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.

Related posts

• Oxhide and Oxhide II screening in Beijing (0)
• MEET THE FILMMAKERS: Liu Jiayin at Apple Store Beijing this Thursday (0)

WHERE:
UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art)

Don’t miss this showcase of Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide I and Oxhide II. The first film won the Fipresci Prize at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival, and the sequel debuted at Cannes in 2009. In Chinese with English subtitles. The showcase will also run on Feb. 27 and Feb. 28.

Venue and further details at Beijing City Weekend

Related posts

• Interview with Oxhide director Liu Jiayin (1)
• Global Times: Liu Jiayin Working on Oxhide III (0)

Peter Rist

Here are some choice excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found at Offscreen.

Offscreen: My first question is about style. And, I wonder if you could explain a little bit of why you use the cinemascope frame, because I was very surprised when I saw your first feature film, that for such an intimate setting, and shooting on (not the highest definition) digital, you would use the widest scope frame available.

LJ: Firstly, it is personal. I like the aesthetics of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and it also makes the film look more “serious.” I knew that, normally, the cinemascope format is used as a more “epic” style, and for more “spectacular” scenes, or for exterior scenes. I know that my film was really intimate, but I still chose to use this ratio. That’s the first point. Secondly: size and distance are relative, so, even if you are shooting something very close, or if something you are shooting is very small, if you are using a cinemascope lens then that will give you a different perspective, and it will make it look larger.

Offscreen: Whereas in the first film, there’s a lot of off screen action and off screen sound, something that struck me about Oxhide 2 is that, sometimes, there is so much going on, for example the 3rd scene, that we can’t see everything, unless we work … So, that if someone says this film is “boring”, I would say no, it isn’t, because there is so much happening. So, I’m curious about how much time was taken to make it. Was there a series of making dumplings over a period of time? Sometimes there is more action going on than we think is possible in “real time.”

LJ: I feel that in family life, it is just like that, because, it is not like the concentration of this interview. In family life there is always a lot going on at the same time, and things don’t have a start to them and an ending, so we should have a multi-layered narration and multi-layered themes to it.

There are only nine shots in the film, and for three or four of the nine shots, we only needed one take. The rest of the shots we took three or four times. We had enough flour for all of the takes.

Offscreen: Here is a “social” question. Maybe I learned something here. How can you make 73 dumplings from just a small piece of meat, and then a small piece of fat. So, I was thinking, you are making so much use of so little food. It seems that Chinese people are able to be very careful about how much food there is. They are able to make a lot out of a little. That is one thing. The other thing is that you are boiling the dumplings in water, and then you drink the water as soup. So, you are using everything. So I was thinking that, maybe, even poor people can eat well with very little. That was the “social” message I got from that. But, I’m also wondering was it really just this small piece of meat that you used for 73 dumplings?

LJ: There are two ways to make dumplings. You can use meat as the main ingredient. In this case we were making chive dumplings with just a little bit of meat. I think that your version [interpretation] is quite right, because in the past, when there weren’t so many resources and when people used to make dumplings, they would add more vegetables than meat, especially when there was a large family. So you would usually end up with a vegetable dumpling with just a little bit of meat, because of hard times.

For more discussion of Oxhide II, see David Bordwell’s blog, “Observations on Film Art” and Shelly Kraicer’s report from Vancouver.

Related posts

• Reviews from Rotterdam: Oxhide II and Sun Spots (0)
• Oxhide and Oxhide II screening in Beijing (0)

Sun Spots (dir. Yang Heng)

18 films by Chinese directors or with a Chinese theme will be presented at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs from January 27 to February 7. Among these films include Oxhide II, Liu Jiayin’s follow up to her debut feature Oxhide (recently voted one of the top ten Chinese films of the past decade). Sun Spots, the second feature by Yang Heng (whose debut Betelnut is a dGenerate Films ttle) will be in competition for the VPRO Tiger Award.

City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan’s controversial big-budget feature depicting the Nanjing Massacre, has inspired a sidebar of related films, several of which date back to the time of the historic tragedy.

The full lineup of films can be found after the break.The Annunciation (Hsu Ronin, China 2010) Moving, atmospheric social realism by the young Chinese debutant is about a simple newlywed couple who have moved to the city like so many others looking for work. He really wants a child, she wants to make him happy. But how does she convince him that his sperm isn’t helping?

