THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

Hong Kong-born filmmaker David Wu Dawei (not the David Wu who talks da talk on TV) is one of the few film technicians who's celebrated internationally. Wu's signature slow-motion and fast-cut editing techniques in action movies directed by Tsui Hark (Swordsman, A Chinese Ghost Story), John Woo (The Killer, A Better Tomorrow) and Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) set the standard for Hong Kong films in the 1980s and 90s and soon spread worldwide.

Following the decline of the HK film industry (where Wu also worked as an actor, music composer and scriptwriter), Wu relocated in 1995 to North America, where he directed and edited a string of feature films and TV mini-series (Merlin's Apprentice, The Snow Queen, Son of a Dragon, G Spot). But his enthusiasm for edgy action and flamboyant editing was clearly a thing of the past.

Most recently, Wu directed and edited Iron Road, a USD 13 million epic set in the 1880s. This film doesn't feature any hyper-kinetic action either. Inspired by an opera written by Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, it's a love story set against the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Featuring an international cast (Peter O'Toole, Sam Neil, Betty Sun Li, Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Luke MacFarlane), the story hinges on Little Tiger (Betty Sun Li), a poor Chinese girl disguised as a boy, in search of her father, who is working on a railroad in North America. Along the way she falls in love with the son of a Canadian railroad tycoon, James Nichol, whom she meets in China where he's recruiting cheap labor. She follows Nichol to find the truth about her father's disappearance and to fulfill her dreams of a better life in 'Gold Mountain'. In the end, she survives prejudice and treachery, and achieves a bittersweet fulfillment of her quest.

A true bridge between Canada and China, Iron Road has many Shanghai connections. For one, Shanghai-born and bred Sun Li (Fearless). Second, the film was shot in the Chinawood Hengdian film studio south of Shanghai. What's more, a group of Shanghai expats – mainly Canadians – won roles as the society friends of the railroad tycoon

Below, Wu discusses his new film, to be released in China this summer, and the reasons he's toned down his extravagant montage style.

that's: How did your work in the Hong Kong film industry prepare you for a career in the West?
David Wu (DW): The first time I set foot on a set in the US, 11 years ago, I felt spoiled. In HK, directors never have a trailer of their own; they are lucky enough if they get a chair. The way movies are made is very different. Hong Kong shoots guerilla-style, the quickest and most economical way possible. In the US, we spend a lot of time and effort on pre-production, with plenty of meetings and lots of paperwork. It's a good thing. By preparing well you avoid making mistakes. I especially appreciate the safety prep in the US, which is better than in HK.

that's: What drew you to the Iron Road project, as a filmmaker and as a Chinese?
DW: I'm one of a number of filmmakers interested in making a film about the Chinese workers who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Back in 1998, John Woo had planned to produce one, which was supposed to be directed by the late King Hu [one of the best HK directors of the 1960s-70s]. In the same year, [Steven Spielberg's] DreamWorks was developing another one, but it was aborted. For what reason, I don't know. My guess is maybe the subject matter [the exploitation of Chinese labor] was an issue. In any case, quite a few other producers and directors had similar projects planned but none of them materialized. When first time producers Anne Tait and Barry Pearson approached me, I was instantly attracted to the script, which is a love story with a historical backdrop. A movie just about sweaty, barebacked Chinese workers with queues wouldn't sell; maybe that's the reason DreamWorks pulled the plug. But romance speaks an international language. As a Chinese director, I have to say it's my mission and passion to tell this story.

that's: Cross-dressing is a common theme in Chinese literature, opera and film. In Iron Road, the character of Little Tiger is a female playing a male. Is this a gimmick or integral to the plot?
DW: The main reason is for the dramatic effect on James' character. After all, there have been so many stories like this so it won't be a big surprise for the audience, especially for Chinese audiences, because Sun Li is a star.

that's: Typically, this story would be told from the point of view of James; yet the film's main character is Little Tiger (Sun Li).
DW: We chose to tell the story of a Chinese girl trying to survive in a world of alpha males. Films about survival have always been my favorite: The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Killing Fields, Papillon, The Defiant Ones, etc.

that's: Why did you cast Sun Li as the lead? She hasn't played much of this type of role in the past…
DW: When I cast for a film, I never want to typecast. I always invest a lot of time communicating with the actor before I decide he/she is the one. With Sun Li, simply by getting to know her persona and her attitude, how she sees the script and the world or what sort of movies and music she likes, I found out that for a petite young Chinese actor, she has a clear perspective of what roles and what films she will act in. She thinks big. She told me she doesn't want to be typecast as a sweet lover, a girlfriend or a student. At the time, she had actually turned down a big offer for the leading role in a sweet romantic Korean film for which she could have made big bucks. What's more, what I like about this young actress is she uses her eyes to express her emotion; it's the first thing I look for when choosing an actor.

that's: As an editor, did you pre-edit each scene in your head before shooting Iron Road?
DW: I think that's what every director should be doing. For me this is my way, my habit. I guess it has a lot to do with my editing background. I pre-edit the scenes so when I shoot I don't shoot what I don't need. By doing that it saves me lots of time. And time is money. Otherwise one will just keep shooting lots of materials hoping that they will capture what they need in the editing room. It means they shoot by chance, not by choice. That's not the way I make movies.

that's: How did you work the film visual with director of photography Attila Szalay?
DW: The word was 'real'. But I told my director of photography Attila that we were not making a documentary for a history channel. In terms of setting a style by lighting, camera movements and framings, I don't want the style to become an obstacle that keeps the audience from being drawn in. Because too much style kills a film.

that's: That's an interesting point for someone who edited stylish films in HK for two decades. These action and adventure movies have been internationally lauded. In retrospect, what do you think of the editing techniques you used in HK?
DW: I think those techniques I created have been very over-used. Once I was chatting with an American director about action sequences. Surprisingly, he admitted that he had a copy of The Bride with White Hair [a gem of the 1990s new wu xia pian genre, co-written and edited by Wu] for "reference", and that he literally ripped off all ideas from HK-style action to editing. To be honest, some of these techniques seem old, if not used by now. Film making is changing every day, every year. It is a craft in constant evolution. I choose to move on.

Special thanks to Anne Tait, Barry Pearson and Raymond Massey.


(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
June 2008 issue

The 2007 film Protégé, directed by veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Derek Yee, opens with what is arguably one of the bleakest and most intense openings ever seen in Chinese cinema: a young daughter removing a syringe from the arm of her mother who has just shot up with heroin. The mother is portrayed by 28-year-old Fujian native Zhang Jingchu, perhaps the only actress of her generation with the acting chops this role demands. Indeed, her commitment to the character was such that Yee commented, "[Zhang] was so engaged in her role during the shooting that I even started to worry that the movie might leave her with psychological problems."

Clearly, Zhang is devoted to her art. An art she discovered only recently with her debut in Gu Changwei's Peacock (2005). At the time, she had just graduated from Beijing's Central Drama Academy and had little commercial acting experience. Nevertheless, Gu was able to elicit a performance that won the Best Actress Award at the 2006 Chinese Film Media Awards. That performance also made a deep impression on international critics when the film was shown at the Berlin film festival.

Since then, Zhang has made 10 films, including Zhang Jiarui's The Road (2006), wherein she portrays a ticket seller at a bus station in rural China whose love affair with a local doctor spans more than three decades. Her convincing performance, through the various stages of ageing, won Zhang the Best Actress Award in the 2006 Cairo International Film Festival.

For her role in Protégé, she visited several drug clinics and studied the effects of withdrawal. That research paid off handsomely. To say that Zhang outshines her male costars Andy Lau and Louis Koo would be an understatement. In recognition of that fact, she was nominated for the Best Actress award at the 27th Hong Kong Film Awards, though she didn't win.

It's no surprise, then, that Zhang has attracted attention in Hollywood. She had a small supporting role in the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker vehicle Rush Hour 3. This year holds more promise. Recently, she's been involved in two projects: Zhang Jiarui's low-budget Red River (currently in post-production and slated for a summer 2008 release) and Florian Gallenberger's USD 20 million Sino-German co-production, John Rabe (recently shot in Nanjing and Shanghai and set for release at the end of this year).

