[music]

Brian Lehrer: Here we look at the feature-length documentaries up for an Oscar with the film Ascension. That was some of the soundtrack of the film that brought us in there that explores the Chinese dream. What it looks like on that trip up the economic ladder in that country for factory workers, service workers, professionals. Plus what it's like at the top for the very rich. Like the young people we actually see in the aerial shot that that music accompanied. Where they're cavorting in a huge water park, for example, as that particular music played.

So far in this series on the Oscar-nominated documentaries, we've heard from filmmakers Stanley Nelson about his film Attica and from Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, the directors of Writing with Fire. Now we're joined by Jessica Kingdon, the director, editor, and cinematographer of Ascension. Jessica, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations on the Oscar nomination.

Jessica Kingdon: Thank you so much. It's so great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe we should start by telling our listeners that this idea of the Chinese dream is not your phrase borrowed from the American version, the American dream. It's something Xi Jinping announced. What is the Chinese dream?

Jessica Kingdon: That's right. The Chinese dream is similar to the American dream. It is also equally a slippery term, I would say. [clears throat] Sorry. Just a little bit sick, not COVID today. It's a slippery term, just like the American dream, and can be used in, however, the person who's using it wants it to be understood. I think the similarity is that there's this idea that if you work hard, follow the script, follow the directives, and believe in the system, you can work your way up the economic ladder, which of course we know is not necessarily true for everyone.

However, the difference, I would say between the Chinese dream and the American dream is the Chinese dream does look more like a collective national comeback. It is more framed in this question of nationalism and has to do with China taking the world economic stage as a superpower.

Brian Lehrer: With that in mind, just to give the listeners a sense of what the film is like, would it be fair to say it's very much in the vein of Koyaanisqatsi. If folks remembered that one with a Philip Glass soundtrack, telling a story through striking cinematography. With no narration and a great minimalist musical score, this one from Dan deacon. I'm curious if Koyaanisqatsi was an inspiration for you?

Jessica Kingdon: People bring that film up a lot. I think that subconsciously it must have been. I've seen it twice before. I'm a big fan of that film, but it's not something I was consciously thinking about. Although I'm sure that in a subconscious way, that was there. I think I just didn't presume to make something on such a grand scale as Koyaanisqatsi.

Certainly, these elements of this visual storytelling and these questionings of systems and societies and these larger questions are there.

I think one of the main differences is that I do go into observational scenes where there is dialogue and interactions between people. Which, not putting a value judgment on what's better or worse, but that is one of the big differences.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder if anybody listening right now, A, has ever seen or has seen Ascension yet. Or if there's anybody out there with ties to China. Maybe you came from there, maybe family members or friends came from there. With experiences of striving for the so-called Chinese dream or striving for. Being knocked down in your attempt to strive for the Chinese dream as we'll hear some examples of and wants to tell a story. Again, if anybody's seen Ascension and wants to ask the director, editor, and cinematographer of the film Jessica Kingdon a question, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

I'm going to take a shot at describing the film by saying, the story is told visually with footage from I understand 51 locations of amazing tableaus and fly-on-the-wall scenes of people working in, say, a sex doll factory or at a business etiquette class. You've said it poses questions through visual juxtaposition, like the young women carefully creating those sex dolls. Or by including the worker tending the grass in the blazing sun. With footage of a young woman in a photoshoot saying, she's going to have heat strokes if she has to stand there another minute.

She's just getting her photo taken. What questions were you most interested in asking through those juxtapositions?

Jessica Kingdon: In making this film, I wasn't trying to offer answers about the moral value of China's system, but to draw attention to the universal aspects of industrial creation and consumption and ask who's benefiting from these systems. I think that I was interested in looking at China in this perspective because of its unique position. Where in such a short, compressed timeframe, it has gone from what was once known as the world's factory to what is one of the largest consumer markets in the world.

