Director Ying Liang

Director Ying Liang was interviewed at the Apple Store Sanlitun Beijing, as part of the “Meet the Filmmakers” series, co-presented by the Apple Store in Beijing and dGenerate Films, an ongoing series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology.

Ying Liang graduated from the Department of Directing at the Chongqing Film Academy and Beijing Normal University. He directed his first feature film,Taking Father Home (2005), which won awards at the Tokyo Filmex Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2006, Ying made The Other Half (2006), which is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) from the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film also won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo Filmex Film Festival.

The video of Ying’s interview is in three parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript. Interview conducted by Gigi Zhang. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription and subtitles by Isabella Tianzi Cai.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player. The subtitles can be repositioned anywhere on the screen by clicking on them (if they are not displaying properly, click them to adjust).

PART ONE:

Gigi: Thanks to everyone for coming and being interested in independent Chinese cinema. Many of you may not know Director Ying Liang that well, so why don’t we start by having him introduce himself? Could you talk about yourself a little bit? And also the shorts as well as longer films that you have made? What are their similarities?

YL: Thanks Gigi for introducing me, and addressing me as a director and a filmmaker, and associating me with the underground film production world. But honestly, I am not any of those. I am just some guy who likes this medium. I like using a DV camera to film things. What you see on the screen is a short by me. I am not very satisfied with this short. I made it last year or the year before last. It is roughly 14-minute long. I have done features before. Actually I’m working on one right now. Most of my shorts, a total of 14 of them, are shot in Zigong, Sichuan. This one is different from most of my other films. It has a more concrete narrative structure, and very linear in that sense. To most people it may also seem a little artsy. So far I have only been a one-man team for all my films. I spent my own savings of 30,000 yuan on my first feature. And I have not spent any more than this amount. I really don’t consider myself a film director. Being called one in this luxurious space makes me feel that I don’t deserve it, and I am a little reluctant to be called so. I know how embarrassing it must feel for Gigi to introduce me. But please proceed with the questions.

Gigi: We should not judge a director by the budget or the length of his or her work. You are being modest. So far you have made 13 shorts and three features. Do you think the shorts that you have made land you on your features in some way? What is the relationship between these two forms? Do you have any advice or suggestions for the film students sitting in the audience?

YL: My shorts are not much different from the shorts made by many other students in film schools. Back in school, I have been taught that shorts are a good exercise before making features in terms of production, producing, as well as screenwriting. In retrospect, I did see one other benefit of making shorts, that is, I could mature during the making of them. I am not satisfied with this particular film because it is not extraordinary in any way. Despite a slightly larger budget and a tighter narrative, it is still an average student short or medium-length film, depending on how you define a short. Right now, I am more interested in making shorter shorts, but with more room for creativity. I think this kind of short is more challenging to the mind, and at the same time, it is also most appropriate to this art form. Most of the time, it’s not easy to tell if a short is a narrative film, a documentary, or an experimental film. Shorts are a unique form; they foreground time. I have some friends who make shorts. I often share my thoughts with them and also with my students at Songzhuang. They tell me interesting little things in life that they have neglected in the past. And I tell them that all these can be good materials for shorts. As for my features, I go about shooting them less effortlessly. The experiences that I have gained by making shorts are certainly helpful, especially in terms of working around a tight budget.

Gigi: You mentioned that you only spent 30,000 yuan for your first feature. Did you shoot it on DV cam?

YL: Yes. Before 2008, I used MiniDV. After 2008, I used HDV. I don’t think that my techniques have improved much whereas the technology has certainly kept developing. I think I am lazy. I don’t always know how good I want my films to look because to me, that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is the freedom enjoyed by the artist, which includes the freedom from state production codes, the freedom from economic concerns, and the freedom for artistic creativity. I like being able to use this medium to tell interesting snippets of life in creative ways. I want to keep my relationship with filmmaking pure. The filmmaking process is not yet industrialized for me; my production team has been small, so has my budget.

Gigi: You mentioned that your filmmaking process is not yet industrialized. But I wish to ask you more about the funding of your films. I know that in the past you have secured some funding through overseas organizations. Was that helpful? Do you know if other independent filmmakers have also been funded as such?

YL: This is the most industrialized space that my film has ever been screened. For me, getting funding from overseas organizations was purely by chance, and it was atypical. At the time, I just finished my first film. I didn’t think about distributing it. I looked for some film festivals online, and I sent off my film to them. Surprisingly, it received some awards, including cash awards. I didn’t expect to have these cash awards at all. However, they did help me get started on my next film projects or related works, such as writing a screenplay, preparing for shooting, etc. I kept working, and more cash awards came by that way. I also applied for funding. But my relationship with overseas organizations hasn’t been very good. One reason is that I don’t like being restricted in any way, certainly not in my filmmaking process, and also not in my life. Money always gets offered with conditions attached. It is the same with an investor as with a cultural institution. These conditions could restrict me. They could make me feel not being true to my own calling. Every person knows to be grateful. Making a film is hard work. After you complete a film, if you show it to others and get approved by them, you feel proud of your work. However, when you are offered money for the work you have done, you are naturally inclined to feel grateful towards the offer. That could somehow shape your future film projects in unforeseeable ways, which could be restricting. For example, it could affect your attitude towards filmmaking, your choice of subjects, etc. I often tell myself not to be affected by such funding. I want to continue being myself. The relationship between me and some overseas organizations is mostly just collaborative. If they ask too much of me and make me feel too restricted, I tend to give up the funding or the project. But I should mention that the reason that I am here today. dGenerate Films Inc. is a New York-based nontheatrical distributor of independent Chinese films. My films have been distributed by them to North American colleges mostly. They helped me make my work known overseas. I have to thank them here today.

PART TWO:

Gigi: You said that you had a collaborative relationship with overseas organization, but I take it to mean that it was also a business relationship in which both sides have invested interests. For people who just arrived, this is director Ying Liang. He studied film production at Beijing Normal University and later also studied directing at Chongqing University. He is currently an independent filmmaker. I learned that when you were at Beijing Normal University, you were classmates with Ning Hao, who now makes short and medium-length films. In terms of filmmaking practices, what do you see as the differences between him and you as well as the similarities?

YL: Starting from 1993 or 1994, the filmmaking program was put in place as part of an adult education program. However, our educational policies changed, so this program no longer exists. Peng Tao, who directed Little Moth, Han Jie, Yang Jin were all from there. Sadly this program is no longer there. This is a comprehensive program. From observing life, to writing screenplays, to producing films, to auditioning actors and actresses, to editing, everything was taught to us. You can say that each of learned how to complete a film by himself, or with the help of a very small team. In this sense, I don’t see much difference between us. The difference is rather at a more personal level. For examples, our interests are different, and our conceptions of film too. Every filmmaker or artist is an individual entity. His or her preferred way of working is analogous to a college graduate’s choice of employment.

Gigi: You are one of the organizers of Chongqing Independent Film and Video Festival. You made a statement there that went like: “The future of Chinese narrative films, unlike that of Chinese documentaries, isn’t bright; they will be very limited.” Could you explain what you meant by that? Why did you express two different views on our narrative films and our documentaries?

YL: I referred to independent narrative films because these films don’t often pass muster with the censors. Officials from China’s Film Bureau like to say – although I have not heard it myself, but I read it in writing – that young and independent filmmakers who make personalized and subjective films do not have a future. I used to think that this was only true in China. However, this March when I was in Kuala Lumpur, I heard something similar from the chief officer of the Malaysian Film Bureau. Malaysia also has a group of independent filmmakers, who are very similar to mainland Chinese independent filmmakers. They were told by the officer too that if they kept making personalized films there would be no future for them. I should note that the future in my speech and the future in those people’s speeches are different. I was being frank. I think if anyone wants to be an independent filmmaker, he or she needs to be prepared to sacrifice a lot first. Some people asked me before how I was able to keep at my job as an independent filmmaker, what difficulties I had had, etc. Usually I told them that I did not have any difficulties. I made my choices, and I should be responsible for all the consequences of my choice. Since this is the case, there is really no complaint to be made, and perseverance is unknown to me. If I felt that I had to persevere instead of just being an independent filmmaker, I would no longer enjoy being one. I think if a person does not enjoy what he or she is doing, he or she might as well give it up. Instead of making independent films, why not play computer games on Mac Books or surf the Internet? For me, I find the Apple interface too difficult to navigate and their desktop icons too small to notice, and I do not always remember the shortcut keys, so I give up Apple. Making independent films and using an Apple computer are similar in nature. It depends on your interest. To those who don’t enjoy it, I would suggest not take it too seriously. Do something you enjoy then.