In the former, Zhang portrays a mentally-challenged Sino-Vietnamese girl who emigrates to China with her aunt, while in the latter she plays a schoolgirl who photographs and records Japanese war crimes in Nanjing. The film's title refers to the "Oskar Schindler of China", who helped protect thousands of Chinese people during the Nanjing Massacre. Zhang's co-stars include Ulrich Tukur, Steve Buscemi and Anne Consigny. Below, Zhang discusses, in near flawless English, her passion for acting.

that's: After studying to be a director, why did you switch to acting?
Zhang Jingchu (ZJ): Actually, I have never really done any directing work, so it's not a question of switching. Studying directing at the drama academy was a part of my personal education. It mainly helped me build up my own taste in drama and films. Before graduation, I was asked to audition for some commercials and TV series, so I started quite naturally with this kind of work. It just came up. There was always somebody pushing me, asking me to try something. I did start as an amateur, with no real career plan, with no planning whatsoever.

that's: You have said that in the beginning of your career it was difficult to unlock your passion and motivation for acting. Where did you find the key?
ZJ: I think Peacock is the most important film in my career so far, because it's the starting point. Director Gu Chanwei really made me feel relaxed, which helped me get into the character's heart. It was a magical feeling; you start thinking you aren't yourself anymore and you become someone else. Peacock was the key opening another door for me – and not only career-wise. It helped me get the sense of acting and unlocked my acting potential.

that's: What other roles have inspired you?
ZJ: For every movie I've made, actually, I've tried to use the inspiration I got from Peacock, that feeling of sincerity and freshness. I don't try to be better, just to be different and create something new. I don't rely on experience or acting skills, which don't work well [for me]. They get in the way of the surprising, interesting and special things that happen on a set.

that's: So you rely on spontaneity to create a character.
ZJ: Every time I accept a new role I feel a sense of panic. I worry that I won't be able to act the part or find the character. In The Road, for example, I played a character who aged from 17 to 60 years-old, but of course I had no actual experience of being older. It was the same situation in Protégé, where I portrayed a drug addict. Still, in both case the roles felt right and I was able to get the feeling of the characters.

that's: In The Road, how important was make-up in creating a character decades older than your actual age?
ZJ: Make-up and costume tests were very important processes for me in finding the character. I just finished a new film called Red River, where I play a mentally-handicapped Vietnamese girl. On location near the Vietnamese border I went running every morning and saw Vietnamese women wearing [traditional] dress crossing a bridge to come to China. That led me to buy a used dress, one that had been worn for some years, which helped me to bring authenticity to the character. It's this kind of process that I use to make the character in the script come alive.

that's: Authenticity takes precedence over your own experience…
ZJ: Yes, I think so. You know, my experience is so simple. It's really nothing; my experience is no different from other college graduates. It's not that dramatic or interesting.

that's: You've worked with Zhang Jiarui on Huayao Bride in Shangri-la, The Road and Red River. What attracts you to this director?
ZJ: The reason why I did three movies with him is because I think Zhang is very open. And because he's open-minded, I don't worry about my performance. What's more, I especially enjoy the work we do before the shoot. The actors, and sometimes the writer and the cinematographer, sit down and go through the script scene by scene, discussing and defining the characters.

that's: Protégé offered some shocking insights into the drug underworld; your performance as the young mother addicted to heroin was very impressive. How did you research the role?
ZJ: I went to a rehab clinic, more of an asylum for junkies actually, where they are forced to stay for several months to kick the habit. I did a lot of research because the experience was really hard to imagine. I had the same question about addicts as the audience will have: Why is it so hard to quit drugs? How does it feel to experience withdrawal? And so on.

that's: A number of Chinese actresses are trying to establish an international career, but like Zhang Ziyi in Rush Hour 2, Shu Qi in The Transporter, Gong Li in Miami Vice and your role in Rush Hour 3, the only roles available seem to be in action films.
ZJ: You're right, but I hope one day it will change and there will be more parts like the Japanese girl Chieko [played by Rinko Kikuchi] in Babel [Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006]. I hope one day I'll get a role like that. In any case, the parts I choose in China are similar to hers, powerful and full of passion.


(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
May 2008 issue

Roger Spottiswoode, director of Shake Hands with the Devil (2007), James bond 007 Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Under Fire (1983), on The Children of Huang Shi.

It's no surprise that Hua Mulan, Liu Hulan, Huang Feihung and Huo Yuanjia are considered heroes in China. But few foreigners have ever received the honor. George Hogg is an exception. During the late 30s and early 40s, this young Englishman single-handedly helped 60 Chinese children to safety during the War of Resistance against Japanese Agression. In recognition of his heroic efforts, the city of Shandan, a remote town on the Mongolian border, erected a statue to remember his deeds.

More recently, the life of this unconventional hero forms the basis for a new feature film, The Children of Huang Shi directed by Canadian-born, UK-raised director-writer-editor Roger Spottiswoode. It took the 63 year-old Spottiswoode eight years to bring Hogg's story to the screen in a tale adapted from a short newspaper story written by journalist James MacManus.

The newspaper account of Hogg's life and death presents a bold, somewhat reckless and youthful Oxford graduate, one with a strong thirst for adventure. In 1937, at age 23, Hogg arrived in Shanghai shortly after the Japanese had seized control of the city. He soon found employment as a stringer for the Associated Press, though his reporting led to his expulsion from China. Not at all discouraged, Hogg managed to return through Korea. Later, in Beijing, he met New Zealand nurse Kathleen Hall, who in addition to her medical duties was smuggling food and medicines to anti-Japanese guerrillas.

In 1938, as the situation in the capital became more dangerous, the pair fled to the liberated areas in northern China. There, Hogg contracted typhus and Hall nursed him back to health. To make a long story short, after a great many adventures, Hogg finally arrived in the Tsingling Mountains in east-central Shaanxi Province, where, in 1943, he was appointed headmaster of a school that had been deserted by its teachers. Hogg soon restored discipline to the remaining students by imposing the strict standards of English public schools. Meanwhile, the children's safety was threatened by approaching Japanese troops. Hogg formed a plan to relocate the school to the safety of Shandan in Gansu Province, 1,100 km away. He salvaged 15 tons of equipment and set off on foot with the children early in 1945. They arrived at their destination ten weeks later, totally exhausted and near starvation (one child died of a heart attack and another was lost on the way). Four months later, Hogg had rebuilt his school, though he later contracted tetanus – an infection he didn't survive.

Spottiswoode's film focuses on its protagonist's character, rather than the era's politics. Indeed, after numerous rewrites, what emerges is a moving tale of survival and compassion. The USD 40 million (RMB 300 million) Chinese-Australian-German co-production features a stellar cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point), Chow Yun-fat (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) and Michelle Yeoh (also seen in Spottiswoode's Tomorrow Never Dies). The film premiered in Huangshi City, Hubei Province on March 31 and opens nationwide on April 3.

that's: This is your second film set in Asia, followingthe miniseries Hiroshima (1995), co-directed withKoreyoshi Kurahara. What convinced you to spend three months in China at some very tough locations shooting The Children of Huang Shi?
Roger Spottiswoode (RS): I came across the story of George Hogg about eight years ago when two friends, producers Davina Bellin and Clive Parsons, sent me an early draft of the script. We worked together with writers for another three or four years to get the script right. But it was the compelling story of Hogg and China during a pivotal moment of history that made me want to come to China. In fact, between casting and preparation and then the shoot, I must have spent about a year in China altogether.

that's: What impressed you most during that time?
RS: The huge distances. The vast size [of the country] is hard to take in from the map. What's more, there are cities whose names do not appear on Western maps, or perhaps we just couldn't pronounce their names and so we never learnt them. So it is a country full of surprises. We were also looking for the past and for some cities that were not too altered since the 1930s. Well that was almost impossible. The past is being destroyed and is disappearing so quickly in China; it is a tragedy.

that's: Where did you shoot in Shanghai?
RS: Like so many others before us, we shot at Chedun town, the Shanghai film studio [the Songjiang studio backlot] where we used the Nanjing Road set. We also shot a few scenes in Nanjing itself at a building near Hunan Bridge. While we were shooting in Hengdian [China's largest backlot, in Zhejiang Province], every Saturday evening there would be a five-hour race up to Shanghai to enjoy the good restaurants before they closed.

