Interview
SLIFF Interview: Jiayan “Jenny” Shi – Director of FINDING YINGYING
FINDING YINGYING screens as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival November 5th – 22nd.Ticket information for the virtual screening can be found HERE The feature is followed by a Q&A with director Jiayan “Jenny” Shi and co-producer Shilin Sun.
“Finding Yingying” chronicles the search for Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old Chinese student who had only recently arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017 when she disappeared. The filmmaker, Jenny Shi, also a Chinese expatriate, was studying journalism at Northwestern University and volunteered to help in the search. When Yingying’s family members and boyfriend arrived in the States to engage in the hunt for the missing woman, Shi served as translator and guided them through the alien landscape. By recording events as they transpired, Shi captures the unfolding narrative from a particularly privileged and empathetic position. A moving and expertly told true-crime story, “Finding Yingying” also explores larger subjects within that framework: the ambitions of young Chinese students who come to the U.S. in great numbers to pursue an education, the cultural divides that they have to bridge, and the generational differences between more traditional Chinese parents and their modern-age children. The Hollywood Reporter writes: “The unfolding investigation is presented with a level of suspense that’s involving and never exploitive. Besides being an agile storyteller, Shi, who shared DP duties with Shilin Sun, has a strong eye. She crafts potent visuals without the slightest showiness, whether capturing moments of tenderness or raging despair, or examining existing footage to highlight chilling details.”
Director Jiayan “Jenny” Shi took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about FINDING YINGYING
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 12th 2020
Tom Stockman: Congratulations on your film FINDING YINGYING. I watched it last night and thought it was terrific.
Jiayan “Jenny” Shi: Thank you. We are so excited to be showing it at the St. Louis Film Festival which is not far from where the incident in the film happened.
TS: How did you first hear about the disappearance of the Yingying Zhang?
JS: When she went missing, I was an International student at Northwestern University. I was in a lot of Chinese chat groups and one was my college alumni group. I learned about Yingying’s disappearance from friends and alumni back in China. I didn’t think originally about making a documentary. I was just trying to spread the word about her and see what we could do to find her and I was posting information on my social media. I went down to Champaign to help with the search and after Yingying’s parents arrived, a lot of Chinese people would visit with them. They did not speak English and they did not know much about America.
TS: But you had never met Yingying before, had you?
JS: No I had not. I learned from somebody at the University of Illinois at Champaign about this case and then I learned that she and I had actually attended the same university in China.
TS: How could you relate to Yingying? Talk about that and talk about her diary that you narrate in your film.
JS: I could definitely relate to her. We were both international students . I didn’t know what happened to her but I knew how worried her parents must have been. My parents learned about the disappearance while they were in China and they had been texting me a lot, urging me to not go outside, and just stay home and be safe. They warned me not to go to Champaign because there might be somebody dangerous there. Yingying was someone who probably had similar experiences as me, Someone who just came to the US. It wasn’t until I attended a press conference, about two months after her disappearance, that her family revealed that she actually had a diary. Yingying’s boyfriend read the last line in the last entry of her diary at the press conference: “Life is too short to be ordinary”. Those were her own words in her handwriting but I didn’t see the rest of the diary until 2018, a year after her disappearance.
TS: When did you come to the US?
JS: I came to the US in the fall of 2016, just about 10 months before all of this happened. I was pretty new to the US. So in 2018 I got access to the diary. That was the first time I read, in her handwriting, her experience being an international student.
TS: She speaks of loneliness in her diary. Is that something you felt when you came to the US at first?
JS: Definitely. I myself kept a diary, but I didn’t write it down, I put it on social media. But yes, I was lonely and I was home sick. And I had to adapt to the environment here very quickly because I started my graduate program and it was a one year program so I had to familiarize myself immediately to the learning environment here and overcome the language barriers and get to know the culture. Before I came here, I thought I was well-prepared. I passed the exams, got the grades to get into Northwestern and familiarize myself with American media. I had never been to the US, so for me living here was something totally different and challenging. And I’d say it was not just challenging for me but for Yingying and a lot of us when we first come here. Everyone shares that similar experience.
TS: You went back and did some follow up interviews in China while Yingying’s family was preparing for the murder trial. There was one scene where Yingying’s mother looks at you and says that you remind her of her daughter. How did that make you feel?
JS: I have mixed feelings. That was not the first time she mentioned that. When I first met her here in the US, she told me that I looked like her daughter. I did not know what I should say to her. Sometimes when she would mention that, she looked happy so I felt that maybe that was a comfort to have someone around who looked like her daughter. But on the other hand that was also a reminder that her daughter is gone and there is someone else here that just looks like her. So for me that was a mixed feeling. I did not know what to say and I did not want to say the wrong thing and make her cry. She was very emotional and I was very careful about what I said and the way I behaved.