I think that when these kinds of transitions are compressed, these larger questions related to the paradox of economic progress, these questions are put in sharper relief. I found that the questions that I was interested in such as paradox of economic progress, what is the meaning of work? What is the value of what is a good life? What are we striving towards? All of these questions are magnified in contemporary China for me.

Brian Lehrer: Here's somebody who saw the film. Alan in White Plains. Alan, you're on WNYC.

Alan: Hi there. So great to be able to talk about this film. I loved it. It was a thrill to see it nominated for an Oscar. I think it's just the kind of film that the Oscars need. It's an artful meditation done so intentionally and so wonderfully visually. It also just invites the audience to examine the sociopolitical ideas that are brought up in the film in a personally involved way. I think it's really engaging in that way.

Jessica Kingdon: Thank you.

Alan: I was just so impressed by the filmmaking and the discipline of resisting the urge to get into the more overt social and political issues, but just give that opportunity to the audience. I was wondering if you could talk about your choice to not get more didactic with the film and to rely on the audience to complete the picture. Really interesting choice.

Jessica Kingdon: Thanks for that question. I think that the film places a lot of faith in the audience in terms of their abilities for accepting a film that isn't telling you what to think or what to feel. Also appeals to an audience's sense of empathy in terms of expecting them to put themselves in the position of the person that they're seeing on screen and hopefully see themselves in the film. I think that China is such a hot-button issue and on both sides of the political spectrum, issues related to China tends to provoke such heated reactions.

I was hoping to immerse viewers into these kinds of spaces that might provoke political arguments, but without giving a directive of where the meaning lies. Allowing the audience to experience rather than to intellectualize. I think that there is value in that as in understanding, in exercise, in empathy, and its consciousness changing even. I think that for me personally, the more interesting cinematic experiences can happen when meaning is left as an open-ended question and something that's constantly evolving.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that interesting question, Alan. We appreciate it. 212-433-WNYC. Were you given pretty free reign in shooting these scenes in China, since you're really raising some fundamental questions? Even if you don't didactically, as you say, answer them in the film, you're raising challenging questions about Chinese society?

Jessica Kingdon: Because we weren't making an overtly political film and we weren't shooting in any "sensitive areas". We were completely transparent about what we were doing, which was an independent documentary American film crew making a film about China's economic rise. I worked with a great team of field producers within China, who acted as a liaison between myself and the different locations. We just put out feelers to so many locations to see which ones would be comfortable letting us in.

Because I wasn't going in with this thesis that I had to prove, when locations turned us down, it didn't mean we had to shut down the production. We could pivot towards the places that did let us in. For every single place that let us in, there were sometimes dozens or even hundreds of asks going out to these places until one would say yes. It had to do with the resilience of the team that I was working with. Also the production being able to pivot and have this soft approach to the ideas of what I was exploring rather than this hard approach about trying to prove a certain point.

I was trying to be very open and malleable to the kind of ideas that were coming up. Once we did get access to spaces, for the most part, we had very pretty free rein. Some of the things that surprised me actually, but makes complete sense is that in the factories, the things that they were sensitive about were us not shooting their proprietary technology. For example, in the sex doll factories, there was one room that looked like it was out of a horror film. where you saw these castings of the bodies that were hanging from iron chains from the ceiling.

They told us, "No, you can't shoot that," and I thought that maybe it was because it just looked too gruesome, but no, it's because that's their proprietary technology.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Let's take another phone call. Faivo, am I saying your name right in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Ascension. Hi there.

Faivo: Hey, congratulations, first of all. I was curious why you chose to keep the filming within Chinese national borders. At least that's what I'm understanding as it was. To me, it seems like the way that Chinese folks were portrayed, I don't think intentionally, but that large mass as opposed to following individual stories. As a choice could have unintended consequences of, I think, people appearing as broad strokes of portraying this particular country that I think a lot of Americans are not [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You mean dehumanizing rather than telling personal stories, which would further humanize.

