A version of this interview with “Eternal Spring” director Jason Loftus first appeared in the International Film issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Toronto-based filmmaker Jason Loftus tells the story of the 2002 takeover of a Chinese state television station by members of the banned Falun Gong movement — and to do so, he enlisted the help of Chinese born comic book artist Daxiong, who had to flee the country after the government crackdown. The film is Canada’s entry in the Oscars Best International Feature Film race, but it is also eligible in the documentary and animated-feature races, following in the footsteps of last year’s triple nominee “Flee.”
How did you get involved with Daxiong and with this story?
I was making a kung fu video game a few years ago, and it featured hand-drawn comic book art. We learned about this artist who was living in New York at the time, originally from China, who had drawn for “Justice League” and “Star Wars”. So we thought it’s perfect: The guy’s got the cultural background as well as this amazing artistic ability.
He was working on this game with us, and I learned that he came from a city in northeast China, Changchun, the same hometown as my wife and producing partner, Masha. She had no connection with any dissident or persecuted group, because she was the daughter of a mid-level government official in China. So hearing what Daxiong had gone through under her nose in her own city really hit home for her.
For me, I had an interest in Eastern philosophy and meditation in high school, and I encountered Falun Gong at that time. So when the government in ’99 said, “These people are evil and dangerous and we need to get rid of them,” it didn’t reconcile with what I had witnessed. And when Daxiong fell into our laps, we felt it was an important story to tell, and a unique one from an artistic and filmmaking perspective.
At that point, did you envision using his animation to tell the story?
Not to the extent of what we see. We explored different things, but I liked the idea of animation in Daxiong’s style to bring the story to life. So there was a question of, “Do we look at this as a dramatized true story?” But the documentary element was just begging to be part of it, because it’s an ongoing human-rights issue and that can ground it.
I thought animation can be used very effectively in documentary, but what excited me was this idea that the animation wouldn’t just be a decision by the invisible hand of the director. I felt there was an opportunity to pull the curtain back: We see this artist. He’s been tortured, he’s lost his home and it’s reflected in his pen. As soon as he starts drawing, you can see that.
It created, I have to admit, a big challenge from a production standpoint. If you’re making a traditional documentary, you’re shooting 100 of footage, you’re observing, you’re sitting in the editing suite and carving it up and letting the story emerge naturally. But if you’re gonna animate something, you lock the whole story beforehand and you have your storyboards. Animation is time-consuming and expensive, and you don’t want to throw any of it out. So we took this leap of faith because what we were observing Daxiong as he was creating the work and animating, and of course we were showing the animation process on screen, which means we were already animating things while we were doing the documentary pieces. We were doing both at the same time with some kind of like, knock-on-wood, fingers-crossed approach that it was all gonna somehow gel together.
Was Daxiong on board from the start? He’s exploring events that essentially forced him to leave his country.
Yeah, I think he was looking for some type of closure. He had these feelings of like, he survived and other people didn’t. And I think sometimes in that situation you feel like you want to do something. You feel like, “How come someone else died and I didn’t?” I think he wanted to have an understanding of what had taken place.
The timeline of the film is quite intricate. Was that tricky?
Yeah, yeah. A number of people have told me, “Hey, I notice it bounces a bit, but it all seems to work.” And my response to that is, if it works, if it ever feels effortless, it’s because there’s an enormous amount of work that went into it.
Were you aware of the animated documentary “Flee” when you were making this film?
We were in the later stages of the story edits when it was making its rounds on the festival circuit. One of my friends and story consultants said, “Oh, you really gotta check out ‘Flee.’” I didn’t get around to it during Sundance, and when it was at TIFF we were in the throes of post production to get it finished for an early 2023 presentation.
So I didn’t end up seeing it until I’d fully finished my production. But I was aware of it and I’d seen the trailer and I was excited by the fact that it was succeeding. I just wanted people to not have reservations about animated documentaries. And I wasn’t concerned that people would think, “Oh, someone did an animated doc last year,” because I knew what we were doing was unique in the sense of how we were integrating the animation.
When you approach a story and come up with something unique and original, I think there’s always space for it.
Read more from the International Film issue here.