TS: When you were in China you captured some very intimate moments of grief with the Zhang family. Angry moments with breaking of dishes and cursing and it gets pretty intense. Was there some footage that you shot that you chose not to use for that sequence?
JS: I say we put every major moment about how the loss of Yingying has affected her family in the film. Specifically speaking about that fight, we used very little footage. They were throwing things at each other but we did not include that. Also, as a filmmaker, I tried to navigate my role. Nobody saw that flight coming, so when it first happened we were already filming. Right away, I tried to stop the fight but we cut that part. I tried to calm them down. Besides that, if you ask about what else we shot but didn’t use, We actually follow different characters including the volunteer searchers who appears in the first part of the story. We wanted to document them and the search. We didn’t want to miss anything, so we had a lot of that footage that we didn’t use. We really wanted the story to focus on Yingying and her family. We focused on their perspective to put the audience in their shoes, this experience as a family and what happened to them.
TS: The Zhan family seemed determined to see Yingying’s murderer executed. Were they aware how difficult it is to get a death penalty conviction in the US? Did they have an attorney explaining this to them?
JS: Yes, they did have an attorney explaining the whole American criminal justice system to them. Yingying’s boyfriend was a PhD candidate at that time and he had more knowledge about the differences between the Chinese and the US criminal justice systems.
TS: Explain that. How is carrying out the death penalty different in China?
JS: I’m not an expert, but I would say that is something like this happened in China, it is very likely that the defendant would be found guilty and then would get the death penalty. I’ve never really followed a court case in China but that judgment’s based more on cultural background and I think that Yingying’s parents share the same cultural background as I have, so it was understandable that they would have that kind of hope that he would get the death penalty. I myself, after having followed the story for over three years, now understand better how the US criminal justice system works. For a long time I wondered about such a heinous crime that happened to this innocent woman with such a bright future of head of her. She had her life taken away from her by this person, who I don’t even want to mention because I don’t want to glorify what he did. I was very aware of the family’s desire for the death penalty. And that’s always something interesting to present in the film because I think in the media coverage there are a lot focus on the crime itself and all the gruesome details. But from my perspective, as someone from the Chinese community, I feel like Yingying and her family somehow got lost in the media narrative. The way the family was portrayed in the mainstream media is the typical victim stereotype. It was always mom crying and speaking in Mandarin. A lot of reporters only speak English so they can’t really get a cultural connection to Yingying’s family. To me, this film is to show something that is not often seen in mainstream media and to go beyond the headlines and to show the humanity behind the heinous crime. In the film I see a lot of different people coming out to support a family. That was something we wanted to highlight.
TS: You did a great job with that. Has Yingying’s family seen your film?
JS: Yes. We showed the film to them before any public screening because we wanted to make sure that they were on the same page as everything in the film. We took their feedback into consideration. We wanted to make sure they were OK with everything. I was a bit nervous before the family watched the film. I worried that they might feel uncomfortable about the family conflict that we showed. I think in Chinese culture people don’t want to show their family affairs in public but I was surprised at how much Yingying’s parents and her boyfriend were OK with everything. That was exactly what happened to them and those were the facts, and that’s not something people always see in the media. Also there were our efforts to highlight Yingying as a person, to try to keep her alive throughout the film. Her family really appreciated our efforts.
TS: You’ve kept in touch with the Zhen family I assume.
JS: Yes. We have had several subsequent conversations. I’d like to keep them updated as to what is going on in terms of the film. Yingying’s mom is staying at home because of her health condition. Her brother is working at a restaurant and has a little baby now and got married. I hope that will bring some joy and happiness to the family. Yingying’s father went back to work as a truck driver. But to them it was very difficult for life to just go on. It’s impossible for them to get over this.
TS: Let’s talk about you. Is this your first feature length documentary?
JS: Yes. I studied journalism in China for my bachelor’s degree and then immediately after that I started studying journalism at Northwestern University. I took some documentary journalism classes so my specialization is video journalism. I try to use visuals to tell powerful stories. That was in 2016 and 2017. Yingying’s story came out the last quarter when I was in school. I started filming it as a student because I had followed the story for a while and I had also created a student version as a student project. I graduated and continued to work on the project. And now it is a feature-length film.
TS: Has it played a lot of other film festival?
JS: Our world premiere was supposed to be at SXSW but we had to wait for the next timing to launch the film so we started robust festival run in October and we have screened it in 13 film festivals so far including the Chicago International Film Festival , Los Angeles Asian-Pacific film Festival where it has been well-received by different audiences. Not only Asian America audiences but also general audiences. So we really see the potential for bringing the story further . We hope the film can travel to different places so more people can hear Yingying’s story and she can be memorialized in a good way.
TS: What’s your next project?
JS: I have started a project. It is also related to the American Chinese Experian but I can’t say much about it now because it is early development, but I am currently doing research.
TS: Good luck then with FINDING YINGYING and all of your future projects.
JS: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.
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