that's: Many foreign filmmakers have come to China for co-productions, yet most have failed to make a film appealing to both local and international moviegoers. What does your film offer to both these audiences?
RS: Co-productions are designed to help filmmakers work in different countries and raise money internationally, since film finance is extraordinarily difficult. It is an added – and I think completely unexpected – bonus if a film happens to appeal to all members of the co-production partnership. In our case, it's possible that our cast of young actors will surprise audiences in many places.

that's: In the past, some of your work has dealt with politics, for instance, Under Fire and Shake Hands with the Devil, yet The Children of Huang Shi seems decidedly apolitical.
RS: The story of George Hogg in China is not one that demands to be political. What's more, the appeal for me was a character who at an early age was finding himself and his purpose in life. The war closing in around him, the children he was taking care of, all led to an unexpected journey – a new world for them all. It was this story and not the politics that drew me to the film. But at the same time, I have always felt that Europeans have been particularly ignorant of the horrors the Japanese inflicted on China. Just as the Japanese seem ignorant of the genocide their parents committed when they killed 10-15 million Chinese.

that's: You seem to prefer location work (eg., Rwanda for Shake Hands with the Devil) toshooting in a studio.
RS: It's one of the glorious benefits of making films that you travel the world.

that's:How did you convince the two Chinese stars Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat to join the production?
RS: They loved the script and their characters. I went to them four years ago. They have waited patiently for me to get the money together.

that's: How has Yeoh evolved as an actress since your collaboration in Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997?
RS: She gets better and better.

that's: It's hard to work with children, be it in the US or in China. Here you had to handle 60 of them. Did that add to the complexities of the shoot?
RS: We expected it would be hard to take kids away from home for three months, to travel all over the country, to work in the winter in remote places. But it turned out to be great. The children (aged between 7 and 15) really were wonderful. The experience was amazing and rewarding. I had a second unit and a gifted second-unit director who shot 80 per cent of the scenes with the kids and she had a wonderful time with them and adored them all.

that's: Is theChinese approach to working with children in movies different from that of the West?
RS: Cannot tell you this, but kids are similar the world over.

that's: What visual style did you want to create with director of photography Zhao Xiaoding [Zhang Yimou's cinematographer on House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower]?
RS: We wanted to create a world of muted colors, where the color of people's skin was the most striking part of each frame. It was a completely different approach from the other two films [shot by Zhao for Zhang Yimou]. But what he loves and we shared, is creating a palette of interesting colors and shapes. My Chinese is non-existent, his English is developing and so without our valued intermediary and translator, Wang Xiaomeng, it would have been very difficult indeed.

that's: Peter Loehr has been one of the rare Western producers to help several independent Chinese filmmakers. How did he help you on The Children of Huang Shi?
RS: This was in every way a Chinese-Australia-German co-production. Our crew was more than 95 per cent Chinese; most of our department heads were Chinese. All but one day of shooting was done in China. So Peter and Er Yong [also known as Wang Zhang] were the producers. Post production was made in Germany and Australia and the remaining crew and facilities came from Australia.

that's: George Hogg's life in China was tumultuous and full of hardship. And apparently so was the shoot.
RS: The mountains in winter were a challenge to us every day. Sixty children, four mules and 30 handcarts are quite a handful to put onto a narrow, precipitous trail in the mountains, along with a big film crew. I don't quite know how we did it day after day. But on about the sixth day, when shooting on the most dangerous mountain, it snowed and froze. The next morning our generator was leading the way back to the location in the mountain, 50 trucks and busses behind it. The truck carrying the generator got caught on ice and drifted slowly backwards, plunging 60 feet into a chasm. Fortunately, the driver jumped to safety.

Special thanks to Peter Loehr.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
April 2008 issue

China loves the Oscars. Every year, 22 million Chinese turn on the TV to watch the big night (routinely aired on CCTV6 -- this year the 80th ceremony will be broadcast on February 24). The love is rather one-sided though. If the Academy Awards are any indication of the Hollywood establishment's interest in acknowledging Chinese and Chinese-American artists, well, that interest can best be described as minimal. Indeed, since 1929, Chinese contributions to the US and foreign film industry have resulted in a mere 13 Academy Awards, in all categories.

Meanwhile, the American entertainment media has for decades all but ignored Chinese and Asian minorities, except when portraying them as subservient (sexually or otherwise) or subversive (evil or mysterious) stereotypes. Multi-award winning producer, writer, director Arthur Dong explores this subject in his latest documentary Hollywood Chinese, a blend of film clips and interviews with Chinese film talents (Nancy Kwan, Tsai Chin, Wayne Wang, Ang Lee, etc.). Within this format, the 54-year-old San Francisco-born Chinese-American filmmaker examines the history and perceptions of Chinese who worked in the industry.

What first strikes the viewer is how limited a view Hollywood had of Chinese. In the main, Chinese actors were confined to play China dolls, villains, action heroes, zen masters, dragon ladies or gangsters. And at times, they weren't even allowed that much. Many Hollywood productions featured white actors in 'yellow-face', further disseminating die-hard racial stereotypes. The list of 'yellow-faces' is surprisingly long, including John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando. The Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu franchises are notorious reminders of this trend.

Despite the stereotypes, Chinese and Chinese-American actors and technicians have had a tremendous influence in Hollywood, a fact which soon becomes apparent in Dong's documentary, which won the 2007 Best Documentary Golden Horse Award. Scheduled for US theatrical release in the spring of 2008, Hollywood Chinese makes clear that the Chinese influence has resulted in a number of memorable performances and landmark films, despite its unfortunate history of race and representation. For that reason, this film should be as eagerly celebrated in Hollywood as US productions and the Oscar ceremony are in China.

that's: How have Chinese stereotypes evolved in American film?
Arthur Dong (AD): Representations of the Chinese in American films have existed since the beginning of cinema in the late 1800s. From the start, coming from halfway around the world, the Chinese were considered foreign and "other"; their customs, language, and dress were considered exotic and a novel curiosity, not only in films, but also other forms of pop culture. Throughout the 20th-century, and up to present day, this fantasized cinematic treatment persisted. Coupled with political and historical developments, ranging from the Boxer Rebellion, World War II and the formation of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese were regarded as either an ally or a threat, and in many cases, unscrupulously mysterious.

For me, the image that most represents the slow-changing attitudes in Hollywood is the depiction of the Tongs [a Chinese-American secret society]. That image has morphed itself into the hatchet man, opium dens, white slavery, gambling lairs, gangsters, and today, it’s the threat of the Triads. No matter what the label, this characterization continues to find its way into American productions [Rush Hour 3's storyline being a fine example].

that's: What effect has globalization and better access to information had on the perception of Chinese and American-Chinese actors in today's America?
AD: By and large, Chinese film artists are treated in America as foreigners, a perception that reflects a long history of discrimination against the Chinese since the 1800s. The big names in Hollywood are the "Jackie Chan's" and the "Jet Li's", the kind of actors who formed their reputations first in Asia, and whose overseas on-screen personas as martial arts experts remain pretty much unchanged in American films. While they have found a level of popularity in Hollywood, the question remains whether their films expand creative boundaries and give audiences new insights into the Chinese or Chinese American experience, or are their films just doling out more typecast pulp.
The situation for Chinese American actors is slightly different. They're still called upon to play secondary roles and caricatures like bus boys or grocers, but at the opposite end, they are now also cast in the "new and improved" professional model minority stereotypes such as engineers, doctors, and, especially for women, news reporters a la Connie Chung [anchor for NBC, CBS and ABC]. Very seldom are they main characters in Hollywood films.

that's: Many directors from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong have worked in Hollywood (Tsui Hark, Chen Kaige, John Woo), with varying degrees of success. In your opinion, which director has best integrated with the Hollywood system?
AD: In art cinema circles, the directors most respected are filmmakers from China who make films about their homeland, versus Chinese-Americans who produce films set in America. Perhaps John Woo might be the exception with films like Mission: Impossible 2. Of course, Ang Lee's ground-breaking resume of films can't be ignored, but I think he said it best when I asked him about his directing Oscar for Brokeback Mountain: "I made Brokeback Mountain, [but] they will still call me a Chinese filmmaker. But I made a very pure American film. [Still, be they in the US] or in China, people will say, 'The movie is so good because he's Chinese. He looks at things differently.'"

that's: In 2001, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four Academy Awards and was a USD 130-million blowout at the US box office. Has its success changed anything?
AD: The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phenomenon was a major coup. The upside was it showed the world that a Chinese-language production can succeed in both critical acclaim and in box office. But because there is so little product that reflects the wide range of Chinese and Chinese American experiences, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has stood in as the image that most Americans know. Starting with Bruce Lee and now with this film, the kung-fu figure has become a stereotype. Movie executives have a predilection for playing safe and we're seeing copycat productions based on the Crouching Tiger success – not only from Hollywood but also from China. While this strategy provides plentiful employment for artists, it further narrows the definition of who we are as diverse individuals.

that's: Conversely, Flower Drum Song was a groundbreaking re-imagination of Chinese in Hollywood.
AD: For many Asian Americans, this production was the first time they saw themselves on screen as contemporary Americans. Flower Drum Song was a 1961 Universal Studios film that introduced a radically different vision of Asian Americans to Americans. Based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song was produced just 15 years after Cold War; the paranoia persisted and Chinese Americans were still perceived as subversives and communists, [though] discriminatory immigration laws against the Chinese had just been lifted. For most non-Asians, this would be the first time they'd see beyond touristy facades of Chinatowns and experience Chinese Americans as three-dimensional people.

