‘Shadowed in a Snowstorm’: Filmmaker David Novack reveals his journey exposing genocide in China

Portuguese filmmaker David Novack has recently revealed that he was followed in the middle of a snowstorm while shooting a documentary on a human rights genocide in China, which has been garnering widespread acclaim and sparking thought-provoking discussion.

Speaking to The Epoch Times, David Novack said, “We were followed by a car with an unmarked license plate, and our host in Kazakhstan was quite nervous about it.”

“It was in a snowstorm at night. Eventually, we put our cameras on that car. That car saw that we were filming them, and it left. The power of the camera, right?” he added.

David Novack’s documentary, “All Static and Noise,” which exposes the inside stories of survivors and their families in China’s Uyghur detention and re-education camps, is currently screening in cinemas and film festivals around Australia, as per reports.

According to Australian film magazine FilmInk, “All Static & Noise” found its inspiration from an article by Anthropologist Darren Byler, who was reporting on a speech by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials at Xinjiang University in 2017. 

CCP officials gathered thousands of students and faculty in the university gymnasium to ‘explain’ their version of the ‘Global War on Terror’, and they painted Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in the Uyghur Region as ‘terrorists’ guilty of ‘separatism.’ 

During the speeches, the Xinjiang University Party Secretary and others, referring to Uyghur and other ethnic minorities, declared that ‘all static and noise would need to be eliminated’. That’s documentarian David Novack, explaining the meaning of his latest feature length film’s title, according to FilmInk.

In an interview with the magazine, Novack said, “The film’s intention is to reappropriate this language, to make louder the voices of resistance and inspire the masses to challenge the hate that sits behind this inflamed speech.”

“Note that in English, the term ‘static’ can have two meanings. The film’s title refers to the crackling sounds you might hear on a radio or television caused by electricity in the air, not stagnancy,” he said.

This is the third feature documentary by David Novack as writer, director and producer, following Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008), which focuses on the impacts of mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, and Finding Babel (2015), which is an artful exploration of Soviet author and journalist Isaac Babel’s life, writings, and political commentaries.

Lawmakers in multiple countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, have declared that the CCP is committing genocide against Uyghurs, in addition to suppressing their culture and identity through forced assimilation, language suppression, and detention of over a million Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, while the United States government was the first to declare this genocide in January 2021.

Interestingly, filmmaker David Novack discovered that his documentary was banned in China one-and-a-half years before it was completed.

“We found out through a document that our film was officially banned in China, but it was officially banned a year and a half before we finished it,” Novack was quoted as saying by The Epoch Times. “So clearly, someone within the CCP was aware of our film, that we were making this film, and knew the title.”

The documentarian noted his team had faced obstacles distributing the film, saying, “I couldn’t possibly sell this film to Netflix as the OTT streaming platform is broadcasting or streaming in China.” 

“Any entity that’s doing business in China is not going to show this film,” he added.

The most pervasive challenge was self-censorship, which Novack called “dangerous,” as reported by The Epoch Times.

“For instance, many of the major film festivals would hesitate to show this film because they also bring in very interesting Chinese filmmakers to their film festivals. They want to, and they should, right? That kind of artistic interaction is a good thing,” David Novack told the publication.

“But if they were to show our film, they might face the CCP boycotting their festival; not allowing Chinese filmmakers and critics to go,” he added. “In some cases, Chinese embassies abroad contribute to film festivals and would pull their money out.”

Pointing out the irony of being unable to criticise the Chinese Communist regime freely despite being in a free world, the filmmaker said, “In the West, we live in a free world where there’s no ramifications. I can make a film that’s critical of the US government, but nothing will happen to me. In fact, the State Department sent me around the world to show that film.”
“And yet, I have a harder time with a film that’s critical about China because of self-censorship,” Novack told the publication