Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Chloe Zhao, the Chinese director reinventing US cinema
The Oscar-nominated director of "Nomadland" has cast the Western and the Road Movie in a new light. She's now revisiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Chloé Zhao took the long road to Hollywood.
The Chinese-born director, whose film Nomadland is the frontrunner for the 93rd Academy Awards this Sunday, had a very circuitous route to the top of the movie world.
Like Fern, the van- living nomad played by Frances McDormand in her new movie, Zhao's life has been marked by a wanderlust that has taken her from her birthplace in Beijing — via London, New York, and the Badlands of Wyoming — to Los Angeles, where she's now one of the most in-demand directors in show business.
Not that Zhao stays in L.A.. She prefers Ojai, a town in the Topatopa Mountains northwest
of the city. Every magazine profile on her seems compelled to mention Zhao lives there with "two dogs and three chickens." Some also mention the other resident: her partner, Nomadland cinematographer, Joshua James Richards.
Wr i t i n g h i s t o r y w i t h 'Nomadland'
But ahead of the Oscars this weekend, there can be no doubt that whatever route she took to get here, Zhao has arrived.
She has picked up more than 40 awards for Nomadland so far and is the bookmakers' pick to take home Oscars both for best picture and best director: a feat that would make history, with Zhao the first Asian women to win either category.
Next film a Marvel superhero movie
For her encore, Zhao is going big, with the $200 million (€166 million) Marvel superhero movie The Eternals, which she started just after wrapping a fourmonth, guerilla-style shoot for Nomadland.
Featuring a cast of stars, including Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan and Kumail Nanjiani, and, according to reports, the first LGBTQ character in the Marvel Cinema Universe, The Eternals is set to hit theaters worldwide this November.
Watching Nomadland, a poignant portrait of the new American underclass— older, itinerant workers who live out of their campers, traveling across the country chasing seasonal jobs to survive — one wonders what Zhao's take on the superhero movie will look like. Personally, I'd pay good money to see a MCU version of Frances McDormand's Fern character — all spandex and cape, weatherworn face framed against the hills, staring off in the middle distance — but I imagine the studio will want a movie with more punch.
What seems certain is that Zhao will surprise us with a new perspective on an overworn American film genre.
Revisiting Hollywood's cinematic mythology
It's what she's always done. Her 2015 debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me and the 2017 follow-up, The Rider — both of which follow the stories of Lakota Sioux teens living on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation — shone fresh light on the Western.
In Nomadland, Zhao reinvents the visual language of the American road trip movie in a way that
feels fresh and original while still remaining true to Hollywood's cinematic mythology.
Zhao's approach as a director combines an insider's obsession with details with the fresh eyes and endless curiosity of an outsider.
Inspired by real-life stories To make her first three films, Zhao embedded herself in the communities she was depicting. Before Nomadland, which features two-time Oscar winner McDormand and veteran actor David Strathairn as a fellow traveler, the director only cast nonprofessionals in her movies. She would find real people who captured her interest and shape her stories around them.
Zhao spotted John Reddy, the star of Songs My Brothers Taught Me in a Pine Ridge school yearbook and cast him as a teenager who dreams of getting off the reservation. When Brady Jandreau, a Lakota cowboy Zhao had met during the making of Songs, was nearly fatally injured after a devastating fall, she cast him in The Rider, retelling his story as that of an injured rodeo star who struggles to find a sense of purpose after being told he can't ride anymore.
"She's basically like a journalist," McDormand explained to
The Rolling Stone about Zhao's process. "She gets to know your story, and she creates a character from that."
Intimacy, for Zhao, does not breed mawkishness. Her films depict people living on the margins, but without a dose of misplaced pity or romanticism. As McDormand put it, Zhao "draws a razor-sharp line between sentiment and sentimentality."
Intimate tributes to cinema greats
That sharp line distinguishes Zhao's portraits of the American West from that of Euro-romantics like Wim Wenders or Michelangelo Antonioni, who fell in love with the grand landscapes but didn't spend time looking took closely at the real people living in the foreground. And while Zhao likes to work with real people —and her films overflow with empathy for every character on screen— her movies are rigorous, not fly-on-the-wall. Visually, they are grandly lyrical and often stunningly beautiful. Many critics have compared Zhao use of magic-hour light to supreme stylist Terrence Malick.
A 2018 portrait in Vogue quotes one of Zhao's film professors at New York University, who said admiringly that her ex-student "has a very warm heart but an extremely cold eye."