Flower Drum Song was a breakthrough for Hollywood as well. It starred Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, and Miyoshi Umeki, three of the industry's most popular Asian stars of that era whose prominence has yet to be equaled. This was the first major studio release to feature all Asian characters played by real Asian actors. Prior to Flower Drum Song, lead Asian characters were mostly portrayed by white actors in yellow-face (The Good Earth, Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, etc.). And when Asian actors were allowed to perform, they'd be cast in secondary roles that were usually stereotypical and demeaning. In this respect, Flower Drum Song was a landmark film that would set a higher bar for future Hollywood productions -- a bar, unfortunately, that wouldn't be met frequently.

that's: How do you see the future representation of Chinese in Hollywood films?
AD: We now see Chinese in many levels of employment, including studio executives, but I'm not sure how much we can count on them to stick their necks out in order to create fairer screen representations. We need to always remember that Hollywood is commerce; it's not an industry that has altruistic goals at the forefront. Regardless of their race or ethnic background, decision-makers must consider their profit margins. Given that, I want to believe that there are executives who harbor idealistic goals and that besides financial gain they may have desires to produce intelligent and honest films that don't rely on insulting portrayals.

BOX Chinese who have made a difference in Hollywood

Anna May Wong: actress, born in Los Angeles (1905-1961)
First notable Chinese American Hollywood actress (The Thief of Baghdad, 1924). Wong repeatedly played stereotypical Oriental roles in the 1920s and 1930s. She moved twice to Europe at the height of her fame in protest of such roles and finally retired in 1942.

Bruce Lee: actor, born in San Francisco (1940-1973)
One of the most influential martial artists of the twentieth century. Lee sparked the first major surge of interest of Chinese martial arts in the West with Enter the Dragon (1973). Lee, who exhibited Chinese national pride in his movies, has become an iconic Chinese figure.

James Wong Howe: cinematographer, born in Canton (1899-1976)
Considered one of history's ten most influential cinematographers by the International Cinematographers Guild. Nominated for ten best cinematography Academy Awards, Howe won twice.

Nancy Kwan: actress, born in Hong Kong (1939-?)
Played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent in significant Hollywood film roles. In the 1960s, Kwan was considered a major sex symbol (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960; and Flower Drum Song, 1961), and appeared on mainstream magazine covers (Life, Esquire).

Wayne Wang: director, born in Hong Kong (1949-?)
Named after John Wayne. Wang is best known for The Joy Luck Club (1993), a successful adaptation of Amy Tan's novel about a family of Chinese women living in contemporary San Francisco. This film proved mainstream audiences would pay to see Asian lead characters.

Ang Lee: director, born in Taiwan (1954-?)
Has deftly cut across cultural and national boundaries with a string of films in English and Chinese language (Hulk; Lust, Caution). Holds the record for the most Academy Awards nominations and wins (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won 4 Oscars; Brokeback Mountain won 3) of any Chinese director.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
February 2008 issue

Shanghai, Waiting for Paradise (SWFP) is French journalist/filmmaker Sylvie Levey’s latest exposé of the lives of ordinary people in modern Shanghai. Shot between 2001 and 2006, the 92-minute documentary follows three generations of Chinese living under the same roof in a small apartment on Fangbang Road in Huangpu district. During this period, the family awaits relocation to a new home as their neighborhood faces demolition. It’s this long wait – five years – during which their dreams for a new start clash with harsh urban reality.

Born in the fishing port of Saint-Malo on the northern coast of Brittany, Levey’s interest in China began at the age of 10, after reading Pearl Buck’s novel East Wind, West Wind. Since arriving in Shanghai in 1999, she’s made a series of documentaries on subjects that few foreigners ever experience, including the one-child policy (The Golden Babies, 1999), trans-sexuality (The Unique Destiny of Colonel Jin Xing, 2001) and the women’s penal system (High Crimes in Shanghai, 2005).

SWFP is as intimate as a reality TV show, though it replaces voyeurism with a distinctly humanist point of view. Mixing laughter with tears, and hope with outrage, the film portrays a range of emotions that are as big as life itself. As the camera follows the daily routine of the Wang family before their relocation to a Shanghai suburb, the viewer is treated to a wholly unique work: at times heart-rending, at times comical, a warts and all portrait of an ordinary Chinese family. In the end what emerges is a distinctly Chinese tale, but one that transcends cultural and language differences with its universal appeal.

Despite the difficult topics Levey’s tackled, all her work is made with the consent of local authorities. Fluent in Chinese (she studied Mandarin Chinese in Paris and Taipei), she works without an interpreter to increase the intimacy and understanding she has with her subjects. Known as ‘Le Shiwei’, Levey has been called the “third eye watching China". As an outsider looking at the Middle Kingdom, that third eye has won her multiple awards overseas; the only market where her films are shown.

In our interview at her richly decorated apartment in the former French Concession, Levey discusses how China appears through her camera viewfinder.

that’s: When you arrived in Shanghai in 1999, did the reality match your dreams?
Sylvie Levey (SL): China is always full of surprises. Everything is possible and nothing is impossible. That is what I love about it. But if people come with preconceived ideas, if they seek their imaginary view of China, they won’t find the real China or real people. The key to understanding China is modesty; by being modest you can get as close as possible to the essence of China and its people. What’s more, Chinese respect hard work, courage and dignity; if they feel you have respect for those qualities, then they will appreciate your love of their country. Of course, if you can speak their language, use their sayings and idioms – even with mistakes, they’ll love you even more.

that’s: How does your approach to your work differ from that of other foreign journalists?
SL: I am idealistic and ultra sensitive. I make documentaries from my guts. In most of my work the point of view is subjective, the opposite of what’s taught in journalism schools. I don’t believe in objectivity at all, which for me is meaningless and dull. Subjectivity is my primary interest; the time and money spent on my work is secondary.

that’s: In SWFP, this subjectivity is even more manifest than in your previous films.
SL: That’s because the subjects of this film, the Wang family, are my friends. I shot the film without using a third party, so my relationship with them was direct. I was like a member of their family, and that’s why the film is so strongly subjective: their view became my view. Initially, I thought about having a Chinese friend handle the camera for me, but I gave up on the idea. It wouldn’t have worked with a Chinese outsider. I was looking for a direct approach because Chinese don’t speak to other Chinese in the same way they do with Westerners. We are from the outside; we are lao wai. What’s more, my film will be shown overseas and not on Chinese television; that was one of the Wangs’ conditions before they agreed to be filmed.

that’s: You made this film over many years. How could you be sure that you wouldn’t miss key moments in the lives of the Wangs?
SL: I always carried a small camera and eventually they became used to it. In the beginning, however, nothing really happened on film. The initial approach was modest; none of us knew where the story would take us. We had some ideas, of course, but fortunately life is unpredictable and so are people.

that’s: In the end, what does your film tell us about Shanghai?
SL: Actually, this film takes the pulse of the city by looking inside the heads of its ordinary Chinese residents. It is a modest attempt to look into the modern Chinese psyche and how it has been affected by what is, at times, overwhelming change. In fact, few works have ever attempted this point of view, with the possible exception of Four Generations under One Roof by the famous Beijing novelist Lao She.

