China Film Journal

Shanghai filmmaker Shu Haolun (舒浩仑） made a name for himself a few years back with his personal documentary Nostalgia 《乡愁》, an exploration of the nong tangs where he grew up and which are slated for destruction. He’s just come out with a new film, a 20 minute fiction film called Young Blood 《少年血》, that also explores 1980s Shanghai life, telling the story of young teenage love. There was a screening last month (sorry to be telling you now, we’re ridiculously out of the loops), but there should be more in the future. Read more about the film and filmmaker on his blog.

Technorati Tags: documentary, film, cinema, movies, shanghai, chinese, china

“Sixth Generation” director Jia Zhangke has long been adored by art-house audiences, but in the past year his indie cred has taken a series of hits. Last June, Jia agreed to act as artistic director for a highly commercial, Visa-sponsored, state-approved Olympic film project. More recently, it was announced that he had cast pop star Jay Chow in his upcoming kung fu-themed The Age of Tattoo. Both these career decisions have drawn inevitable comparisons with fellow Venice Golden Lion-winning director Zhang Yimou, who has long since embraced the mainstream. Coincidentally, Zhang’s also heavily involced with the Olympics, and also cast Jay Chow for his glitzy costume melodrama Curse of the Golden Flower. Has Jia finally outgrown independent cinema? We sat down with him to find out.

Q: Your current projects appear to be a considerable departure from your previous work.

Jia Zhangke (JZK): Up to now, my work has been on contemporary life. But [The Story of 24 City] is set in the 50s and the 70s.

Q: There’s a lot of talk about your other project, The Age of Tattoo, including the casting of Jay Chow. It’s also been said that there will be some kung fu scenes.

ZJK: Actually, the film is based on Su Tong’s novel, about a violent teenager who symbolizes the violence during the cultural revolution. As far as Jay Chow goes, he is very proper for this role. He has a cool image, something like a young hooligan from the 1970s. In terms of budget, since the movie is set in the 1970s, we had to restore locations to look like the period. This is very expensive, and the only way we were going to get the money, which came from China and abroad, was if we were going to have a big star.

Q: Can you understand that some people feel that adapting a big novel and using a big star is very unusual for you…

JZK: I don’t mind. If Jay Chow is proper for this film, I will use him. Besides, I have my own way of using Jay Chow.

Q: Does the shift in time periods mean that you’ve done everything that you wanted with modern life?

JZK: It’s not that I’ve accomplished everything that I wanted to do in this period, but that I was able to find historical causes for the changes that are taking place now. Workers’ lives change a lot in the shift to urbanization. In The Story of 24 City, I will tell a story about three women in the 50s, the 70s, and the present day, as society makes the transition from collectivism to individualism.

Q: Given the nature of these people and their situation, how did you find this story in the first place?

JZK: Their factory in Chengdu was once very big, with more than 20,000 workers. When a real estate company purchased the site, the factory was demolished and all the workers lost their jobs. It was a typical case of urbanization in today’s China. I went there, saw the conditions, and it occurred to me that in five or ten years this story would be forgotten. So my aim is to use the medium of film to keep their story from disappearing..

Q: For the film, you collaborated with the poet Zhai Yongming instead of producing the script alone as you have done in the past.

JZK: We have a very good method of collaborating. I did the interviews and then wrote the first draft. Zhai, who’s from that area rewrote the script from a female point of view. She has a sophisticated understanding of the feelings of women during the time. For example, in those days women had very few possessions, and I wanted to know how society defined sexiness. Of course, she knows more about that than I do.

Q: Do you every think about your place in history as a member of china’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers? Does that mean anything to you?

JZK: No. (Laughs.) I don’t care how I am known, Sixth Generation or whatever. The moment I accept such labels, I lose my freedom. I am just doing what I love.

Q: What do you think about the films of Fifth Generation directors?

JZK: The golden period for Fifth Generation directors occurred when I was in middle school and later in university. I especially like their early works, including Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth. Before Yellow Earth, I was just a moviegoer. After that, I knew I wanted to become a director.

Q: Did the Fifth Generation sell out? Did they go Hollywood?

JZK: Going to Hollywood isn’t bad. Hollywood produces fine films. There are many respected European directors, for example, who work in the US. The real difficulty for foreign directors [working in the US] is finding a way to retain their outlook and beliefs.

Q: Will you go to Hollywood?

JZK: I don’t know yet. I don’t like to plan too far in advance.