Near the end of Nomadland,
Zhao, an avowed movie geek, frames McDormand's Fern in a manner directly inspired by a famous shot of John Wayne in the 1956 classic The Searchers. It's an audacious and incredibly effective image that places this 60-something woman — who works minimum-wage, part-time jobs at Amazon packing centers and desert campgrounds — side-by-side as peer to the most famous cowboy in movie history.
By combining deep humanity and cold precision, Chloé Zhao is shining new light on the oldest stories in American cinema.
proven in court. A wake-up call
"I am pleased that we were able to reach an agreement today and thus end the legal dispute," said Christiane Theobald, the company's acting artistic director. "I regret the experiences of discrimination described by Chloe Lopes Gomes, which we take very seriously and are thoroughly dealing with."
"In the current situation there is also a great opportunity for change, it's a wake-up call," she added.
Worldwide, the case of the dancer had caused quite a stir. Chloe Lopes Gomes had complained publicly that she had repeatedly heard racist comments from her ballet mistress.
"During those two and a half years, I was under the supervision of a ballet mistress who said that ballet should not take me because I am Black and a woman of color in a 'corps de ballet' is something that is not aesthetic, not homogeneous," Lopes Gomes told DW in December 2020. "She made racist jokes and comments."
The French dancer has been working at the Berlin State Ballet since 2018 — as the first and to date only Black member.
The ballet mistress is said to have repeatedly racially discriminated against her, for instance, by demanding that Lopes Gomes apply white makeup for Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake.
It's an explosive topic since whitefacing, or making Black people appear white using make-up, violated the ballet's house policy under former artistic director Johannes Öhman, as other people of color also dance in the company. After Öhman left the Berlin State Ballet in December 2019, however, the ballet mistress reportedly demanded that Lopes Gomes do just that.
"I felt very humiliated, but above all, I was very surprised that she felt no fear of being punished," recalls the 29-year-old Frenchwoman.
Lopes Gomes had informed Öhman of the situation before he left, and she says that even though he was shocked by her statements, he also pointed out that the State Ballet's masters are protected by life contracts and that little could be done. On the other hand, dancers only have a one year renewable contract: "At the time, I was very worried that if he spoke to the ballet mistress about it, my case would get even worse," says the dancer, who only went public with the accusations against the Berlin ballet mistress when it was clear that her contract would not be renewed. It expires next year.
'Any form of discrimination not acceptable'
The current artistic directorate of the Berlin State Ballet did not want to comment on the case when questioned by DW. In a statement on the claims of racism, the State Ballet said: "All forms of discrimination and racism are unacceptable in our company." It was thought that its international diversity — after all, the company works with 91 dancers from more than 30 countries — would "already sufficiently sensitize people to problems of racism and discrimination."
That apparently is not the case, which is why an investigation is currently underway to reveal discriminatory behavior within the ensemble. Since December 2020, all state ballet employees have been able to anonymously get in touch with an external contact to report their own experiences and perceptions on the topic of discrimination.
With a view to the future, there is "the opportunity to realign our company and look ahead, and to create a safe and appreciative atmosphere for all employees, from the corps de ballet to the first soloists to the production and administration team."
The investigation also involves the repertoire: "Outdated and discriminatory ways of performing" are to be exposed and "traditions are to be reviewed and re-evaluated with a different perspective and consciousness." The directorship is aware that "the ballet genre has marginalized people of color throughout its history."
Protest against blackfacing in customs
In the case of Lopes Gomes, whitefacing is problematic because it demands conformity to the white majority that was once the standard in classical ballet. The reverse, blackfacing, is also a practice in the performing arts, as well as a common practice in certain cultural customs — such as Carnival or Mardi Gras. However, it has long since become controversial. "Black people are reduced to their skin color and stereotypical features by way of wigs and ear or nose rings. But that's not what Black people look like," Tahir Della of the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) told DW in a previous interview.
Blackfacing came into fashion in the 19th century with socalled minstrel shows in the US, which trivialized slavery. White actors portrayed Black slaves in a stereotypical manner, painting themselves in dark colors and drawing exaggeratedly thick lips.
Blackfacing also problematic in classical ballet
The piece La Bayadere, which belongs to the core repertoire of classical ballet, has also come under fire in the debate about blackfacing. The love drama of an Indian temple dancer premiered in 1877 at St. Petersburg's Mariinksy Theater.
Written for Russian audiences, it was intended to convey an image of India and its history through the plot location and characters, but not to represent Indian culture. While the music and choreography show Oriental influences, they still adhere to the usual adagios and waltzes and classical technique. Nevertheless, to make white dancers recognizable as Indian, they were occasionally painted dark. Some houses still adhere to this tradition today.