that’s: There’s one sequence near the beginning of the film where the Wangs are watching a news broadcast of the 9/11 attack and making comments that some viewers may find shocking.
SL: It is not for me to judge their comments; my role was to observe. [What they said] was what they thought at the time. I admit I was very surprised by what they said, and there is indeed a risk that some viewers will be offended. Too bad for them. My films are not made to please Western audiences; if they were I’d be making reality TV shows. I’d also be richer, and would own a car and a flat. In the West, there are two caricatures of China: one as an ultra-liberal market where we can make billions. That image, of course, has no human face. The second portrays China as a gray zone for human rights. In my film, I didn’t want to follow these stereotypes even though my raison d’etre as a filmmaker is to work on the edge. What I wanted to do with this film was to introduce the Wang family and China to the West. Like the films of Jia Zhangke and Yasujirô Ozu, I want to tell stories that have universal appeal, the sort of appeal that allows the viewer to sympathize with the characters. My brother Christian, who’s neither into my films nor into China, watched my documentary and said he could identify with the Wangs as fellow human beings and as friends.

that’s: There are echoes in your film of Jia Zhangke’s Still Life, which also deals with destruction and relocation.
SL: When I watched Still Life in a Paris theater, I was struck by how his actors act out the lives of ordinary people on screen. It reminded me that my characters are also actors in their own lives. Jia’s films blend cinema and documentary, fiction and reality. I love his work because it has a humanistic dimension; it’s not propaganda. His characters are human and their story is powerful. He shows China as it is today.

that’s: In your film you followed the story of the Wangs between 2001 and 2006. In the end you produced 180 hours of footage.
SL: Yes, it was crazy and very expensive to produce and then edit 180 hours of film, but I have no regrets. During the years of filming, I was permanently ready. Sometimes I captured nothing and other times I found magic: poetry, misfortune, anger and smiles. Clearly, this took a lot of patience, but it was both necessary and worthwhile. Of the 180 hours of film much was left in the editing room. For example, I spent a lot of time shooting the pavement stones in the courtyard, and the doors, corridors, etc. I could have produced a 60-minute silent film on Old Shanghai streets. At times, I was obsessed with these streets and even dreamed of finding a millionaire to rescue them from demolition. Of course, these scenes did not make the final cut.

that’s: In one scene in your film, a passerby stops, looks directly into your camera and scolds you for filming common people in a poor neighborhood. He thinks you should be showing modern China to the world, and he has a good point. Many Westerners only want to see the old China, which they see as colorful and exotic despite the poverty.
SL: There is no misery in my films, but it’s true that some viewers do expect what might be termed a sensationalist view of China. A friend of mine, Li Xiao from the Shanghai Media Group (SMG), once told me that he went to a festival in France where an amateur Chinese filmmaker presented a film on the killing of a pig. It was horrible; the pig was purposely slaughtered slowly to produce a reaction from the viewer. My friend felt nauseous, but the film attracted a big audience who wanted to reinforce their stereotyped view of Chinese as a cruel people. However, my films will not appeal to these people; for me, dignity and respect are important.

that’s: What’s next?
SL: I’m working on two projects. One is in Beijing the other in Shanghai. I don’t want to say too much right now, but one of them is a personal project about the Chinese television industry, in particular CCTV.

SWFP premiered at the Istanbul International 1001 Documentary Film festival in October 2007. For more information visit http://www.sylvielevey.com.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
January 2008 issue

Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman helped put Chinese-born directors on the international map in the 1990s, but it was his Oscar-winning films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2003) and Brokeback Mountain (2005) that propelled him to international superstardom. His most recent effort is Lust, Caution – a return, of sorts, to his Chinese roots. Based on Eileen Chang’s eponymous short story, the film, starring Joan Chen, Tang Wei and Tony Leung, is already gaining accolades, and captured the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival this past September.

Lee is perhaps most known for his bold versatility that knows no national, cultural or even sexual boundaries – a characteristic that is the focus, among other things, of film writer Whitney Crothers Dilley’s new book The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen (Wallflower Press, 2007). Although it would undoubtedly be a valuable tool for academics, this first full-length study of the 50-year-old director’s work is also an accessible and gratifying read for film buffs. The author, who is an associate professor of English at Shih Hsin University in Taipei, not only positions Lee’s work within the context of world cinema but also the roots of the Taiwan-based New Cinema movement. We caught up with Dilley last month to ask her about her take on Lust, Caution.

that’s Beijing: What was Lee’s mindset at the time he was producing Lust, Caution – particularly on the heels of Brokeback Mountain?
Whitney Crothers Dilley: After making The Incredible Hulk, Ang Lee was so depressed he considered retiring – it was his late father who pushed him to continue. So Lee made Brokeback Mountain on a shoe-string budget without expecting it to be a success. I suspect that his father’s wish for him to continue [also] brought him to the point of making Lust, Caution … Lee’s grandparents were from the Chinese mainland, and his parents left for Taiwan just a few years after the end of World War II, so this material also resonates with him personally.

that’s: What are the universal themes of Lust, Caution?
WCD: Lee has been dealing with repressed desires in all of his films – he’s a master at the topic. Another interesting aspect is the strong feminist voice represented by Lust, Caution’s focus on a female lead (played by newcomer Tang Wei). Eileen Chang’s fiction is known for voicing the intricacies of the female psyche – in this narrative, she plays out repressed female sexual desire against the backdrop of the very masculine world of war and corruption.

that’s: How does repressed desire translate in the film?
WCD: Lee brought out an element of the story that was much more subtle in Chang’s narrative: graphic representations of desire and sexuality. Lee was convinced the sex scenes were necessary to fully represent the psychology of the main characters, and he has compared them to the fight sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

that’s: Bold as it may be, Lust, Caution has been given the strictest rating in the US (NC-17) and was released in a truncated version in China.
WCD: Lee’s films have always been full of risk, both topically and stylistically. His willingness to walk the line between security and insecurity, as I have said in my book, is what makes his work transcendent.

that’s: How has Lee managed to become a bridge between Chinese and American cinema?
WCD: Lee intrinsically understands the gap between Chinese-style art (i.e. martial arts in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and American-style art (i.e. the Civil War in Ride With the Devil). He finds the universal themes that appeal to people of both cultures, such as gender differences, cultural identity, family ritual and social duty. It’s very important for Lee to be bold in building bridges between cultures – this is one of the key roles we need to play in an increasingly globalized world.

(c) that's Beijing
Chief editor: Oliver Robinson
November 2007 issue

Iris Chang will be remembered as one of the most important human-rights activists and investigative journalists of her time, in the main for bringing a forgotten chapter of history to international attention with the publication in 1997 of The Rape of Nanking which documents the atrocities of December 1937 in the former Chinese capital.

Born in New Jersey, Chang worked at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune before devoting her efforts to examining one of the most tragic events of World War II, the Nanking (Nanjing) massacre, an event some historians have compared to the Nazi holocaust. More than just an account of the carnage, Chang’s tome exposes the Japanese Army’s utter disregard for human life, as well as later efforts by the Japanese government to suppress knowledge of what had happened.

The book became an international bestseller and at 29 Chang became a literary celebrity. More importantly, she also became a role model for thousands of Chinese students in the US. Indeed, her book, the first English-language account of the massacre, became mandatory reading in many college classrooms.