Faivo: Possibly. Yes. I know that's really complex. I work in documentary myself and I know there's really difficult choices to be made. Especially as they were just talking about with access is really complicated. That to me, the way that the-- I would love to see an American version of this, and I think Americans honestly would be really offended by what they saw if it were equivalent.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Or maybe enlightened by what they saw. How would you answer that question, Jessica?

Jessica Kingdon: Yes. It's something that I've thought about a lot, for sure and there's a few different answers that I have to that question. One is that I think making this open-ended film like I was saying before, the idea is having a faith in the audience that rather than look thing at this and seeing the people on the screen as people who are other people. The idea's for people to reflect on their own lives, particularly in American audience. I feel really grateful that in terms of the reactions that have gotten in the States and in the West, for the most part people do seem to watch the film and reflect on their own lives.

Secondly, I think that the film, even though I don't delve into people's personal lives, it is more of what we were talking about earlier, the Koyaanisqatsi kind of style. I look for these cracks in the system where you do see these moments of individuality of joy and spontaneity, where you least expect it. For me, that is actually the more humanizing thing than say, a traditional sit-down interview where you talk to someone and hear about their life at home. I feel like documentary for me is a medium where the possibilities of being open to different types of experiences rather than drawing out individual stories through interviews.

That's something that excites me. I think that yes, at the end of the day, the film is something where I hope for people to see themselves in it. I think that so far that's how the reactions have come across.

Brian Lehrer: We should say most of the film is in Mandarin, at least I assume it's Mandarin. It's almost entirely in Mandarin. There is a short clip in English that I have from later a film when the focus has shifted to the super-rich. It's during a class on being a butler and Downton Abbey is namechecked. That's where the idea of having a Butler in China came from. Here, the students are being taught some key phrases.

Teacher: [Chinese language] My Lords.

Students: My Lords.

Teacher: Ladies and gentlemen.

Students: Ladies and gentlemen.

Teacher: Dinner is served.

Students: Dinner is served.

Teacher: Dinner is served. [Chinese language] lunch is served.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe not so much the American dream or the Chinese dream, maybe that's the British aristocracy dream which is in its own way, is telling as it's about classes you are born into and inequality. It's capitalism in communist China. Right?

Jessica Kingdon: Right. That's one of the things that I was interested in is this hybrid of exploring hyper-capitalism, but in this country that is still nominally communist. I think seeing capitalism function in a different context than my own Western one gives a different understanding or flavor to it.

Brian Lehrer: The title I see Ascension comes from a poem by your great-grandfather. From what I read your grandparents fled China after the communists took over. Is this personal for you, even as we talked about how you filmed it as a mass film, not an individual or a few individual stories? Are you trying to decide where you as a Chinese American fit and where your dream is taking you?

Jessica Kingdon: That's an interesting framing. The film wasn't a personal film as I was making it, but it became more and more personal I would say. I actually ended up finding relatives that I didn't know about while I was shooting the film. That was also how I was able to find this poem of my great-grandfather's. Which I grew up hearing stories about him, but I never knew if they were real or not. Then finding out that he really was this famous poet was this fortuitous moment. That's also how I was able to find the relatives in China.

In terms of the poem, I think that when I was trying to come up with a final title for the film, I had been calling it Untitled PRC project for so long. I went back and looked at these poems from my great grandfather and one of the poems was called Ascension. The way I understood it is about this paradox of progress because in the poem, the narrator who's presumably my great-grandfather Zheng Ze, he climbs to the height of a tower. From that vantage point is able to see the invading territory and all of the chaos beneath him. This was 1912.

Brian Lehrer: That has to be the last word I am sorry to say, as we are out of time. Jessica Kingdon is the director, editor, and cinematographer of Ascension. One of the nominees for the best feature documentary at this year's Oscars, which come up on Sunday, March 27th. Ascension is available for screening on Paramount Plus. Thank you so much. It's wonderful. Congratulations.

Jessica Kingdon: Thanks so much for having me.

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