Ballet star Misty Copeland, who in 2015 became the first African-American prima ballerina at the American Ballet Theater, is taking a stand against this blackfacing. Under a picture shared on Instagram of dancers wearing dark makeup at Russia's Bolshoi Theater, she wrote the comment, "And this is the reality of the ballet world."
Dancers under pressure due to unstable working conditions
Copeland can afford to speak out — she doesn't have to worry about her career like her less famous fellow dancers do. Competition in ballet is fierce, so hardly anyone wants to attract negative attention.
Friedrich Pohl, managing director of the dancers' network Dancersconnect, sees a recurring pattern in this: "Artists dance under contracts that are constantly limited. Artistic reasons are usually given for the non-renewal of these contracts. This puts the dancers under extreme pressure and puts them in an extremely subordinate position. It is very common for people to first speak out once it is clear that their contracts won't be renewed." Pohl therefore demands that managers become more aware of this. In addition, fixed-term contracts that are repeatedly renewed should be questioned and prevented to ensure better protection of artists, he said.
#BlackDancersMatter: Manifesto against racism in ballet
Regardless of whether the claims in Berlin actually happened that way, Lopes Gomes' accusations of racism are being heard in the ballet world. The Berlin State Ballet is now revising its program.
And the incidents have also been noticed outside of Germany. Prima ballerina Misty Copeland, for example, shared an article from the British newspaper The Guardian about Lopes Gomes' accusations on Twitter.
In Paris, too, people have spoken out against racist structures in this year marked by the Black Lives Matter movement. In the fall, five dancers from the Paris Opera published a manifesto against racism in ballet. Written by Guillaume Diop, Letizia Galloni, Jack Gasztowtt, Awa Joannais and Isaac Lopes Gomes, the document aims to "liberate racial discrimination from the silence that surrounds it in opera." The stigmas of racial discrimination, it states, are still present in 21st-century French society.
The manifesto — signed by 400 of the nearly 2,000 employees of the Paris Opera — also calls for the "official and definitive abolition of blackfacing in ballets and operas."
In addition, Black dancers should be given products such as tights that match their skin tone. According to the Paris Opera, accessories will soon be more nuanced in color, and there will also be an investigation in Paris into the issues raised in the manifesto regarding racism within the ballet company — the results are expected in December. It is currently unclear when the results of the investigation at the Staatsballett in Berlin will be available.
Update: This article, a translation from the German rst published on December 11, 2020, was updated with the settlement details on April 22.
Chloe Zhao, whose US drama Nomadland is the Oscar frontrunner for best picture. Zhao has come under attack on social media in China for comments she made in an interview back in 2013, in which she said her childhood in mainland China was filled with "lies everywhere" — a quote that has been interpreted as a criticism of the government.
Hammer says Do Not Split hasn't been officially banned — "we haven't heard anything from a government official in
China or Hong Kong" — but notes that if Beijing hoped that censoring the Oscars would smother debate, "it has had the reverse effect. Our film has gotten more attention than we ever would have, and there is even more debate around the protesters and the suppression of democratic rights in Hong Kong."
Hammer says he has been doing back-to-back interviews with media outlets worldwide since the "Oscar ban" and is glad the message of "Do Not Split" — that "freedom in Hong Kong is disappearing fast" — is getting out there.
The impact of COVID restrictions on Hong Kong's protest movement
When the coronavirus pandemic hit Hong Kong in late 2019 it had an immediate, and lasting, impact on the protest movement. Demonstrations, which had been thousands strong, were outlawed under new COVID-19 restrictions.
"Suddenly you could only have four people in a demonstration," Hammer remembers. "The government used the pandemic to shut down the protest."
Last summer, the mainland government enacted a new security law — "Beijing's final answer to the protesters" says Hammer — giving themselves sweeping powers to crack down on anti-government activity in Hong Kong.
A call to action
Hammer believes the new law has "created a lot of fear" on the island, as critics of Beijing find themselves in a grey zone, unsure "what is allowed and what is illegal. It's leading to questions of censorship and self-censorship," he says. His hope, beyond winning an Oscar on Sunday, is that international viewers of Do Not Split put pressure on their local governments to censure China for its actions.
"Things don't look hopeful at the moment, and governments are afraid that if they sanction China they could lose political influence and their country's businesses could lose money by being locked out of the Chinese market," says Hammer. "But if I've learned anything from the protesters in Hong Kong is that you can't give up."