This story is part of True/False Conversations, a series of in-depth interviews with the filmmakers of this year’s True/False Fest. Find the rest of them here or download the podcast on iTunes.
Qi Zhao is an Emmy award winning producer. His most recent film, The Chinese Mayor, depicts the mayor of the Chinese city of Datong as he attempts to transform the city into a cultural destination; a massive undertaking that includes relocating half-a-million of the city’s residents.
Qi says he wanted to depict how Chinese society is organized and how its government operates on a day-to-day basis. In Mayor Deng Tanbo, he says he found a vehicle to explore those topics.
How did you decide on Mayor Deng Tanbo as the vehicle through which to explore those topics?
The mayor himself was very open and also he really knows the world. He travels around in the world and also he has a pretty sharp vision to the future. In the film he mentioned that he traveled to Paris to Rome. He mentioned that he was amused by the city not because of the GDP but because of the cultural relics. So I think he himself is pretty open and open-minded. And also I think maybe he is quite confident with his style, he is quite transparent. He’s a very hard working person – he’s not sitting in the office all day – he goes to the construction lot every day, doing the inspections, supervising. So maybe he thinks there’s nothing he needs to hide from us. All the Chinese officials, I think, recently they are getting more used to be under the spotlight. They are more relaxed – not as nervous, not as unnatural as they were before. So I think these are the reasons why we came to him. And he agreed.
When you were making this film, what audience did you have in mind? Were you making it primarily for an American audience? For an international audience? A Chinese audience?
Of course we make films, we want the Chinese people to be our audience for sure. And also because this is something, regarding this film, The Chinese Mayor, it's something the Chinese people rarely see in their daily lives. Because they may read newspapers or articles but they've never had a chance to watch that vivid picture of a mayor doing his daily affairs. So definitely this film is made for the Chinese audience. But at the same time I think this film would fit very much for the international audience.