From Alfred Hitchcock’s East of Shanghai (1931) and Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai to the recent Shanghai Kiss, Shanghai has long captured the imaginations of foreign film enthusiasts. Consider Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek and French producer Natacha Devillers part of this movement with their recently completed Shanghai Trance, a film that explores the many different social layers of the city.

Co-produced by Shanghai Film Studios and funded by Motel Films and the Dutch government, the film tells three independent stories of three groups of young adults who wrestle with issues of family, romance and identity. They are connected only by their environment: Shanghai.

We spoke with Devillers, whose production credits include Jia Zhangke’s The Platform, as she was deep in the final stages of making the film with Verbeek.

Q: Many foreigners have a fascination with the architecture and scale of Shanghai. Do you think that Shanghai Trance speaks equally to both Chinese and foreign audiences?

Natacha Devillers (ND): Some Chinese producers read [the script] and they said it was dead on. But we also did it for a foreign audience as well. [Shanghai Trance] shows Shanghai as a very modern city, which it is.The director came out here fascinated by the growth, an external element of the city that seduces everybody when they initially come out here. But the longer he stayed, the more he realized that this fast-paced change breeds a lot of insecurity among people his age. He felt that a lot of people were drifting a little bit, with no sense of direction.

Q: What special challenges do you face producing films in China?

ND: What you are allowed to show and not show on screen is the trickiest. You think you’ve done it right, and then it turns out all wrong. Then there’s the fragmented state of the cinema exhibitors. In Indonesia, one group owns most of the country’s cinemas so it is very easy to get a film into nation-wide release. Here you have to go from city to city, exhibitor to exhibitor.

But on the flip side, the crews here are great. They are so hardworking, even I have troule following the pacve sometimes. Back in the West, you just hand over your material to the labs or tell your crew what you want and pay them lots of money. Here you pay much less, but need to figure out how to do things by yourself all the time.

Q: In shooting this film in China, were you hoping to escape the 20 films a year quota and have the film shown on the Chinese mainland?

ND: No. [Shanghai Trance] is what we call a “director film.” It’s not a solely commercial film. If we were trying to make a commercial film, we would be doing everything we could to cater to a Chinese audience and we’re not. This is an auteur-driven film.

Q: What images of Shanghai will we see in the finished film?

ND: A whole array of places. There is a lot of Shanghai in this film. It was shot in 30 different locations over 40 days, all throughout Shanghai. [You'll see] the French Concession, the Bund, People’s Square and Pudong.

Q: No doubt expensive locations where you’re holding up traffic.

ND: No, because we’re doing both interior and exterior shots where we didn’t have to stop traffic. The director is really influence by Asian cinema, directors such as Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Ming Liang and Jia Zhangke [known for location work] so there are lots of long shots where you see Shanghai. And I think we tried to take out some shots that were too cliche; this film shows more than picture postcards.

In the World 世界, actress Zhao Tao 赵涛 plays a dancer at an “international” theme park, which means that one day she performs in India and the next in Africa. That role is an apt metaphor for her career, moving from role to role and touring the globe in a whirlwind of costume changes. There is one aspect of her life however that is constant, however: the presence of Jia Zhangke  贾樟柯.

Zhao first met the legendary director of Unknown Pleasures, Still Life, and The Age of Tattoo, to be released later this year, in 1999 during Jia’s six month search for a leading lady for Platform. At the time, Zhao, a graduate of Beijing Dance College, was teaching dance at Taiyuan Normal College. Though they have since formed a strong professional bond, it was not “love at first sight.” In fact, Zhao thought Jia was trying to pick her up–and required a lot of convincing before she agreed to take part in the project. “I knew little about film then,” says Zhao, “and I didn’t know anything about him. He had to show me some proof before I believed he was a real director.” Eventually, Zhao came to appreciate both the opportunities Jia provided and his role as a mentor, though she has often suffered from what some critics describe as the director’s extraordinary intensity when it comes to his craft. During the filming of Still Life, for example, Jia asked the film crew to purposely alienate Zhao, a ploy he believed would result in a stronger performance. “People say that if you can work with Jia Zhangke, you can work with anyone,” says Zhao. “I’m a happy, cheerful person but [during the filming of Still Life] he told others on the set not to talk to me and I didn’t know why. I felt terribly alone and isolated from other people.”

Zhao gave a memorable performance as the tough and tender wife in search of her husand. In return, she has repaid Jia with loyalty.

Though she’s received offers from other directors, Zhao acts exclusively for Jia, in part, because he doesn’t shy away from life’s harsh realities. “[Jia's films] are a reflection of people’s lifes,” says Zhao, “not what is shown on TV. A person has to face life’s truths.”