Gigi: Are you an Apple user?

YL: I am sorry I am not. I do not get much funding. Compared to PC, it is very high-end. Like I said earlier, having my film screened here was certainly very high-end for me.

Gigi: We have been here talking for a while. Shall we change gears and have you introduce your film on the screen?

YL: Sure. It has been playing for a while.

Gigi: Which film is this?

YL: The Other Half. It was shot in 2006. Its story is related to women’s rights movement. It is a narrative film. I edited it using Adobe Premiere 6.5.

Gigi: You have just watched excerpts from director Ying Liang’s The Other Half. This film won four international awards, right?

YL: Not important.

Gigi: Including the Woosuk Award at Jeonju International Film Festival in Korea.

PART THREE:

Man: The number of people who are interested in seeing Chinese independent films is increasing. Although many of these films have won awards at international film festivals, they are not available to majority of the population in China. We often have to search for these films on Taobao.com. I want to know what you think about this phenomenon. And my second question is whether you wish to make commercial films in the future?

YL: Personally I am quite satisfied with everything. I know many filmmakers as well as artists from other fields want to reach a wider audience, but I am not that way. It is not extremely important to me whether people see my work or not, and I do not think my films are that important anyway. You probably have noticed that my films are closely tied to the social milieu of our time. They are mostly based on my personal experiences and observations. And they do not amount to anything larger. If I am interested in larger topics and themes, such as Chinese youth culture or gay culture, like Professor Cui Zi’en, I will do something different. What I film is mostly based on my personal choices. I think our visual media have very limited influences on people, and you can almost argue that it has no influence at all. Ideally speaking, our visual media, people in general, and society at large are three distinct entities, and they should be that way. This is just my personal opinion. As to where to see these films, in China the opportunities are truly limited. Film festivals are one of the venues, but there aren’t so many. You can buy from the Internet, but you need to do extensive search before finding what you want.  BT downloading is another way, and I am not against such illegal channels. I am content with the fact that people who want to see it can see it. I do not care that much about my films or how to distribute them. If I do, then I will start making commercial films and aim for the market, with schemes about how to do so. But that really isn’t what I like. I like this personal relationship with film. If this friendship is contaminated by personal interests, I will no longer like it as much, and I may do something else altogether. Everything I do now has something to do with visual media. As Gigi mentioned, I helped organize a film festival, and I taught a filmmaking class at Songzhuang. But all these things are done out of pure interests, without the concern of making money. All the profits that I have made happened by chance. I like it this way. Either I do voluntary work for others, or I do it for myself. That is also why I dissuaded my students from becoming independent filmmakers because they will faced many difficulties, many demands, and many misunderstandings.

Gigi: You mentioned that your films were marketed in North America. When you were shooting them, did you want to cater to their taste specifically?

YL: This is something that I resist a lot. North America is only one part of the map because there are film festivals all over the world. I mentioned North America because this event was organized by a New York-based distributor. I was invited here to screen my film and talk about it. What you brought up is something I resist a lot. I like to think the relationship between me and various foundations as ordinary friendship. I want to maintain it that way. Think about a film critic and a filmmaker. They have to maintain certain distance.

Relevant Classroom Use

Film Director Yang Jin

dGenerate Films and the Apple Store in Beijing continue their ongoing series showcasing China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. Next Tuesday, November 2, acclaimed digital filmmaker Yang Jin will show clips from his films and discuss his creative process.

Yang Jin’s talk is part of the series “Meet the Filmmakers,” a collaboration between the Apple Store in Beijing and dGenerate Films. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. This series introduces award-winning directors discuss with the general public how they use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.

Read news coverage of the inaugural “Meet the Filmmakers” events, and watch video from previous Apple Store talks with filmmakers Cui Zi’en, Jian Yi and Peng Tao.

Corrected: This event will be held at the Apple Store in Xidan Joy City (NOT Sanlitun), Beijing, starting at 7pm.

Address: North Street, Xicheng District, Beijing Xidan Joy City. Phone:  131(8610) 6649-1400

Yang Jin was born in 1982 in Shanxi. In 2000, he enrolled in the Shanxi Film School’s photography program. In 2003, he enrolled in the College of Art And Communication at Beijing Normal University, where he majored in directing. He made a few of documentaries and some short feature films during his time there. Yang’s first film The Black and White Milk Cow (2004) won the Ecumenical Jury Award and FICC Jury/Don Quijote Prize of the International Federation of Film Societies at the 19th Fribourg International Film Festival. His second feature Er Dong screened at the Pusan, Rotterdam and Hong Kong Film Festivals.

Relevant Classroom Use

Liu Jiayin, director of Oxhide, Oxhide II and the forthcoming Oxhide III (photo courtesy of Liu Jiayin)

In anticipation of Oxhide and Oxhide II director Liu Jiayin’s presentation at the Beijing Apple Store this Thursday, Hao Ying of the Global Times (English edition) profiled the director. Here’s an excerpt:

Meeting director Liu Jiayin, it’s hard to forget scenes from her autobiographic film Oxhide in which her father tries to bully her into growing taller by forcing her to drink milk, and also urges her to hang from a pull-up bar. Her mother, also concerned she isn’t flowering into a curvy woman, urges Liu to dress more daintily, like a Japanese girl.

Her parents’ tactics didn’t work. During a recent interview with the Global Times at a coffee shop, the waitress asked the tomboyish, short director, “Mister, would you like some sugar?” Other people might be distressed by having the world know their most intimate stories, but this doesn’t seem to phase Liu, who is currently finishing the story for Oxhide III, the planned third part of her extraordinary series of fictionalized films about the intimate details of her own family.

Liu is giving a presentation on digital filmmaking at the Apple Store in Sanlitun Village on Thursday at 7 pm. She used Final Cut to edit Oxhide II on a friend’s computer, and currently uses a Macbook Pro. She advises also beginning filmmakers to borrow or rent a camera instead of buying one, because the technology is changing so fast.

Read the rest of the article – in which she gives some details on Oxhide III, and how to solve the filmmaker’s equivalent of “conquering AIDS and cancer” – at the Global Times.

Relevant Classroom Use

Liu Jiayin

dGenerate Films and the Apple Store in Beijing continue their ongoing series showcasing China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. This Thursday, August 5, acclaimed digital filmmaker Liu Jiayin will show clips from her films and discuss her creative process.

Liu Jiayin’s talk is part of the series “Meet the Filmmakers,” a collaboration between the Apple Store in Beijing and dGenerate Films. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. This series introduces award-winning directors discuss with the general public how they use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.

Read news coverage of the inaugural “Meet the Filmmakers” events, and watch video from previous Apple Store talks with filmmakers Cui Zi’en, Jian Yi and Peng Tao.

All events will be held at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, starting at 7pm.

Liu Jiayin was born in Beijing in 1981. At age 23, she made her debut feature Oxhide while a Master’s student the Beijing Film Academy. Oxhide has won several prizes (including the FIPRESCI award at Berlin Film Festival, Golden DV Award at Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Dragons and Tigers Award at Vancouver Film Festival) and has been called “the most important Chinese film of the past several years–and one of the most astonishing recent films from any country” (film critic Shelly Kraicer). Her follow-up Oxhide II (2009) was similarly lauded, and won awards at CinDi Seoul and was featured in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. She is currently a professor of screen writing at the Beijing Film Academy, and is developing the final part of her trilogy, Oxhide III.

Relevant Classroom Use

Peng Tao at the Sanlitun Apple Store, Beijing

Peng Tao is the award-winning director of Little Moth (2007) and a graduate of the Art Department of Beijing Film Academy, where he received the Outstanding Short Film Award and first prize at the 1st JINZI Awards. Peng Tao’s second feature, Floating in Memory (2009), is supported by the prestigious Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and the Hubert Bals Fund, and screened in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition at the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The video of Peng’s interview is in three parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript. Interview conducted by Jane Zheng. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription and subtitles by Yuqian Yan and Isabella Tianzi Cai.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

VIDEO PART ONE

JZ: I know you graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. The literature department, right?

PT: Yes.

JZ: Most students from the literature department become scriptwriter. How did you become a director from a scriptwriter? It’s quite a big change. Can you tell us about this process?

