prepare for the games, as well as China itself and how it plans to welcome the world. Filming locations include Texas, San Diego and the passing of the torch in San Francisco, the only North American stop on the torch’s route, on April 9. In June, she heads to China; post-production will begin after the games end in August, with an anticipated public release by the end of the year.
With the world drawing its eyes East and seeking new images of China, Zhang said she wants to portray its hospitality and friendliness. “From its appearance to the insides of peoples’ lives, both economically and politically, there is openness,” Zhang said. “I want to show an image of welcoming, China opening up its arms to the world and showing its integration of culture, history, modernity and spirit.”
Zhang dismisses the negative attention that has accompanied China’s hosting of the Games. “I know a lot of people have wonders, questions and even negative opinions about China,” she said. “From my point of view, this is the Olympics, which has always emphasized participation, fairness, excellence and peace. And this shows how China is willing to follow these values, and so we shouldn’t participate in negative discussions.”
And Zhang has not found it difficult to find positive points of view. “The Beijing people are so proud,” she said. “They regard this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even taxi drivers are taking English, because they want to talk and want to welcome. It’s a very great honor for them and the same for me.”
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4 Responses to “Framing the Games:”
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Editors:
Even IF there is a Lausanne in Sweden, the one in SWITZERLAND is the headquarters of the Olympics.
And even IF the impending Games come off without more hitches than those already bloodletting, the PRC has this job more than cut out for it.
The classic Greek Olympiads were staged, city-state wars notwithstanding, and the laurels “universally,” among said city states that is, recognized and honored.
The impending Summer Olympics are off to a start fit for political provocateurs and Armageddon-lusting macho types coming out of the Tibetan/Nepalese woodworks.
“Han”-hating and -baiting types, particularly, appear to be in a feeding frenzy, consequent to the usual pre-Olympics fanfares in the “western” media. Who knows what the rest of the world thinks, in the face of the a-priori and biased slants extant and available to “us”?
How many “mainstream media” accounts repeat the reported tourist witnessings, on the initial day of the ongoing “uprising,” of a native Tibetan doctor beaten by the mob that reportely killed the ‘teen-aged Han boy he was trying to help, and the eyewitnessed accounts of the pillaging of Han-owned businesses in Lhasa.
I am NOT apologizing for what “reprisals” and “occupier” authority “police” and “troops” may have perpetrated in the ensuing days and weeks?, but the apparent facts of the initial explosion remain to be sorted out.
Beijing may be ill-advised in its blanketing of the scene and site, but, then, in the face of what “reports” are issuing from both Lhasa and the “frontier” areas of Xinjiang and Szechuan and Yunnan, they may well be politically “correct” in their own interest.
What we are hearing are the communiques from “inside” the “uprising” to their colleagues and sponsors “outside,” and one would have to be naive NOT to believe that the CIA is the protagonist.
Here, as in Colombia. As in Chile of the Allende days, of El Salvador and Nicaragua, and God knows where else.
In these “commentary” columns of recent days, one “Jim Erbes” chimed in on this subject and this issue, and I am afraid I went, personally, overboard, in calling him “jackass” and “jackal.”
But, if he IS the identical Jim Erbes who not that long ago applauded, advocated?, incited?, the Indonesian ethnic cleansings of what he referred to as “Chinese” “pig merchants,” then the epithets stand. In caps. just as they would apply to those who applaud and incite murder and mayhem and destruction anywhere and for any cause.
Not all that long ago, “we” gleefullhy aided and armed the Taliban against the Russkis, then proceeded idiotically to follow in the latter’s footsteps, footsteps that continue to prove mired and pointless.
In 1911?, the British Raj attempted a military coup in Tibet, that “roof of the world,” but then as now, the logistics and the Himalayas were inalterable.
Native Tibetans may well have cause to detest the “Han” said to be inundating the land, but even the Dalai Lama himself, in this instance, continues to acknowledge the socioeconomic interdependence of both.
That said, it seems to me that “westerners,” “Americans” and “Brits” in particular, are both latecomers AND “foreign” to the thorny and prickly and uneasy sociopolitical and socioeconomic equipoise between Tibetan and “Han,” whatever the “form” or “ideology” of “governance.”
One report, the first day of the “rioting,” noted that an observer noted that the “Han” occupier policeman was another teenager, who appeared “terrified”?
And whythell not?
Physical violence should terrify ANY thinking and sensient human being.
And the bottom line response should always be: WHY.
For me, it isn’t Tibetan vs. Han, nor even the plausible question of the survival of an ancient “culture.”
The fact of that last matter is that said “culture” is, fait accompli, already victim of time and change and the “realities” of 21st-Century life and living, replete with hooded parkas and baseball caps and guns and ammo.
Not to mention “interventionists,” of one stripe or another, usually exploitive and self-serving.
Frank Eng
P.S.:: Guys, get a copy reader, AND a fact-checker.
Boy, did you go off on a tangent.
In response to a simple piece about someone doing some filming, you managed to bring in Tibet, the CIA and even “the Russkis.”
And you should not be giving others a lesson in grammar (”get a copy reader”) when your own writing is full of errors and spelling mistakes:
“Sensient” I think you mean sentient.
“gleefullhy”
“reportely”
“In caps. just”
“whythell”
The Olympics should not be used for politics even though I disagree with what China is doing. One can protest what is happening or even boycott the opening and closing ceremonies but don’t attack the sprit of the games, athletics or torch bearers. It should focus mostly on the games, athletics and good will.
To address Frank Eng’s orignal comment:
Frank, thank you. In fact, you are correct on at least one account. I would like to address for the record that indeed, there is an error in fact: Lausanne is in Switzerland, not Sweden, noted.
That said, I would like to remind readers that this article was far from an opinion piece, though I tend to agree with the comments relating to negative backlash leading away from the spirit of unity and goodwill of the games.
I am not Chinese, but have spent several years living in China as an English teacher, and had the opportunity to observe the willingness of my native Chinese students to want to learn English, as an attempt to understand and communicate with the anticipated foreigners as they make their way to Beijing. I think many natives are genuinely honored and excited by the opportunity to welcome the world to their country and this perspective is getting lost amidst the politics, rioting, protests, and so on.
I agree with Weimin Zhang during my interview with her that, given the opportunity, let us also participate in discussions fostering goodwill and peace. In this article, both Weimin and I made the conscious choice to perpetuate goodwill by offering a positive message, as well, to share the story of this amazing film in the making.
Kim Vo