This year, the 70th anniversary of the tragedy has inspired more than a half-dozen filmmakers to commemorate its victims. Bill Guttentag’s Nanking opened in China in July, while Lu Chuan’s Nanking! Nanking! and Roger Spottiswoode’s The Children of Huang Shi are in production. In addition, Simon West, Oliver Stone and Stanley Tong all have scripts in development. That said, one project puts Chang center stage, the Sino-Canadian co-production The Woman Who Couldn’t Forget: The Iris Chang Story. This feature documentary employs archival footage, re-enactments and even CGI to allow the viewer to see the story unfold, much as Chang did during her research. The film is directed and produced by seasoned Canadian filmmaker William Spahic and his spouse, Anne Pick, Hot Docs International Documentary Festival founder and award-winning documentary producer-director-writer.

that’s: How did you come up with the idea of a docu-drama blending archival footage with interviews and re-enactments?
William Spahic (WS): We first heard about Nanking from our son Matthew, in grade 10 here in Toronto, who wanted to do a historical assignment on holocausts. We thought that meant the Jewish holocaust in Europe but he chose the Nanking holocaust instead. In helping him proofread his essay we learned about the Nanking massacre. Our research and writing of the script started in July of 2006. In December 2006, we first went to Nanking for the 69th anniversary of the holocaust, where we filmed the remembrance event at the Memorial Hall and interviewed nine survivors and other people. In March 2007, we had a script and returned to Nanjing to film the drama scenes as well as other interviews. In April, we went to Japan and filmed the Japanese perspective. We found a Japanese war veteran who had chilling stories of atrocities he had committed in China. In the same month we filmed in California, New York and Washington.

that’s: Before the release of Chang’s book, how was the Nanking massacre perceived in North America?
WS: As Iris states in her book and we confirm it in our film, the Nanking holocaust was swept under the carpet by all concerned for geo-political reasons. Very few non-Chinese people in North America knew about Nanking. Her book more than any other event changed that forever. Most of the recent spate of documentaries and feature films on the subject credit Iris Chang’s book for opening their eyes to those terrible events in 1937.

that’s: Why and how did you put Iris Chang at the center of the film?
WS: We’re the only film that has Iris as the central character, thanks to an exclusive agreement with her parents Chang Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin. We also interviewed and talked to her husband and her friends and colleagues. By getting to know Iris, the audience will, through her eyes, get to know and understand the Nanking massacre on an emotional level that goes well beyond a standard documentary primarily using archival footage. Modern day audiences have built-in emotional filters against such emotional exposure. We wanted to reach our audience on that same emotional level, i.e., personal and emotional, as the people who went through and survived the atrocity. There is no other way of looking at it.

that’s: Indeed, Chang was emotionally and personally involved.
WS: Iris had just completed but not published her first book, Thread of a Silkworm and was looking for a subject for her next book. She was aware of the Nanking massacre from her parents, whose families narrowly escaped before the Japanese took Shanghai and Nanking. She saw pictures of the atrocities and realized for the first time that she was witnessing real people’s lives at the very moment of their deaths. She did not perceive them as nameless statistics or objective historical events but as real human beings in real tragic events. She determined to do something about it. Iris was deeply influenced by what she found in China on her research trip, especially interviewing about a dozen survivors. That left a deep emotional motivation for her to write the book. After she wrote the book and later in life, she became a human rights crusader. On her grave [she committed suicide in 2004] there is an epitaph stating she was a human rights crusader.

that’s: Is the film difficult to watch?
Anne Pick (AP): We do make a conscious effort not to sensationalize the graphic archive but we choose not to shy away from it either. Some of the images are hard to watch and we are careful where and how we use them and how long they are on screen. But it was those very images that finally convinced Iris that she had to tell their stories. We hope in our film it is the emotional aspect we are underlining, not the gore.

that’s: Talk about Olivia Cheng, who portrays Iris Chang.
WS: Olivia has the same qualities that Iris had: determination, drive, intelligence and beauty. She even resembles Iris. In fact, when we filmed a scene with Olivia interviewing Professor Wang in Nanking in March 2007 [he was one of the people who helped Iris research her book in 1995], Wang completely forgot that he was talking to Olivia and kept calling her Iris and telling her that she needed to write the book. We are very happy to have found Olivia to play the part of Iris, especially since we inter-cut video interviews of the real Iris and our actress throughout our film. The cutting back and forth is seamless.

that’s: Did you encounter any difficulties when shooting in China and Japan?
WS: We had full co-operation in Nanjing and the Jiangsu Province Foreign Affairs authorities were very helpful. The hardest part was listening to the tragic stories the survivors had to tell. It had the same impact on us as on Iris when she interviewed survivors in 1995. Several times our crew would break down and weep when they heard the sad stories from our survivors. Similar to Iris’s experience, we also felt they were our motivation for making the film and they drive our narrative. But what amazed us all is that they bore no ill feelings toward the Japanese people. All they wanted was the recognition of what happened to them and above all they wanted peace in the world. Japan, on the other hand, was a mixed experience. For example, one war veteran also felt the need to tell his story because he did not want this type of tragedy to happen again. And we found people sympathetic to getting the truth told. But then we interviewed a right-wing nationalist who denied everything. That was hard to take. Emotionally, it is not an easy film to make.

AP: Japan needs to come clean, take ownership and stand accountable for its Imperial Army’s actions in the Pacific theater, China and Korea during WW II.

WS: We are not interested in making a political film. We are making a documentary about a brave young woman who dealt with bigger issues. Our motivation for making the film was the same Iris had for writing the book. And I quote her: “That beneath the thin veneer of civilized society lies a darker side of human nature.” We must always be on guard because if the darker side rises to the top as it did in Nanking many human lives are affected. All she wanted and all that the Chinese survivors we met want is recognition of what happened by way of a sincere and meaningful apology, some reparation to the victims and above all, to teach the true facts of Nanking in Japanese schools.

that’s: How will your film stand out from other films made this year about the massacre?
WS: Our film is the only film that tells Iris’s story and by doing that tells the story of Nanking. All Western films on Nanking have been influenced by Iris’s book but ours is the only one to give her the narrative she deserves. And because we are using the docu-drama format we will be able to give the audience the perspective that lets them get to know who Iris was and through her find the emotional door to a truly tragic and horrific event. We’re hoping to have a premier in Nanjing in December 2007 and with the help of the curator at the Nanjing Memorial Hall, we will have a screening and a permanent exhibit there.

For more information on Iris Chang see http://irischang.net.
2007 marks the 70th anniversary of the Nanking massacre, the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Rape of Nanking and the 3rd anniversary of the death of Iris Chang.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
November 2007 issue

More powerful than a locomotive, Superman Returns’ producer Chris Lee is surprisingly mild-mannered

As soon as Chris Lee knew he’d be joining the Superman Returns' production team, he rushed to his local comic book store and invested nearly USD 400 in back issues. Though not a great fan of the superhero from Krypton (he prefers The Batman), the 50-year-old Hawaii-born film producer needed to do his homework. Which is to say he had to study the 70-decade long evolution of the Man of Steel. Clearly, the man’s a professional.

A Hollywood executive and former president of motion picture production at both Tri-Star Pictures and Columbia Pictures, Lee’s supervised many Academy Award-winning films and box office hits. A large number of which featured A-list actors (Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise; Philadelphia with Tom Hanks; My Best Friend’s Wedding with Julia Roberts; Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt, etc.,). Along the way, he’s not only mastered the production of large, big budget films, but the technical requirements of computer generated imagery (CGI) on projects such as Final Fantasy, Starship Troopers, and Godzilla.

What sets him apart from his producing peers in Tinseltown is his passion for the art itself, and his willingness to share his filmmaking experiences with film students and fellow cineastes alike. In addition, there’s something about Lee that one might call unique, at least in the film industry. Despite his obvious success, he remains true to his roots, and his friends.

In 2002, Lee left the Hollywood fast lane to return to Hawaii, where he founded the Academy for Creative Media (ACM). In cooperation with ten campuses affiliated with the University of Hawaii, ACM offers a platform for indigenous voices to tell their stories, via films and video games, to the broadest possible audience. In the four years since the academy was established, it now offers a total of 27 courses to 200 students.

Lee has also lent a helping hand to numerous mainstream projects wherever they may be. He was creative producer on Bryan Singer’s (X-Men) Superman Returns, released this summer in China, and co-producer of Chen Daming’s (Manhole) comedy One Foot off the Ground (OFOTG).

Superman Returns, the fifth episode in the franchise, is Lee’s second collaboration with long-time friend, Singer. One of the most eagerly anticipated films of this summer, the film cost USD 200 million and doubled its money in worldwide gross profits.

In contrast, Chinese actor-director Chen Daming’s second directorial effort, OFOTG is a character-driven, small budget film, with no SFX and, of course, lower financial expectations. Regardless, while putting the last spin on Superman Returns in Australia in 2005, Lee assisted in the pre- and the post-production of Chen’s bittersweet tale shot in local dialect in Kaifeng (Henan province). OFOTG concerns the vanishing glory of traditional opera. Lee’s expertise in customizing films for multiple markets has already helped Chen achieve international notice, not an easy task for a zany, if quaint, comedy. The film was screened this autumn at several prestigious European film festivals (Spain’s San Sebastian; Greece’s Thessaloniki) to much acclaim, and will open in the Chinese mainland next month.