PT: I think everyone can become a director because being a director is to express your thoughts and understanding of life. Beijing Film Academy provided me opportunities to study all kinds of basic professional knowledge. You don’t have to stick to your major. We all have different ideas about the future. After I finished my script, I felt that only I could best present the thoughts I wanted to express. So I decided to direct it myself. Other people might not like my script.

JZ: Did you show it to other people or is it just your assumption?

PT: Not this one, but it did happen before. They thought it was not good enough.

JZ: Scriptwriter and director are two different roles. You’ve done both. So what do you think the biggest difference is between these two roles?

PT: I think script is the blueprint of a film.  It’s you need a plan to build a house. Everything is based on this plan.  The role of a scriptwriter is to draw the blueprint, whereas the director’s responsibility is to build the actual house, to realize it with images.

JZ: To organize the workers to build the house.

PT: Right. The president of Beijing Film Academy once said that a director is like a supervisor. He/she has other people do technical work for him/her. A director just needs to supervise their work and make final check.

JZ: Another opinion is that a director is not good at everything; he/she only knows a little bit of everything. His/her most important role is to organize people with expertise to finish the film. What do you think about this?

PT: I kind of agree.  Nowadays, people with all sorts of occupations make films, such as poets, writers, and dancers, not just students graduated from Film Academy.

JZ: I think many in our audience today want to be a director in spite of their varied background.

PT: I believe everyone can be a director because they all have their own understanding and feeling of life.

JZ: Thank you for encouraging us. We just saw the 2-minute trailer. Perhaps many people still don’t know what the film is about. I know that your second film is called Floating in Memory. Can you tell us more about your two films and your recent project?

PT: Both of my two films, Little Moth and Floating in Memory, reflect the current situation in Chinese society and the life condition of ordinary people and what they are thinking. They are not about urban subjects, but semi-urban, semi-rural subjects.

JZ:  Where was it filmed?

PT: In Yuan’an County in Hubei province.

JZ: Why did you choose that place?

PT: Because it suits the characters in my script.  It’s a small remote county that matches the script.  So I picked that place.

JZ: My question is why you didn’t choose a city that is closer to our life? What made you decide to present the life of people who are so far away from us?

PT: I was born in city and grew up in city. I’ve never lived in the countryside.  Many people asked me the same question why I didn’t depict city life but chose countryside or small counties. China is such a huge country. I don’t think big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are representative of the entire country.  Second and third-tier cities, small counties and countryside are more representative of China. Moreover, among the 1.4 billion Chinese populations, the majority are still peasants. More than 1 billion are peasants, only 20 or 30 million people live in cities. But there are only very few contemporary Chinese films reflect the life of peasants. I think that these are the best place to show the reality and social change of contemporary China.

JZ: As you told me before, the subject matter of your two films is a bit dark. Have you ever received any criticism? For quite a long time, people have been criticizing Chinese directors for using dark or marginalized side of China to appeal to oversea film festivals.  What made you choose this subject matter for your film? I know your film has won many awards abroad. Please tell us what you think.

PT: I think China is experiencing dramatic changes right now. This change is different from that in the 80s or 90s since its economical development and international status are incomparable to then. You can feel a difference every day. In the past, you could easily win awards as long as you made a different voice from the government. Now it’s totally different. You can’t get attention simply by making a different voice or throwing out a marginalized subject. Now there are lots of independent Chinese films, not everyone can get recognition. I think the most important thing is that your film should reflect true human emotions, life condition and also hope. As long as a film is innovative and has its unique style, subject and perspective, it can be accepted both in and outside China.

JZ: A film that reveals true feelings is a good film.

PT: Right. The fundamental concern is people.

JZ: Let’s talk about your new film.

PT: I’m now preparing for my new film. If everything goes well, I’ll start in October. It’s about the life of old people.

VIDEO PART TWO

JZ: Since you don’t want to tell us more about your new film, we’ll just wait and see. You used HD camera to make your first two films. We know that Apple products make it possible for individuals to make films. What do you think of the role of digital technology in filmmaking?

PT: I think film is now in the digital era. The emergence of DV camera accelerated the development of independent films both in and outside China.  It makes filmmaking more accessible.  As I said before, everyone can be a director.  But before digital camera, this is almost impossible. Traditional film technology requires a big film crew. You need a cameraman and also someone to develop the film and make copies. Digital technology makes things much easier. Postproduction is simplified.  Editing can even be finished within a couple of days.

JZ: All you need is a computer.

PT: Right. It’s also very easy to reedit the film. When I just graduated from school, I used 35mm film, and the process was very complicated …

JZ: It sounds quite far away although it was actually just several years ago. This technique is still in use?

PT: It’s different now. In school they taught us old technique in order to make us familiar with the whole process.  Now even film is digitalized and edited on computer. Then you edit the film based on the digital version.

JZ: So the process is simplified and the cost is reduced.

PT: Right.

JZ: One man and one camera can make a film. These are all the benefits brought by digital technology. As a filmmaker, what challenge do you have to face with the fast developing technology?

PT: I think so. Now filmmakers are everywhere especially independent filmmakers since you can finish a film at a very low cost. But it’s not necessarily a good film. More accessibility actually means higher requirement for the directors. You have to find a clear way to express your feeling and understand of life. Everyone can be a director, but not everyone can make an artwork.

JZ: Right. Although as you said that the development of new technology helps to lower down the cost, but making a film still need lots of money. Without financial support, you still can’t realize your dream of being a director. I know that director Peng is financed by Sundance and Rotterdam Film Festival. Can you share with us how you got support from them? We know that some European countries have funding for independent filmmakers.

PT: Yes. I did get some funding for my previous film. But I don’t know much in detail since I’m not the producer. My responsibility was to write the script. It was my producer who took care of the financing.

JZ: Litter Moth went to lots of film festivals and won many awards. Can you share with us your feeling for the success of your first film?

PT: Of course I was quite happy. I studied at Film Academy for a long time and I was eager to see if I could actually make a film. You can’t be a real filmmaker without making a film. Many people claim that they are filmmakers after graduate from Film Academy, but they don’t have a work to prove that. So little Moth is a testimony for me. It proves that what I learned from school is useful.

JZ: But if you have a very high starting point, will you … For example, Did you expect your second film to go to any film festival?

PT: My second film also went to some film festivals. The threshold of filmmaking can sometimes strangle new ideas in the cradle.  Without digital technology, when the investors look at your script, their concern is that if the film is worth millions or even ten million of investment. Of course he’s concerned about profit. For example, my first film is an art house film rather than commercial.  If no one wants to finance the film since it won’t make any money, the audience would never get a chance to see it. But in the digital era, you can finish the film with far less money.

JZ: I just came up with another question. Film foundations encourage and help independent filmmakers through providing financial support. It played an important role in producing your first film. But as you said, they are also concerned with profit, the market and audience. I guess it might have brought you some troubles. After all film is made for audience. You’ll have to think about the market. If you can’t find any funding, you’ll have to look for investors. Is there any change in the past several years?

PT: There are certainly changes. If your film doesn’t have a good box office, no one will further support your career as a director. I can’t give a definite answer to your question. It involves the struggle of the director. Sometimes I prefer to film this way, but the investors want to make it more commercial, adding some movie stars or change the script into a comedy.  The audiences like that. People are tired from work. They are looking for laughter at cinema not serious stories. So it depends on the director’s choice. Chinese audiences mostly just watch blockbusters. Not so many people care about low budget films. But the oversea market is more diversified. They not only have blockbuster commercial films but also alternative films for intellectuals or certain group of audience. They have specific audience for different kinds of films. But in China, there’s no diversity.

JZ: I don’t know if the audience will agree with me. I think when we give the audience multiple choices; we’ll gradually cultivate specific interest of our audience. It’s just a matter of time and extent. I always believe that a good film, even a non-commercial one, can be well received among its audience.  A low budget film can still get attention as long as it resonates with the audience.

PT: Right.

VIDEO PART THREE

JZ: Does anyone have any questions for Director Peng about filmmaking, about financing, about Apple products? Any kind of questions.

A1: When you are writing a script, do you try to describe the image in your mind or do you write the story first and then visualize it?

