An interview with the Director of The Cave of the Yellow Dog.

Q: The film is a follow up to The Story of the Weeping Camel and, like that film, is very gentle, subtle, nothing really happens – its a uniquely fluid, organic, meandering way of telling a story.
Byambasuren Davaa: My aim was to document a vanishing culture. So as a film-maker, I’m in control of my language, but I wanted to step back and let them tell their story from their perspective, so in a sense I created a filmic language that would enable them to do that. They live quietly, and in a subtle way.

Q: How much of the film is scripted? How much direction did you give – how do you work with the actors (non-professionals)?
Byambasuren Davaa: They’re not actors at all – they are a real family still living in the way that they do in the film. So no, there’s no screenplay, no dialogue for them.

Q: Do you set up situations for them and see what happens?
Byambasuren Davaa: In general I take a fifty fifty split between that which is staged and that which is observed. But when I say its staged, that doesn’t mean that I say ‘come here, say this, and then leave the frame’. I try to get them into a situation, to get them to talk or in the case of the children, to get them to play.

Q: The old adage, never work with children or animals – in this film you really do both. The children are the centre of the story. How did you find the family, how did you find working with the children?
Byambasuren Davaa: I searched and I found.

Q: Did they enjoy the process?
Byambasuren Davaa: Yes, I think they did enjoy it. Both sides were enriched by the experience, both the filmmakers and the family. We were two months together and the children in particular were very nervous at first, these strange people with blond hair and strange grey eyes. So what we did was allow time for them to relax, we didn’t put ourselves under any time pressure, allowed ourselves peace and quiet and to get to know each other. And after some days, though the crew couldn’t speak to the children, they could play with them and then it got to the point when they forgot the camera.

So after we finished shooting, everyone found it hard to leave.

Q: So have the family seen the film? What did they think?
Byambasuren Davaa: I showed it to them on a little video recorder, and generally they said yes, that’s how we really are, but then the mother, in particular, starting worrying, ‘why haven’t the children washed their faces?’ ‘why does my hair look so strange?’ but then they said yes, that’s how we really are anyway.

Q: The film focuses on the inevitability of progress – there's no space to live this nomadic, traditional lifestyle. Is this film a tribute to a vanishing way of life?
Byambasuren Davaa: What I tried to do was see these people with the camera’s eye. The city may be far off, you don’t see it, but its omni-present in the lives. Nobody can individually change these things, and especially not a filmmaker. What’s happenened here is like a huge tidal wave that’s come over them, because of course in the Communist era in Mongolia the whole place was like a fish bowl and now of course the whole place has opened up and all these influences are coming in and going out the other way. It’s the time that determines everything. And its not my intention to say on the one hand it’s a lovely life and it shouldn’t change, or on the other hand that’s in the past and has to change, I’m just trying to show how it is.

Q: Could you tell us a little bit about the funding and production process?
Byambasuren Davaa: It was my university project – graduation film. In Mongolia we have a lot of stories but not enough money. I managed to get the money from Germany the stories from Mongolia, and I’m somewhere between the two. But very lucky, because I'm under no commercial pressure from funders.

Q: And perhaps the star of the film, the dog.
Byambasuren Davaa: The dog wasn’t trained, it was a stray. But it was much easier to deal with than the children – it would respond to sausages, but the children didn't!

Related Links:
The Cave of the Yellow Dog Review.