City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan, China 2009) Impressive chronicle in beautiful black & white about the horrors inflicted by the Japanese in 1937 after they conquered the former Chinese capital Nanjing. Lu Chuan does not only show the random nature of executions and rapes, but also the horror of a well-intentioned Japanese soldier.

Condolences (Ying Lian, China 2009) Burial rites become the mise-en-scène in which politicians, the media, a monk and an infuriated neighbour vividly portray the aftermath of an accident.

Dangerous encounters: 1st kind (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong 1980) Notorious raised middle finger of the Hong Kong New Wave, about three stupid young men who accidentally run over and kill a pedestrian and then, blackmailed by the crazy female witness, use violence to save their skins in the urban jungle.

The Eight Hundred Heroes (Ying Yunwei, China 1938) 800 soldiers of the 88th regiment against what feels like the whole of Japan’s Imperial Army – think Thermopylae, Chinese version. A splendid, visually amazing gem.

Goodbye (Song Fang, China 2008) Delicate short fiction. After an accident, Li Xin ends up with her deceased school friend’s parents. Her stay rips open old wounds.

Kun 1 Action (Wu Haohao, China 2008) Kun1 Action is a wake-up call for young people in China. With his collage of interviews, archive material and reconstructions, the film maker Wu Haohao hopes to ’save local film from degeneration’. Self assured, crazy and naughty.

March 14 2009, Hong Kong Coliseum (Hsu Chia-Wei, Taiwan 2009) In an empty concert hall, star singer Fish Leong shares her deeper thoughts on the pan-Asian tour, in which every show follows a fixed pattern.

Night & Fog (Ann Hui, Hong Kong 2009) Ann Hui’s dark realistic Night & Fog starts at the end of the story, with the brutal murder by a man of his wife and daughters. Hui gradually unmasks the idyll of the peaceful family and that of Hong Kong as the promised land for gold seekers.

Once Upon a Time Proletarian (Guo Xiaolu, UK/Germany 2009) Portrait of post-Maoist China in twelve commentaries by inhabitants of the country. Writer/film maker Guo Xialolu sketches a varied picture of a China that is still developing very rapidly, but which still doesn’t seem to have much room for individual needs. Those who can’t keep up can do little else but complain.

Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin, China 2009) The Chinese director shows herself and her parents in their apartment only with fixed camera positions, with which she revolves around the kitchen table. The rigorously minimalist story emerges in real time: the time it takes to prepare and eat Chinese dumplings together.

Protect My Country (He Feiguang, China 1939) Japanese soldiers take a Chinese village: babies get bayoneted, the elderly crucified, able men pressed into the enemy army. A classic piece of anti-Japanese agitation.

Spring Fever (Lou Ye, Hong Kong, France 2009) Impressionist film about a passionate homosexual relationship between the married intellectual Wang Ping and the transvestite Jiang Cheng. After Summer Palace, the Chinese director Lou Ye seems again to seek confrontation with the Chinese authorities.

Sun Spots (Yang Heng, Hong Kong, China 2009), nominee of VPRO Tiger Awards Successful Chinese example of minimalist cinema combines beautiful, very sharp HD images without camera movements with a story about a tragic relationship between a tattooed gangster and a hesitant girl suffering the pains of unrequited love.

Unforgettable Memory (Liu Wei, China 2009)
In China, few people want to be reminded of the events of 1989. The maker of Unforgettable Memory is still struggling with the past.

Wheat Harvest (Xu Tong, China 2008) Controversial documentary sketches the double life of the young Niu Hongmiao, who cares for her sick father in the countryside and works in Beijing as a prostitute. A picture gradually emerges of the Chinese sex industry. A world with its own language, rituals and rules.

Yasukuni (Li Ying, Japan, China 2007) The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo was established as a place of worship for the war dead. Some two million are enshrined there – including more than a thousand convicted and oftentimes executed war criminals. Among the most controversial documentaries of the decade.

The 400 Million (Joris Ivens, USA, China 1939) A partisan documentary film on the Chinese resistance against Japan. A classic of world cinema.

Related posts

• Critics Spar Over Award-Winning City of Life and Death (1)
• Tibetan Documentary Replaces Nanjing Massacre Movie at US Theater (1)