Jordan Schiele, director of Dog Days, is an unusual man. He is a Brooklyn-born, Beijing-based, cinephile and Sinophile. Schiele spent his first day in Mumbai on his first trip to India taking about 200 photos with several of his new friends he made at the Juhu beach. “I was talking to a local guy and then he introduced me to one friend and that one to another. It was my first day in India and I loved it.”
The best reward
Schiele’s first feature film Dog Days is being screened at the ongoing Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival With Star. Schiele is here to represent his film and interact with the audience post its screening. “The first show at MAMI got a great response. It was sold out. I interacted with a lot of people, especially young filmmakers after the screening. The film gets a very different reaction in different countries, but it is always a strong reaction. Some people love it, some hate it.” Schiele says if his film can provoke or invoke a sincere reaction — good or bad — that would be his best reward.
The film has been nominated for the Best First Feature at Berlin and will also be screened at the Beijing Film Festival. Dog Days is the story of a nightclub dancer and a single mother, who comes home to find out that her partner has disappeared with their baby. She then tracks her child down with the help of her partner’s gay drag queen lover. “Issues such as the one-child policy, homosexuality and child trafficking are in the film, but I am not trying to make a documentary. It’s really more about the experience of the scenario and the characters that go through that scenario.”
What is striking about the film is Schiele’s subtlety and use of nuance. A constant underlying theme, including the title Dog Days, which stands for the sultry part of summer that is characterised by indolence and suffocation, is the oppressive heat of China.
“One of the things I like in a film is that it is sensorial. In Dog Days , I wanted the audience to feel the film, experience the heat which I think drives the characters crazy. I also wanted the film to feel sensual or a little bit animalistic. So, I wanted the characters to have a lot of physicality and sweat was only one part of that.”
Chinese at heart
Asked why he chose China to base some of the themes in the movie when they could’ve been dealt with in other countries, Schiele says, “Most of my adult experience has been in Mainland China. Hence a lot of the narrative and characters have been taken from either the people I’ve met or my own experiences. So, it was always going to be a Chinese film.”
The influence of China on Schiele personally and professionally is palpable. “I’d like to think that one day I’ll be Chinese.” Further proof of this deep impact comes later into the conversation, when Schiele is unable to remember the English word ‘habit’ though the Chinese equivalent comes to mind readily. “That’s crazy, sometimes I surprise myself,” he says, shaking his head.
A complex identity
However, Schiele says his identity, like everyone else’s, is a complex thing. “I primarily identify as an American filmmaker who works in Chinese cinema.
For me, the challenge of the film is, I never thought ‘How am I going to make a Chinese film?’, I always thought who are the characters in the film and how do I understand the society and what can I draw from what I know.”
Schiele lists French director Jacques Audiard, American filmmakers Sydney Lumet and Arthur Penn, Japanese directors Hirokazu Kore-Eda (whose film After the Storm is part of MAMI) and Kenji Mizoguchi, Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl, Hong Kong-based Wong Kar-Wai, Chinese filmmakers, including Jia Zhangke, among his favourite filmmakers. He says for him every film is like a new experiment. “I don’t want to make the same film twice,”
Travelling is life
The young filmmaker says visiting new countries and experiencing new cultures is a big part of what drives him as a person and that travelling is life. “Every festival, Berlin, Mumbai or Beijing, is very localised. So you are able to experience how people in the country or in that city watch films. MAMI has been a very happy time. Every moment in the last 48 hours has been exciting.”
Schiele says he enjoyed walking the red carpet in Berlin because his family was there with him. “This is a career with a lot of risk and doubt. But my mother has been extremely supportive. My mother was able to be reassured that maybe a career in film making wouldn’t be so crazy.”
Many hats, many interests
Schiele is also a cinematographer and is currently working as the Director of Photography for a film he plans to shoot in Japan. He is also working on a feature film project in China and is editing an American Chinese film, which is also like a personal project.
He admits thats he gets offers to act in films in China. “I haven’t done anything yet. Recently, I was asked play a foreigner obsessed with China, obviously a totally different character,” Schiele is considering this one and might audition for it. “I’m not closed to the idea. I enjoy it but I don’t want to ruin the film.”
The author is a freelance writer
