I last interviewed Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight) before the TIFF premiere of 2019’s This Is Not a Movie, which follows the uncompromising humanitarian war correspondent Robert Fisk (who died just this past October) on his eternal mission to give the lie to bothsidesism. And while Chang’s latest doc Wuhan Wuhan – an on-the-ground account of life during lockdown from the perspective of several brave and traumatized frontline workers – might seem a breaking news departure, it’s actually very much in line with the multiple award-winning filmmaker’s character-first approach. Whether tackling issues of capitalist exploitation, controversial righteous journalism, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 29, 2021Long a thorn in the establishment’s side, veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has spent the past four-decades-plus reporting “subjectively” from frontlines the world over, most notably in the Middle East. An Arabic speaker, who interviewed Osama bin Laden three times before 9/11, Fisk has forever served “on the side of the suffering,” political implications be damned. Unsurprisingly, this has caused the Beirut-based Brit to become a controversial, if highly respected, figure, labeled both human rights advocate and terrorist sympathizer alike. Now in his seventies and still dodging bullets, both literally and figuratively, Fisk continues to file columns for The Independent […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 9, 2019[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 6:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] 1. Why are you a filmmaker? Why did you choose this profession? I love movies. Ever since I was a kid and my dad would set up his super-8 projector in the basement and rent black-and-white movies from the library, I have loved movies. Movies are visceral. They are cathartic. They are spiritual. I love the experience of going to watch movies in a dark theatre with a full audience. I love being emotionally moved, to be shaken alive, to feel a sense of the wider world and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012A SCENE FROM DIRECTOR YUNG CHANG’S UP THE YANGTZE. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. At a time when the popularity of documentaries is at an all-time high, Canadian director Yung Chang is not only telling stories as compelling as his peers’, but doing so with a truly cinematic sensibility that is often lacking in his field. Born in Whitby, Ontario, to first generation Chinese immigrant parents, Chang studied film production at Concordia University, graduating in 1999. He was also a student at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where he learned the Meisner Technique. He directed the short film The […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 25, 2008