PT: My method is to imagine a picture in mind first and then put it into words. I’m always the director of my script, so I don’t have to make my script very articulate.  But for a professional scriptwriter, you can’t do it this way. You have to give the director a detailed, complete script. You must make it very clear so that other people can understand. But for me, as long as I can understand my script, it’s fine. I normally just make an outline. Doesn’t have to be very clear. Everything is in my mind. My script is just an outline.

A2: How do you pick actors? Do you find actors first or write the script first?

PT: In my case, I wrote the script first then looked for actors. But sometimes the directors would pick actors first, such as Hollywood. They have s star-based system, which means they the script is tailored to specific starts and then find someone suitable to direct the film. Hollywood always does that. But I just write the script and look for suitable actors.

A2: Did you find the little in Hubei?

PT: Yes.

JZ: We forgot to mention before. All the actors in his film are unprofessional actors.

A2: Is the boy disabled?

PT: No, he isn’t. It’s performed.

A2: Did you teach them how to act?

PT: Right. Unprofessional actors never had professional trainings before. They don’t know how to live in front of the camera. So you need to teach them. Choosing actors is very important. You should pick those who are outgoing and are interested in working with you. If they meet these requirements, you just need to guide them how to live naturally in front of the camera.

A2:  Did you find them through local connections, such as friends’ relatives?

PT: Through many ways. Some are introduced by friend, some are found by myself. The male character in Floating in Memory was found in the street. He’s the chief of a local restaurant. He was smoking downstairs he finished cooking. We happened to see him after the meal. I felt that he’s very close to the main character so I asked him if he would like to act. He was very surprised because it’s very rare to meet someone looking for actors in such a small place. He didn’t believe that. But after he found out that it was for real, he quit his job and joined my film crew.  The owner of the restaurant was quite angry because he only has one cook.

A2: Is the video we just saw from the film or just footage.

PT: It’s the trailer.

A2: Why is it on 4:3?

PT: Because it’s for TV.

A2: What camera did you use?

PT: Canon XL2.

A2: Did you correct the color?

PT: Not really. Just slightly darkened.

JZ: Did you do color correction yourself?

PT: I found someone to do it. Not too much. Just lower down the saturation.

A2: When you mail your film abroad, do you send DVD?

PT: Right. But for screening, sometimes they need the Master tape.

JZ: So many questions.

A2: Master tape is the Beta?

PT: Yes. Digital Beta.

JZ: As I know, the director just needs to prepare the DVD, but the producer should collect director’s statement, actors’ information, and introduction of the film. You should give a set of document to the film festival. Right?

PT: Yes.

A2: What are the major Film Festivals for Chinese language films that you care the most?

PT: For Chinese language films, there are only Hong Kong Film Festivals … and Taiwan Film Festival, the Golden Horse Award. Others are mainly English.

A2: Do you have to pay application fee for foreign film festivals?

PT: Yes, of course. But sometimes the festival organizer will come to China to pick films. You can give your film to them directly. The application fee is quite expensive. It’s in dollars.

JZ: Can I ask your occupation? Are you a film student?

A2:  I’ve already graduated.

JZ:  You are also a director?

A2: Yes.

JZ: Do you have your own film?

A2: I haven’t won any award yet.

JZ: Keep on trying. Other questions?

A3: What’s the target audience of your two films, international film festival or domestic audience?

PT: At the beginning, I didn’t think too much about film festivals. I just wanted to express my feeling. I just wanted to film something I really liked. I wanted to make a good script into a film.

A3: If a writer wants to express some feelings, he/she writes a book and shares it with audiences. Do you think your film is closer to Chinese or foreign audience?

PT: It’s difficult to find a boundary in art. It’s hard to say weather it belongs to the US, UK or China. Of course there’s something national. But my film is about people and human emotion. People’s emotion is always connected. Like some good foreign films, you won’t say you can’t understand them because they are acted by foreigners.

A3: I have an example. There’s an Italian film called Beautiful Life. It got lots of attention worldwide and won Best Foreign Film at Oscar. Chinese people like it a lot, but Italian people don’t think it’s an Italian film.

PT: Is there another possibility… Like The Crazy Stone is very popular in China, but Hong Kong people don’t think it’s that funny at all. They don’t quite understand what it tries to say.

A3: I understand what you mean. Jokes are regional. Like Zhou Libo’s very popular in Shanghai but people in Beijing don’t understand him.

PT: Right.

A3: But people’s emotion is the same. If the domestic audience don’t like the film … I don’t mean your film. I haven’t seen it yet. But I don’t agree that Chinese films rarely reflect the life of peasants. There are lots of films that depict the reality of China, but they don’t have enough chances to be shown.

PT: You are right. Not enough screenings.

Relevant Classroom Use

Jian Yi

Jian Yi is a filmmaker from China whose work actively engages ordinary citizens in documenting their own lives. He directed the critically acclaimed films Super, Girls! and Bamboo Shoots, and co-directed the groundbreaking China Village Documentary Project, in which ordinary villagers from across China used video cameras to record the changing rural dynamics in their home villages. Jian Yi is also the founder of the Participatory Documentary Center at Jinggangshan University and Original Studio, one of the nation’s first innovative community art centers. His documentaries and feature films, which reveal the social and cultural tensions of contemporary China, have won international awards and are shown worldwide. He is a 2010 Open Society Institute Fellow.

The video of Jian’s interview is in four parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript. Interview conducted by Jane Zheng. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription and subtitles by Isabella Tianzi Cai.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

VIDEO PART 1

JZ: The clip we saw just now was from Director Jian’s feature film Dong Sun (Bamboo Shoots), winner of the Bronze Zenith Award at the 31^st Montreal World Film Festival. So, here’s my first question for you. I know you weren’t trained as a filmmaker. In fact, your film career spans over a wide range of related jobs. For example, you have worked as an editor, a production assistant, a producer, and also a curator for film festivals all around the world. What got you started in making films?

JY: Let me first apologize for showing you clips with only English subtitles, especially for the second one, because some of you may not understand Jiangxi dialect. Now, to answer your question, let me use this film as an example. What motivated me to make this film was a wish to realize in film what couldn’t be realized in real life. I have an uncle who works as a provincial-level civil servant. I visited him once and remember seeing at his home many local foods that weren’t available in the local marketplaces. I was curious about where they came from. I was sure that my uncle didn’t get them directly from villagers of nearby villages. It was possible that they got passed from villagers to village-level chiefs, then from village-level chiefs to town-level chiefs, and from town-level chiefs to municipal-level government officials, and from municipal-level government officials to provincial-level government officials. This chain of events must have taken place or else, the oranges would not have ended up where they were. In my film Dong Sun (Bamboo Shoots), a condom and a package of bamboo shoots replace the oranges.  These two objects travel from a remote village to a large city, passing many hands during the process.

To digress a little here, I am a very insecure person. Nothing in the modern world makes me feel safe. This sense of insecurity comes from everything around me, including the food I eat, the things I drink, the clothes I wear, even the house I live in.  It is also this sense of insecurity that makes me want to start a non-profit organization with a pseudonym – fang xin (literally means setting one’s mind at ease). I implanted this idea in my story. The characters in the story all feel acutely insecure because everything they eat and drink including baby milk powder can be unsafe. As a result of that, they begin their personal journeys to self-salvation, knowing that no one else is able to help them with these problems. That’s why I also think that this film can be correctly termed as a salvation or redemption film because you are the only person who can redeem yourself.

JZ:  What about your other film Chao Ji Nü Sheng (Super, Girls!)? What gave birth to that story?

JY: That project started off because of the popular singing competition Chao Ji Nü Sheng (Super, Girls!) on TV. I enjoy watching it very much now. Initially I wasn’t a fan. I even told my friends who watched this show that this show was for ingénues. But everything changed in 2005 when I sat through one episode. In 2006, I started shooting my documentary Chao Ji Nü Sheng (Super, Girls!).

JZ: During the shooting, did you follow one specific girl or a group of girls? In the clip that you just showed us, many girls seem to have been interviewed.

JY: I followed the competition as it took place. First I was in Shenyang, then Guangzhou. If I am not wrong, I was the only independent videographer among everyone else who was there filming of the competition. Most were from official broadcasting agencies. In fact, because my video camera was big, sometimes people mistook me as one of them. When I was unlucky, I got kicked out; but when I was lucky, everything went smoothly. I followed five participants mainly. Among them, Wong Yulan was the focus. I think she is a very interesting person. On the day that she passed the preliminary round of the singing competition, she noticed that there weren’t enough pencils to go around. She went to buy hundreds of pencils and then sold them to her fellow participants at the competition.

