US film producer captures China's path of growth

His early years working in news taught him to respect the people who he was covering as they often shared amazing things with him on camera that they may not have told their families or friends.

He revealed that their trust makes him protective of their stories. His advice to would-be filmmakers is to "stop talking", as the ability to listen is a skill in documentary filmmaking.

During his many trips to China, he says he was struck by people's kindness after his day-to-day filming stopped.

"One of the things I learned was just how welcoming the Chinese people can be," he said. "There's a famous old saying, which I cannot say in Mandarin, but basically says that it's wonderful to be able to greet a friend from afar.

"And, so, time and time again, I was that friend from afar and people I was working with, people who I covered, they'd invite me into their homes. They'd take me out to dinner because as Chinese, they felt this responsibility to be welcoming."

Over the years, he has also witnessed the "remarkable" changes and development that created modern China.

He said he hopes that student and art exchanges between the US and China continue. He described the "50,000 in five years" initiative proposed by Xi and its completion two and a half years early as "an incredible success".

His large body of work is now archived by The University of Southern California and is called the Bill Einreinhofer China Archive.

Hosted by USC's East Asian Library, the vast collection includes more than 1,000 digital videos, textiles, images and audio. The material is available for use by students, researchers and the public. Some of it is accessible online.

"As much as I like to think of myself as youthful, the fact of the matter is at 74, I am not," he says candidly. "And over the course of over three decades, I put together what turned out to be one of the largest privately held libraries of Chinese footage about China in North America."

When USC and the East Asian library expressed an interest in archiving the material and making it available to just about everyone online, he thought it was a "wonderful idea".

He likes the fact that anybody who is interested can tap into the material. "To me, that was very, very exciting," he says proudly. He adds more of his work to the archive after each new project.

His latest documentary — America's Main Street: I-80 — is a journey through 11 states united by a common road and common dreams. It will air on PBS this November.

As the debate around artificial intelligence heats up, he revealed that he is already incorporating it into another film project that is still in the works.

Called The Forgotten General, it is about American General Jonathan Wainwright, the highest-ranking American to be held captive in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II.

He is working with famed Chinese director, Fang Li, who directed The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru.

But after doing some research he realized it was going to be difficult to represent Wainwright's experience as a POW visually, because there aren't sufficient pictures or film.

He has been searching for still photos, and 60-millimeter and 35-mm film of other Japanese POW camps and other POWs, for the AI to use as a basis to create animations.

He says that if he didn't have the film or pictures, AI would be "dreaming up whatever it thinks things might have looked like".

So, by using real documents, he keeps the AI grounded in reality.

As he reflects on his storied career, he visibly struggles to name his favorite film and compares it to a parent of multiple children being asked to name their favorite child — an impossible task.

But when it comes to which documentary he thinks had the most impact worldwide, he points to Beyond Beijing, a four-part documentary series that covered six cities other than Beijing that hosted 2008 Olympic events.

He estimates that it was watched by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, as it was distributed in 43 countries, including China.

"It's a humbling experience because these people are putting faith in me that I'm telling them the true story; that I am being evenhanded in telling that story. And so, I appreciate the audience. And knowing that that audience is out there, it keeps me striving to maintain the level of honesty that I contributed to all of my projects," he says thoughtfully.