In our interview with Chris Lee, he offers insights into the filmmaking process, both Hollywood style and in China.

that’s: You graduated from Yale University with a degree in political science. How does that apply to the entertainment industry?
Chris Lee: I think one of the great advantages of a school like Yale is that your major need not determine your future. That said, I did plan to become a lawyer or political consultant, but my first job ended up being in television – for ABC’s Good Morning America [a morning news talk show first broadcast in 1976].
When I decided television wasn’t for me, I tried film, working with [Hong Kong-born, US-based] director Wayne Wang on his second movie, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), which featured an 18-year-old Joan Chen. I worked as assistant director (AD), apprentice editor and various other jobs that come with low budget filmmaking. I decided being an AD and an editor weren’t for me, so I headed for Hollywood proper and got a job as a script analyst for Tri-Star Pictures which eventually led to my position of president of production for that studio.

that’s: What’s your advice to Chinese filmmakers eager to break into Hollywood?
CL: What a broad question! And at the same time, what a specific one, because I don’t think anyone coming to Hollywood is going to have the same experience as anyone else.
What often separates the success stories [from the failures] is the individual’s ability to market themselves and their tenacity; Hollywood is a very tough town that revels in rejection and failure. You need a very thick skin if you want to survive and prosper. You also have to learn from the inevitable failures and not get too discouraged.
My suggestion is to remember the maxim that it’s important to get your foot in the door any way you can; be an intern, be an assistant, go to parties and meet as many people as you can. And know that you need to both make as many friends as possible and be as wary as you can. Also, agents and managers do have the ability to be enormously helpful. Always try to find a mentor and listen to others’ experiences.

that’s: You were a creative producer on Superman Returns. Can you explain that title?
CL: Good question. Everyone knows what a director does, or an editor, cinematographer, etc. But producers play many roles and have many titles: producer; executive producer; co-producer; etc. In my case, I was the creative producer for both the studio [Warner Bros.] and Bryan Singer, and served as the chief liaison between the two. I was with Bryan all the time, involved in everything from script, casting, to second-unit work, marketing and publicity. I wasn’t a ‘line’ producer which is to say, I didn’t come up through the ranks of the talented people who know how to physically ‘run’ a picture. But I was responsible for making sure Bryan had smooth sailing every day.

that’s: Superman is an icon. What challenges were there working on a film with such a well-known character?
CL: There are 70 years of history connected to Superman, so you really want to make sure you get it right. That means honoring the legacy and roots of the characters, but it also means, after an absence of 20 years on the big screen, re-establishing the franchise for an entirely new generation. The fans are, of course, quite vocal on their likes and dislikes and while we of course listen to them, Bryan wanted to try some things that had never been done before – but always with tremendous respect and love for what made Superman great in the first place.

that’s: You also produced OFOTG. Was it difficult moving from a Hollywood blockbuster to a low budget Chinese comedy?
CL: Well, they [the two projects] actually happened simultaneously. Chen Daming is an old friend of mine, but I’ve always known him as an actor. He has been my host in China on several occasions, even translating for me when I guest lectured at the Beijing Film Academy. I was pleasantly surprised when he wrote and directed Manhole (2004), which I thoroughly enjoyed. He asked me to read an early draft of OFOTG and I just loved the characters and asked if I could work on it, developing the script with him. Together, via the Internet mostly, we worked on focusing the story and the comedy and emotion. Then he got financing from the [Beijing-based] Huayi Brothers to make it. I was in Sydney at the time doing Superman Returns, so I couldn’t go to Kaifeng for any of the shooting. But I went to Beijing in January [2006] and worked on the final cut with [producer] Henry Wang. Then in April I went to Bangkok to supervise the sound mix at Technicolor. I’m very proud to be involved and look forward to making more movies with Chen Daming.

that’s: What sort of film is OFOTG?
CL: It’s very much a comedy with heart. If I had to categorize it I’d say it’s similar to Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994) with multiple story lines, laughter and tears.
It is very Chinese, but it’s very universal as well. It’s about surviving in changing times and dealing with the people we love. The conflicts and dilemmas are recognizable for any audience. Yet I was [also] excited by the opportunity to make a film about contemporary Chinese society. There are already enough martial arts epics and woeful villagers' movies – these are characters I think Chinese audiences will embrace as their own.

that’s: How familiar are you with the work of OFOTG’s investors, the Wang brothers of Huayi Brothers (The Banquet; A World Without Thieves)?
CL: They’re interested in actually developing a script before shooting it and applying marketing to selling them. They seem very supportive of their filmmakers. I know that they’re very successful and I enjoy working with them. I think they’re mostly successful because they’re audience driven; they’re not interested in making films just for the filmmakers. They remind me of Hollywood producers in that way.

that’s: How can Chinese cinema benefit from foreign expertise?
CL: I think script development could help some filmmakers. I also think better marketing would bring the films to a broader audience. Again, I’m sure there are many ways to define ‘Chinese cinema’ but as a Hollywood producer, I am always interested in pictures that speak to the broadest audience.

that’s: There’s a growing trend in Chinese films to use more CGI effects? Is that progress?
CL: CGI’s just a tool, and it can certainly be overused as it is in many Western films that just end up looking like cartoons or video games. It’s more important to care about the stories and characters. You know, some of my favorite Hong Kong pictures were things like A Chinese Ghost Story (Tsui Hark, 1987) and The Storm Riders (Andrew Lau, 1998), which used all kinds of SFX to tell their stories. So I think there’s a history in Chinese cinema to use SFX. And I think CGI provides an opportunity to tell many of the mythical stories of Chinese folklore in ways that could not be done before – similar to what we do with our superhero films.
I love what Zhang Yimou did with CGI in Hero (2002) and also House of Flying Daggers (2004). I loved the use of color and the CGI sets.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
October 2006 issue

In late November last year, a statue of Bruce Lee was erected in the Bosnian city of Mostar. One resident said the martial arts’ icon was equally popular on all sides of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, in other words, a symbol of universal peace. ”We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats,” said Veselin Gatalo of the youth group Urban Movement Mostar. “But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee.”

In light of such widespread appeal, it should come as no surprise that film director Antti-Jussi Annila, aka A-J Annila has produced the first ever Finnish kung fu flick. After all, he’s been hooked on the genre since he was a boy. In the summer of his tenth year, he viewed a martial arts movie 36 times. That’s enough to traumatize a kid for life. And to sow the seeds of an unconditional passion for kung fu and wu xia pian (a film genre derived from wu xia or Chinese ‘martial-arts chivalry’ literature).

Now 29, Annila has translated his passion to the screen with Jade Warrior (JW, Jadesoturi), a work five years in the making, but one that he’s been preparing for decades. As a youth, he borrowed the family video camera to make his first action-packed films. Later, at the School of Art and Media in Tampere, Finland, he applied his obsession with swordplay, high kicks and flying chops to five short films which he wrote and directed. Entitled Hard Student 1-5, they were shown at several domestic film festivals. His thesis, if you haven’t guessed already, was based on Hong Kong action films.

Since graduating in 2002, Annila has pursued his dream in earnest, working full-time to bring his first feature-length film to fruition. To do so, he sought and won creative and monetary support from film professionals in Finland and China, but also in Estonia and Holland. In this first ever Finland-China co-production, Annila blends Finnish mythology with Chinese martial arts, and he highlights this unusual combination by setting the story in ancient China as well as in modern-day Finland. The RMB 27.5 million (USD 3.4 million) sword and romance film was shot in location in Finland, Estonia and China (in Fangyan, Zheijiang Province, 500 km north-east of Shanghai).

The plot concerns an ancient Chinese warrior, Sintai, (played by Finnish actor Tommi Eronen from Producing Adults) who while battling a Chinese demon (Cheng Taishen from Jia Zhangke’s The World), falls in love with an equally deadly Chinese beauty named Pin Yu (China’s rising starlet Zhang Jingchu from Peacock and Seven Swords). So far, so good. But from this point on, the story becomes rather more complicated. Sintai not only loses his loved one, but also loses track of her. He takes up the quest after being reincarnated as a blacksmith (Kai) in contemporary Finland.