JZ: How smart of her. That’s certainly someone with a business mind.

JY: Certainly. She knew too that she and I could use each other for our own gains. My observation tells me that her generation is highly aware of the media. For her in this case, she was right to think that my camera would help her sell her pencils. And she was able to accept the presence of my camera quite readily.

JZ: I would like to congratulate you on your achievements of both your feature film and your documentary, for I know that both of these films were given awards at world film festivals and screened in many places. From the perspective of a filmmaker though, the making of a feature film and that of a documentary can be very different in nature, both in terms of the plot and the presentation. How are you able to excel at and succeed in doing both? Could you share some of your experiences with us?

JY: I don’t consider myself a success at both. Many brilliant and excellent filmmaker s are out there. I really don’t consider myself as one of them. I like to do what I like, of things that I think about. That’s why it doesn’t really matter to me whether I’m making feature films, documentaries, oral histories, or photography for that matter. I will use my dream non-profit organization fang xin here as an example. I really like the idea and I constantly think about it. Though I am unable to realize this dream at the present, or in other words, I am unable to redeem myself right now, I am free to fictionalize it in my feature film, as a way of self-salvation for the characters in the story. This explains how and why I was motivated to make the film.

JZ: I see. You mean to let form serve content.

JY: Exactly. Fang xin may never be realized. If it did, it might corrupt pretty easily.

JZ: Like 315 (315 refers to China Consumer Association).

JY: It could be.

JZ: I know besides making art, you are also involved in all kinds of social projects. For instance, together with documentary director Wu Guanguang, you started a project called “Chronicling Villagers’ Images.” Could you share more about this project with us please? Who are your targeted villagers? And what are the mandates of the project? Additionally, how is it going now?

JY:  We began this project in 2005. I met Wu Guanguang in 2004. From 2003 to 2006, I was part of an EU team whose mission in China was to follow Chinese village-level elections, and my job there mostly had to do with media relations. While I was on that job, I took many photographs, which few filmmakers or cinematographers could have had the opportunity to do the same. With ample time, a wealth of funds, and many valuable networks on hand, I obtained easy footage wherever I went.

In the first year, I did it on my own. People who live in China may know this: when I arrive at a place to do some films, I need to report to the provincial-level Civil Administration Office first; afterwards, someone from that office will inform the municipal-level Civil Administration Office about my arrival; from there, someone from the municipal-level civil administration office will inform an even lower Civil Administration Office about my arrival. This process basically continues until I get to whoever is in charge of the village that I want to visit.

Often by the time I met any villagers, it would be very late at night because a whole day had been wasted on meeting all the intermediate people, and some twenty civil servants often would sit with me at the table for a meal prepared for all of us by the villagers. During the second year that I was at this job, I organized a national photography competition simply because after so many similar incidences like this one, I came to the realization that what I could see with my own eyes was very limited. I wished to see what others saw. The results were not as good as I expected because many who participated submitted works that weren’t as illuminating as I thought they would.

It was around then that I met Wu Guanguang. I consider Wu to be like most of the people who participated in my competition, but he suggested to me that we can hand the cameras to villagers and let them film themselves. At the moment, I thought his suggestion amounted most to a change of mode of representation and nothing much. But Wu carried it out and matured as he did it. He knew many advertising agencies. He was also someone famous.

We made announcements of this project, and the response was good. The project was for ten specially selected peasants, each of whom would travel to Beijing and be given a free video camera and a free ten-day crash course on how to use video cameras. We planned to give them a month’s time to work on their own films in their native villages. After their time was up, they would be requested to come back to Beijing again where we would teach them how to edit their footage into a ten-minute short film in Wu’s studio.

VIDEO PART 2

JZ: I have noticed that you are not always interested in working with professional filmmakers, actors, etc. for your projects. Instead, you pick real people living real lives. Is it alright for me to make a connection between your filmmaking practices and your area of study in school, as well as your concern with contemporary sociopolitical issues?

JY: Yes, perhaps there is such a link. I was in a master’s degree program in International Peace Studies in the United States from 1997 to 1998. I don’t think it’s a program that many choose to go. I went because of the full scholarship that they offered to me. After I went, however, it became almost inevitable that I would be reformed in one way or another. Even though we studied international political issues, I realized that a lot of the materials that we covered were closely linked to basic human needs and shared universal values. So after my studies, I felt that I had gone through a big transformation. So . . . .

JZ: So perhaps that’s what made you return to your hometown Ji’an after graduation and set up Participatory Documentary Center with the support of Jinggangshan University. I think I see a vague resemblance between this organization and your collaboration with Wu Guanguang to teach villagers to shoot films. How is this center doing right now?

JY: Let me say more about the organization. In 2008, I lived in New York for half a year. It was another transformative period in my life. While I was there, I attended many film screenings, art exhibits, etc. I noticed that like Beijing, New York had a great number of people working in the entertainment industry. While some of them seemed to have worked to entertain themselves, others worked to entertain others. As it is often said, where there is a lot of money, there is a lot of people. Unfortunately, I am not a people’s person skilled at entertaining people.

While I was in the U.S., I visited a non-profit multi-disciplinary arts and education center called Appalshop in Kentucky. They produce documentaries, videos, among other things. They have been around for over forty years and have over 100 documentaries in their collection. They are located in a very small town called Whitesberg in Kentucky. It is so small that in China we may not even call it a town! The place is rich in coal, and people who live there have a history that goes back a long time, and often they are very conservative and very poor too.

My visit to Appalshop inspired me greatly, so after I returned to China from New York, I went back to my hometown, hoping to start a similar organization like Appalshop there, instead of staying in Beijing, which is a city that I had lived for 15 years. In October 2008, Participatory Documentary Center was formally established. It has five branches: documenting films, documenting photography, documenting oral history, documenting theater houses, and documentary village architecture and infrastructure in our socialist regime.

JZ: Documentary filmmaking must be the biggest component of your work at Participatory Documentary Center. Can I say that marketing and global outreaching are also quite important?

JY: Yes. To me, going back to my hometown to start this non-governmental organization is a very natural thing to do. As I mentioned a minute ago, both in Beijing and in New York, many people are working in the entertainment industry. I lack the appropriate spirit to work a job in the entertainment industry. I want to go to a small place to work, and I know that most Chinese don’t live in big cities like Beijing. In the beginning, it was a lot of hard work. As people all know, independent films and non-profit organizations are not easy. When you tell your local government that you want to establish a non-profit organization, your local government is likely to be suspicious about your organization. What don’t you want to make money? They ask. Conversely, they welcome organizations that have making profits as their agenda.

JZ: Ji’an is a relatively small city. The standard of living there isn’t as high as it is here. How did people there react when your first opened Participatory Documentary Center? Were they willing to participate or were they hesitant to?

JY: In the beginning they did not really understand what we were trying to do. We wanted to make it entertaining for them, but at the same time, we had to live up to our mission. That was why we could not be like some of the local television programs that catered to entertainment mainly. We run our organization bilaterally. Sometimes locals approach us and seek out opportunities to work with us, other times we approach them and persuade them to participate in our projects. To us, the most important thing is not making documentaries but making changes. We wish that our presence in this small place can help people rediscover themselves as deeply sympathetic creatures and help the local community strengthen itself.

I think that in today’s capitalist culture, interpersonal relationships have become very fragile. True, the world today is full of problems. But do we ask ourselves what we can do to improve the situation? When we speak of bad people around us, do we think about our own actions? I have a notion that the badness that we see in the world is a reflection of the badness inherent in ourselves. You can look at a photograph here taken by a high school student. Here is another one of a participant and one of our journalists.

JZ: He is an old man.

YZ: Right, that is our oldest participant. You can see the point that our goal is not to make documentaries but to build the community and strengthen interpersonal relationships. Ji’an can be summarized into eight words: sheng guan fa chai ma jiang da pai (get promotion, get rich, play mahjongg, and play cards). It could be true in other parts of China including Beijng too. These words tell us how ordinary people think and live their lives. We wish that our oral history projects or other kinds of effective use of video could awaken people from their mundane existence and start questioning themselves. We wish that they will come to some kind of self-reflection in the process.

Ultimately, we wish to open a museum about this city and its people, one that keeps alive the cultural and historical records of the city by its people. Nowadays we are flooded with television series of famous people in the past, but we do not know how life was like for ordinary people back then. The goal of our oral history project is exactly to capture ordinary people’s stories and experiences. Our documentaries are divided into two categories. One is for participants who film their own lives on a yearly basis; the other is for our young filmmakers who film local organizations for longer periods of time. For instances, one young documentarian filmed a hospital, some others filmed schools. They keep going back to these organizations year after year to complete their documentaries.

JZ: A long-term engagement in a sense. Through the images left today, we can reconstruct the life of the people in the future. They will all become valuable documents.

VIDEO PART 3

JZ: Since we are now in Apple Store, could you also talk about how digital technologies have facilitated your organization in achieving its goals?

JY: One advantage of digital technology is that it is cheap. It makes it easy to buy and own a video camera rather than having to rent a film camera. It is easy to carry. Its size makes it more suitable for documentary filmmaking than large-sized film cameras. I will show you another documentary we made last year to illustrate what I mean. This documentary is about China’s meat market. We consume more and more meat nowadays, both in terms of the varieties and the qualities. The documentary explores the relation between meat consumption and the climate. It was screened at last year’s Copenhagen Climate Summit just after it had been edited.

(Clip)

JY: This film lasts twenty some minutes. I shot it in Jiangxi. The man in the picture used to raise pigs. She said that she ate meat every day. Without meat, her meals are bland.

JZ: Did you use high definition video camera for this documentary?

JY: Yes. We also brought an Apple laptop with us as we shot. I had had the laptop for three years. We were able to transfer our raw footage to the laptop whenever we wanted. As for editing, we used Final Cut Pro. In this scene the owner of the pig farm was giving injections to his pigs. A pig has to take many injections in its lifetime, just like us. We stepped into this pig farm quite casually, and this was what we saw.

JZ: Did you hold the camera during the shooting?

JY: No. This gentleman here did. The man you saw just now was a very young entrepreneur. He smells great profit in this business. He owns the largest butcher house in the town. He wants to open the biggest pig farm in the town as well.

JZ: I’m interested in how big your team was in the making of this documentary.

JY: We wanted to have it as small as we could. We had five people who were permanent staff. Sometimes on set we only had four.

JZ: How long did it take to make this twenty-minute documentary with your five-member team?

JY: It took us half a month.

JZ: We have many videographers here today who are also interested in making their own documentaries or feature films. Besides the advantages that you just mentioned about digital technologies, could you also share with us the drawbacks too? Especially their limitation on creativity?

JY: Certainly there are drawbacks, for example, the quality of video is not as good as film. To me, film means something different from what most people perceive it to be. I guess most people are concerned with the quality of sound and images. But I am concerned with the content. For the content that you see here, if you had chosen to film it with large professional video or film cameras, this would have turned out a completely different film.

JZ: So you are more concerned with the realist portrayal that portable video cameras are able to deliver.

JY: Yes, I would say so. After my wife and I finished shooting this film…

JZ: Jian Yi’s wife is sitting among us here today.

JY: …she and I converted to vegetarians. Dr. Yu who is here with us has a bungalow in Beijing. We interviewed him too. He also became a vegetarian in the aftermath. But what’s most interesting is that towards the end of the shooting when the entire production crew was in Guangzhou, we experienced the most transformative moment of our time together. My wife Song Lin and I were gravely impacted by what we had seen. We weren’t able to bite into another piece of meat. It is like after you have seen the truth and know the truth, eating what you used to take for granted becomes nearly impossible.

So on the last day, I took over the video camera and pointed it at my crew. It made them extremely uncomfortable, and they roared! Why? What we eat is private. We are afraid of letting others see what we eat because we do not like being judged by others. Food is something we intake every day; nothing is more private than it. That was why my crew found being filmed intolerable.

JZ: Such emotions were uncontrollable.

JY: Exactly. This will go on to show that our goal in making documentaries is to establish intimate and genuine interpersonal relationships. The most meaningful thing about making this documentary is this last moment when everybody who was involved felt being influenced and transformed.

JZ: From the works that you have done, I can see that you have always wanted to make your personal experience part of the creative process. The two always go together and influence each other. Now let’s turn the floor to everyone else in the room.

VIDEO PART 4

JZ: After having seen Director Jian Yi’s works and listened to him talking about his filming experiences, what questions do you have for him? We will pass the microphone to anyone with a question. Now let’s begin.

Man #1: What is your goal?

JY: My goal?

Man #1: Yes. And second, what do you wish to express today?

JZ: What does he wish to express today?

JY: (Jokingly) My talk must be really lousy today. Well, one thing that had been on my mind all the while was that I only had half an hour. Half an hour was all I had.

JZ: Let me try to rephrase the question a little. Did you want to ask Director Jian Yi what he wishes to express through his works, which he just showed us today?

Man #1: The screening went by quite fast. I wasn’t able to understand what drove you to do such projects. What thoughts do you have behind them?

JY: My goal, let me see. Well, as I mentioned earlier, all the works that I do concerns me in one way or another. I have never felt like searching for a topic so as to film it. I would never go to a remote village and set a goal to film it because the village would not be something that I am truly familiar with. I am not saying that that village is unimportant. I only mean that I am not inclined to challenge myself to film something that I have no knowledge of. I like to start from myself and what I can see. I picture myself as a tiny molecule, perhaps one of the tiniest, in this big world. I would like to open up the rest of the world from me. For instance, I started from the things I ate. If you also try it, you will see that it could be quite a formidable project at first.

JZ: It is like a self-dissecting process in front of others.

JY: Not yet in front of others, only in front of myself.

Woman #1: I can sense from your talk that you have a personal philosophy that runs undercurrent throughout your work. Maybe this personal philosophy isn’t totally explicable. It’s common to many of us. That’s probably why people shoot documentaries, write music, and so on and so forth. I want to say that what you have been doing and your persistent input in making feature films and documentaries are admirable. For most people including me, even though we also have similar insightful moments in life, where our smooth-running everyday life ruptures to reveal something much deeper – for example, we feel being treated unfairly in society – we do not have the means and talent to capture those moments and make them widely known. My question for you is about your next step or your next goal. Where are you being led?

JY: What we are doing now is already a lot of work. That’s part of the reason that I don’t have in mind what my next project is going to be. As I mentioned earlier, our work (at Participatory Documentary Center) is divided into five parts. Making documentaries is only one of them. Photography is also part of our work, like the photographs that were produced by elementary school and middle school students. Besides those, we have oral history and documenting theater productions. Whatever you film, you are mediated by video cameras. But for documenting theater productions, the presence of video cameras isn’t going to be that strong. As for documenting architecture, architecture itself is already a strong link between people and the environment that they live in.

JZ: What about your ultimate goal?

JY: That’s not easy to say. I used to word “roar” earlier on. I don’t think what we are doing is simply roaring. If that was what we wanted, we would be not doing what are doing. I think that there are many things that worth roaring right now and there are many brave people who are roaring. But despite what they do, they are doing it onto others, not to themselves. How much of our time do we spend asking ourselves what we can do to help? How do changes happen in society? I don’t think our society is an automatic running machine that runs on its own but is run by people like you and me. That’s why I really don’t think that what we do is simply roaring.

Woman #1: “Roaring”  is probably not an appropriate term. What I meant was a kind of roaring that requires spiritual inspirations, which ordinary people don’t experience much. For those who don’t have a much deeper understanding of the world, they may not have the ability or even the means to do the same work as you do. The act of roaring isn’t the language of roaring. I have another comment too. You want to document the history and culture of a small city. If you succeed in doing it, what you do will give us ordinary people a sense of empowerment and entitlement to our own history and culture. This is especially meaningful and important to people like me who are not from Beijing, Shanghai, and other big metropolitans. You are the first to start this kind of project and this kind of organization independent of the state, which always imposes restraints on similar projects and organizations. Thank you.

JZ: Let’s say your organization really grows and matures a few years from now, do you wish to start another one of its kind in a different city? Is that in your plan?

JY: I have had such a thought before. But it is already not easy to do it well in just one city, so I stopped dreaming about such things. I honestly think that by being there, our organization is already a success. And it could be just because of the fact that the people working there feel changed every day by doing what they do. Maybe what we do seems similar to what the local broadcasting agencies do, for instance, local community DV’s. But we are actually very different from them in essence. We are stationed in the local community whereas the local broadcasting agencies assign people to work on projects – these people will come and go.

Another point that I want to add is that as you probably know, independent documentaries do not reach a wide audience. A lot of the times, independent filmmakers could only show their works to one another. It is a closed and limited circle of people. However, from my father, I was able to change the way that I viewed independent documentaries. My sister and I bought a video camera as a gift for our father and let him film our grandmother. He had a bad relationship with her because she disapproved his marriage in the old days. She lived in an old folks’ home. Old folks’ home is a new phenomenon in China. This one became a quite extraordinary place for my father. He filmed her for a year there, during which I wished to see a change in their relationship for the better. Unfortunately what I wished didn’t happen because she passed away in the midst of it.

However, my father’s experience during this year changed his view on documentaries. In the past, he had not been interested in watching documentaries. In fact, he had had no concept of what a documentary was. After that year, he became interested in documentaries and watched every documentary that I stored at home. What I learned from my father is that my team and I are not only developing a documentary-making community but also developing our own audience, both of which are genuinely for community building.

JZ: In other words, the work acquires personal and communal meanings.

JY: That’s right. I think that it’s pointless to make films without people who can actually watch them. Those films won’t have the chance to influence people that way.

JZ: Right. Are there any more questions? Well, thanks for everyone who is here and Director Jian who shares his works and his experiences with us. Are you willing to give some conclusive remarks for today – for the coming of the Chinese New Year?

JY: Everything we do is to establish and strength interpersonal relationships. We have a small project called “Passing the Video Camera Project” right now. Many people today who have old digital cameras and old video cameras with resolutions ranging from 8 to 10 megapixels do not use them anymore. These old machines sit in their homes or get thrown out. We collect such old cameras and pass them on to children, young people, etc. in our community who seem interested. So if anyone today is willing to donate, please contact us.

JZ: That’s really meaningful. Thanks Director Jian again. Even though the event is quite short today, it is significant. I hope sincerely here that you will succeed in doing what you are doing and achieving your goal(s) in the future. And I hope that everyone here today will also succeed in your own filed. During the past three days, we have had dialogues with a bunch of independent filmmakers. I could see that all of them are very persevering. They all know clearly what they want. In my personal opinion, people who know what they want and who strive to achieve it with perseverance will succeed ultimately. Thanks everyone. Thanks, Director Jian.

Anchor: Thanks Director Jian for showing us his films and having a dialogue with us. Thanks everyone for coming to Apple Store to participate in our events. I hope you all like it and continue to participate in our future events. So thank everyone.

JZ: If anyone is interested in knowing more about the Participatory Documentary Center, we have some brochures at the back too. Thank you.

Relevant Classroom Use

Cui Zi'en, director of Queer China, 'Comrade China', speaks at the Apple store in Beijing. (Photo: Robert Douglas)

Cui Zi’en is a director, film scholar, screenwriter, and novelist based in Beijing. He is an associate professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Cui Zi’en is a premiere avant-garde digital filmmaker in China. He has published nine novels in China and Hong Kong, and he is also the author of books on criticism and theory, as well as a columnist for magazines.

dGenerate Films distributes three of Cui Zi’en’s features in its catalog: Queer China, ‘Comrade China‘, Enter the Clowns, and We Are the… of Communism (coming soon).

The video of Cui’s interview is in four parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript.

Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.

VIDEO PART ONE

JZ: As we know, being a director is only one of your different roles.  You are also a scholar, a novelist, and an activist.  In the past several years, you became quite popular in the media. So my first question is, how you see your role as a director?

CZE: I have different areas of focus in different periods.  I first spent ten years focusing on my research, and the next ten years writing novels.  In the past ten years, I’ve been working on images as a way to express myself.

JZ: So shall we say that being a director has become an important part of your life?

CZE: Kind of. But I see myself more as an organizer than a director. Forming a film crew is almost like having a party with my friends.  My role is to gather people for a big twenty-day party, like a party host.  Everyone brings cheese and wine. Of course in our party they bring a DV Camera, tapes and costumes.

JZ: That sounds interesting. As an independent filmmaker, I’m sure you’ve come across all sorts of difficulties, such as lack of inspiration or funding. How do you manage to turn filmmaking into a big party?

CZE: As long as you have a clear idea about what kind of film you want to make and what thoughts you hope to express, and you are able to present it to others, like holding an empty basket, God will fill your basket with pies quickly. Of course the precondition is that this has to be an empty basket without any concern for profit or other things.

JZ: So you can achieve your goal with a strong will and pure motivation.

CZE: For filmmakers who make all sorts of films, if you are running out of ideas or inspiration, you only need to slightly change your direction. For instance, if you’ve made too much avant-guard stuff, you can start to make narrative-based films.  If you feel that you can’t write an innovative story, maybe you can try to document real life. This is also my own trajectory, from the so-called avant-garde and experimental, to narrative films, and then documentary. My works cover all these different fields.

JZ: Do you have any suggestion for those who want to become an independent filmmaker on how to manage the equipment and the film crew?

CZE: My suggestion would be to go for whatever is the most convenient and easiest to use. Many film students have this “film complex” and always hope to shoot on film, seeing it as the highest level of filmmaking. I always want to subvert this concept. I embraced DV as soon as it appeared in China. I even claimed that the age of film would be over with the coming of DV, and I was criticized by many people in my circle.

JZ: When was that?

CZE: 2001, when the home video camera appeared in China.

JZ: How did you start to use the DV Camera?

CZE: I didn’t like shooting on film, so when there was an alternative, I picked it up quite naturally. It doesn’t require any preparation; you can just start right away.

JZ: Can you share with us any interesting story or particular feeling you had when you started to use the DV camera?

CZE: When we just started, we thought it was cool to use big cameras, the bigger the better. My cinematographer picked up the biggest one. I thought it was too big, but since we were having a party, I just let him choose whatever he liked. One scene was shot in an actor’s apartment. However, the apartment was too small for the camera movement we designed, and we used hand-held camera instead.  We had to adjust our idea to the actual shooting conditions.

JZ: From 2001, when you started to use DV, to 2010, digital technology has advanced quite dramatically. Do you think you’ve kept yourself updated with the most recent technological developments?

CZE:  In some ways I do. My camera size gets smaller and smaller.  But I also deliberately went against the trend.  Now even small cameras have HD format, but I still use the most common DV format for my films, because I want to preserve the natural and rough quality of DV camera, which better presents the scene of China’s development today. I want to show the dust of Beijing Station, not a perfect visual experience made up with artificial light. So I still haven’t tried HD yet.

VIDEO PART 2

JZ: I know you are always very special; you always stick to your own ideas and concepts.

CZE:  I always need to think it through before I accept new things. Maybe this is because of my ten-year research experience. Every time I come across new things, I analyze the content first, and then think about how to use and develop it in my own way.  I never passively accept whatever is given to me.

JZ:  Can you tell us your plan for 2010?

CZE: In 2007 and 2008, my trajectory turned into documentary making and I plan to carry it on to the new year. I have several projects at hand right now. I have two small Sony cameras, and I am using one of them to make what I call a “visual diary.”  Every time I go to lower-class areas, not a middle-class place like this, I carry it with me to document what I see, liking writing a diary. But I won’t call it a film project.

This year, I have one documentary project, and several narrative films. But my new narratives will be quite different from my previous ones. In the past I always tried to eliminate the narrative component in my films. Although the script was narrative based, when it is presented in visual form, narrative became almost invisible. But in my new project, I want to highlight the narrative, and make the visual narrative match that of the script.

JZ: You’ve been working as an independent filmmaker for many years. I’m sure there are opportunities for you to make commercial films for the mainstream audience if you want. Why do you insist on making independent films?

CZE: For me there’s no distinction between the so-called mainstream and alternative. For me, people are just like waves running here and there. There’s no mainstream or small branch. They are all part of the big waves. If there is such a thing as “mainstream”, I would be very resistant to this concept. What’s your data and what methodology do you use to collect it? If I can’t count these people one by one, then mainstream is just an illusion to me. So when I make a film, I only have myself and people around me in mind. As the Christian saying tells us, we should always love our neighbors.  You can’t love people who are out of your reach. It’s a lie if you say you love them. So my works are all related to people around me.

JZ: Your films are very unique among Chinese cinema and even world cinema. You have a very distinct aesthetic. Do you have any warning to people who first watch your film?

CZE: I always see each of my audience as myself. I wrote a book called The First Audience, which means that I’m my first audience. When I watch my own film, I feel that I was watching someone else’s work. I’m always surprised by the sense of unfamiliarity. I would think that this director’s work is so revolutionary. Everyone likes quick cut, but he uses long take. Everyone else is trying to make the picture more delicate, but his images are getting rougher and rougher. He must be someone really special. If I see some bad shots, I would think he’s such a boring director. He should have done it in a better way.  I’ve make about 30 or 40 films so far, my favorite one is a 110 min film with only about 10 shots. It’s very simple. There are only two characters and they are naked throughout the entire film.  We feel it’s thorough and free.  I have a good friend teaching at the University of California. She always talks about the difference and relation between my films and other directors’ work. She knows that I like Almodovar, and she says that actually you are freer than Almodovar. You can make whatever film you like without any concern for box office or success. But Almadovar has this pressure. No one is as free as you are.

JZ: That’s why your works are so pure.

CZE: Thanks.

JZ: Today is a very special occasion. We are having this conversation in the Beijing Apple Store.  What’s your impression of Apple products?

CZE: I have many friends around me who use Apple. I don’t use Apple computer, but I like to use Adobe for editing. I didn’t know that Adobe is related to Apple until I saw your questionnaire before the interview.

JZ: I personally think that the style of Apple is rather similar to yours, very free.

CZE: I like the design of its logo, a bitten apple.

VIDEO PART 3

Audience Q & A:

Q1: There are many different ways to express yourself, such as painting, photography, or writing as you did. What is the quality of moving images that makes it such a special way for expression? What are its unique features that other ways don’t have?

CZE: Thank you for your good question. I always think that the universe is God’s draft.   A draft is revised over and over again according to the change of time and space. Among the several professions I have, I like writing novels and making moving images the most, although I teach and do a lot of academic writing as well. Novels and films are the closet to my concept of draft. People used to say that film is the art of regret, but for me, it’s the art of draft. Any film, no matter how many time you shoot it, how you edit it, it is always a draft. Even the most carefully made Hollywood film or European masterpiece is still a draft. I like its sense of fluidity. That’s why I keep on working as a novelist and filmmaker.

Q2: Although you said that you don’t see the difference between mainstream and alternative, the concept of “mainstream” and “alternative” are widely accepted.  As a filmmaker, of course you don’t want yourself be the only audience of your film, but at the same time, I’m sure you don’t want to cater to the audiences’ taste at the price of your own creativity. I wonder if you have struggled over that? Have you ever made compromises for these considerations?

CZE: Of course I have all kinds of careful considerations about distribution, screening, audiences’ reception, etc.  My personal take on this is that the so-called mainstream and alternative is always relative, and differ from place to place. The mainstream in this area might be marginalized in another area. Some popular mainstream films in our country probably cannot be found in the West at all. On the contrary, the ones that we see as alternative sometimes can be very well accepted there. Take myself as an example; my films are screened at different universities in the States quite frequently. This is something that mainstream Chinese films don’t have.  If I show three of my films in ten universities, I’m likely to attract a wider audience than a mainstream film showing in one theater. The mainstream and alternative are not fixed concepts. They are constantly changing in a global context.

Q3: Some directors care most about cinematic styles, some pay more attention to their ideas. What do you care the most?

CZE: There’s no way for me to pay special attention on any particular issue. It all depends on what I’m filming.  Like today, I had no idea what the space would be, or who would come to my talk. It’s the same as making a film. When I get a general idea about what I want to film, I start to call my friends and ask if they would be interested in that. The process is always very simply and quick, no rehearsal, script or professional actors. We discuss the idea together and then I just need to have a few words with my cameraman about how long and how wide each take should be. I don’t really know about what we’ll get, but I do know that the friendly and harmonious environment of our film crew, the freedom beyond the Capitalist pursuit for profit and the censorship of the Communist Party will lead to something extraordinary. My successful experience is based on a cooperation bound by our friendship, not by profit.

VIDEO PART 4

Q4: It is always very different to resist the temptation of fame and profit. How do you see these two things?

CZE: I think a good artist should identify himself as lower-class. My definition of lower-class is different from proletariat, yet it’s not the same as middle-class either. The upper-class always have too much and don’t know what to do; while the middle-class always get the exact amount. So I consider the lower-class as more creative. The so-called fame and profit, failure and success are just social constructions. When we are by ourselves or with several true friends, we are not judged by these criteria and therefore in the most natural status. For example, when we celebrate Chinese New Year with our family, no one really cares about whether we’ve succeeded or not. I always try to situate myself in such a condition where I can be free from worldly judgments.  There are a lot of very successful film people around me, almost everyone in the Beijing Film Academy is only half step away from being a celebrity. But I always keep a certain distance from them and try to be true to myself.  I’m a Christian, and I think about the issue of death almost every day. My biggest wish is to be brave and truly happy when I die. This is the most important thing to me, and I’m training myself every day.

Q5: I only see your works about the subject of “queer,” and I think they are very different from other queer films without much emphasis on sexual desire. Many films that depict homosexual love are not that different from those about heterosexual love, and they only use the queer subject as a token to attract more attention. What’s your take on this?

CZE: I don’t think that the queer subject is that much different from other subjects. My reason for making films about that is because it’s too marginalized in China. I think it’s a very powerful subject because it is discriminated and repressed, not because it’s a popular theme right now. I’m quite familiar with the international film circus, I’m aware that many queer films emphasize on aesthetics, sexual desire etc. I intentionally work against this trend of queer cinema that gradually evokes your sexual desire first and then satisfy you. We call it “double ejaculation”, which means crying and masturbating at the same time. My films are always very straightforward without evocation for either sexual desire or tears, and I’m personally very critical about this so-called “double climax.” This is the trick of commercial films or popular films.

Q6: What kind of conclusion do you hope that people will make about you after you pass away?

CZE: As I said, this world is a draft, as well as my life, so any conclusion will be even rougher than the draft of my life. I don’t have any expectation for that. Thank you.

Interview conducted by Jane Zheng. Videography by Michael Cheng. English transcription by Yuqian Yan.

Relevant Classroom Use

Cui Zi'en, director of Queer China, Comrade China, speaks at the Apple store in Beijing. (Photo: Robert Douglas)

Following up on our recent “Meet the Filmmakers” series at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, here are a couple of links to local coverage of the events.

At The Beijinger, Dan Edwards talks to Karin Chien about the Apple Store events and China’s digital filmmaking revolution.

At the Global Times, Robert Powers reports on Apple Store appearances made by filmmakers Jian Yi and Cui Zi’en.

We’re pleased to announce that the “Meet the Filmmakers” series will continue with other filmmakers appearing at the Apple Store Sanlitun over the coming months. Stay tuned for details.

Relevant Classroom Use

dGenerate Films is teaming up with the Apple Store in Beijing to present a new monthly series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. Listen and watch how award-winning directors use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.

All events will be held at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, starting at 7pm.

Events are listed below in English; scroll further to read them in Chinese.

On Feburary 17, join Peng Tao in conversation about LITTLE MOTH and FLOATING IN MEMORY. We will screen clips from both films, and then hear Peng Tao discuss the process of making films with Mac products. Peng Tao is the award-winning director of LITTLE MOTH (2007) and a graduate of the Art Department of Beijing Film Academy, where he received the Outstanding Short Film Award and first prize at the 1st JINZI Awards. Peng Tao’s second feature, FLOATING IN MEMORY (2009), is supported by the prestigious Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and the Hubert Bals Fund, and screened in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition at the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

On February 18, join Cui Zi’en in conversation about how he uses Adobe and Final Cut Pro to make his groundbreaking digital video features. Cui Zi’en is a director, film scholar, screenwriter, and novelist based in Beijing. He is an associate professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Cui Zi’en is a premiere avant-garde digital filmmaker in China. He has published nine novels in China and Hong Kong, and he is also the author of books on criticism and theory, as well as a columnist for magazines.

On February 19, join Jian Yi in conversation about filming from villages to cities with Apple products. Jian Yi is an independent filmmaker, visual artist and writer. He is a finalist for the British Council’s 2007 International Young Film Entrepreneur of the Year award. He partnered with filmmaker Wu Wenguang to launch the China Villager Documentary Project. Jian’s photos on China’s village governance toured the nation’s seven provinces as well as Brussels and Strasburg. He has been a visiting fellow at Yale University, Cambridge University, the New School in New York, and the Asian Cultural Council.

Relevant Classroom Use