As mentioned above, the storyline stems from Finnish legend, namely the Kalevala, and from the tradition of Chinese martial art films. The Kalevala is a 19th-century Finnish epic poem of 22,795 verses and 50 chapters, wherein rugged Norse warriors pine for battle, as well as the love of a good woman. Needless to point out, this work alone offers the director plenty of melodramatic material. But add to the mix the graceful representations of flying bodies engaged in swordplay and other kung-fu staples and you’ve got something altogether unique.

Last month, Jade Warrior premiered in the Vanguard category at the 31st Toronto International Film Festival. The film has been sold in 20 territories (from Japan to Poland) by France-based Rezo Films International, and will be released by Warner China Film HG Corporation in China this month.

In our interview with Annila, he discusses his love of the martial arts’ genre and its influence on his craft.

that’s: You seem to have spent your youth living in a sort of fantasy world.
Antti-Jussi Annila (AJA): In my childhood, I spent my time in the forest with nothing but a knife as if I were the son of Tarzan. When I was ten, I watched Sam Firstenberg’s Revenge of the Ninja [1983] with Shô Kosugi 36 times in one summer. When I was twelve, I dreamed to someday win the Wimbledon tennis tournament. I still have that dream, though I haven’t played tennis for years.

that’s: What are your favorite Chinese movies?
AJA: There are a lot of them: Tsui Hark’s Once a Upon a Time in China; Liu Chia-liang’s 36th Chamber of Shaolin; Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Eat Drink Man Woman; Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love; and John Woo’s The Killer.

that’s: What attracts you to wu xia pian?
AJA: I love the melodrama and the melancholic portrayal of emotions in wu xia pian, as well as the way emotions are connected with action scenes. In the original kung fu films, the action often feels separated from drama, but in wu xia pian they seem to go hand in hand; feelings and drama are conveyed through physical movements. Wu xia pian also has a lot of fantasy elements, and I love stories that blend emotion and fantasy. This doesn’t happen in real life, yet this film genre offers feelings you can also experience in real life.

that’s: Wu xia pian is a Chinese art form. Is there a Finnish version?
AJA: My inspiration for the story came from the Kalevala, but the idea to set it in ancient China came from my love for Chinese wu xia pian. And I discovered that these two sources of inspiration are really close to each other. The film is a mixture of the two cultures. It is not Chinese or Finnish; it’s a combination of both. JW is a melodramatic love story, with elements of Finnish and Chinese myth, and action scenes inspired by the wu xia pian genre. It is the first of its kind, and I hope it will come across as something different.

that’s: How do you merge wu xia pian and Finnish myth?
AJA: I have been watching kung fu and wu xia films since I was a young boy. Wu xia pian is a form of Chinese action film that visualizes themes such as the way of the warrior, courage, hate and love. Our national epic Kalevala could also be described as such; the men are very skillful warriors in battle but they’re totally incapable in love affairs. Which seems to fit quite well into the wu xia pian world.

that’s: Time travel is another unusual element in the film. Why is JW set in ancient China and present-day Finland?
AJA: The story has elements of reincarnation, so from the beginning, in pre-production, we set the story in ancient times and the present. The connection between ancient China and contemporary Finland is [represented by] an iron chest that travels with our hero [Sintai/Kai]. Kai is a blacksmith stuck in the past and living in seclusion on the edge of an industrialized city. His forge is a gate revealing visions from ancient China, what really happened in the past and whom he can trust in the present. The connection is not only material but also spiritual, because our main character really sees and feels his memories from his past life in ancient China. We tried to make these worlds and times connect in material and spiritual ways, so, no matter how far apart they are, they’d fit into the same story.

that’s: Why did you cast Zhang Jingchu as the character Pin Yu?
AJA: We wanted to find an actress who could be strong and vulnerable at the same time. We didn’t want to cast somebody just based on their name and star-power. At the casting session, Zhang Jingchu stood out amongst other Chinese actresses – all of them were really good. But after the screen test, I was sure she was the one. And I think she was excellent in her performance.

that’s: The warrior Sintai isn’t played by a Chinese actor. Why?
AJA: The story stems from the Kalevala and the main plot happens in Finland, so the lead actor portraying Kai is Finnish (Tommi Eronen). The same actor is also present in the Chinese part of the story as Sintai. Sintai’s father is Chinese but his mother is Finnish; he is a son of two nations. The main character is a fusion of two cultures – like the film itself. Our hero is based on Kalevala’s heroes but has a story of his own. He is not a typical hero from an action film; he’s a man with multiple flaws. He fights against his destiny – like we all do sometimes.

that’s: How did you design the fighting scenes with Chinese action-choreographer Yu Yan-kai?
AJA: We didn’t have any specific movies in mind because we wanted to make our own style, mixing Chinese kung fu and Finnish fighting. Yet, following the tradition of the wu xia genre, [we let] the actors perform the action scenes themselves, which gives their movement authenticity. The action idealizes movement and the beauty of battle rather than violence. We also designed the action choreography to reflect the drama. The fight scenes are not just action, but also narrative elements. They set the pace for the melodramatic story.

The weapons vary from spears to swords, from birch branches to iron fans, from chopsticks to smith hammers. The skills of smiths and warriors aren’t that different after all, and here they finally become one. The ultimate battle between the demon and Sintai/Kai is waged with hammers and anvils. What’s more, all the action sequences have an element of difference. Sometimes the action is like a dance between two lovers; sometimes it’s really brutal between two enemies.

that’s: Are you feeling satisfied now that your dream has become reality?
AJA: JW is a dream come true. To bring together [my] culture with the culture I have come to love has been an adventure. I hope this feeling is conveyed in the film. My [next] humble dream is to someday direct a ninja musical. After that, around year 2029, I hope to have more time to spend on my favorite hobbies: clearing the forest, cutting down trees and working on something really concrete, like a tree house, for example, one similar to Tarzan’s.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
October 2006 issue

Lei Feng (*) would not approve. In Shanghai, the shining citadel of modern China, it seems that fundamental values – civility, courtesy and selflessness – have all but vanished. In short, the model citizen spirit, prizing good manners and high ethical standards is on the endangered list. In its place, one finds the hustler, whose conduct is governed by the law of the concrete jungle: every man for himself.

To be fair, Shanghai is not the only city suffering from a lack of feeling for one’s fellow man. But such is the depth of the problem that the authorities have taken action. Recently, city officials have arranged public seminars on etiquette, and reinforced the message with a number of publications, including the good manners manual, A Million Families Learning Etiquette, and Recognizing Phonies, a consumer’s handbook that might have helped Lei Feng spot bogus beggars unworthy of his goodwill. Even ‘Little Emperors’ and ‘Little Princesses’ are now being instructed to employ the all-but obsolete phrase “thank you, Mum” or “thank you, Dad”. And not least, there is the anti-corruption campaign.

The success of these efforts remains to be seen, but in the meantime Shanghai’s moral dissipation has provided material aplenty for Hong Kong-based filmmaker Ann Hui. Her latest film, The Postmodern Life of my Aunt, opens nationwide this December, and features a cast of reprobates straight out of The Threepenny Opera.

With all the ingredients that have won praise at home and abroad by critics and viewers alike, The Postmodern Life of my Aunt is an exceptionally good, character driven comedy-drama, albeit one that is suffused with topical societal issues.

Hui’s 21st film revolves around a 60 year old woman, Ye Rutang (award-winning Mongolian ethnic actress Siqin Gaowa), who after losing her job leaves her hometown, the northeast post-industrial city Anshan (and incidentally Hui’s birthplace), for Shanghai. Ye’s trusting nature is severely tested in sin city where she falls victim to a series of scam artists who aim to cheat her out of her life’s savings. The list of con men includes her 12 year old nephew (Guan Wenshuo), who fakes his own kidnapping to extract pocket money from his aunt; a charming opera singer (Chow Yun-fat, absent from Chinese productions for six years) who deals in the futures market for funeral plots, and Ye’s new neighbor (Shi Ke), who claims she needs cash to pay her daughter’s hospital bills. Eventually Ye is bled dry, forcing her reluctant daughter (TV heartthrob Zhao Wei) to come to the rescue.

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Yan Yan, the film portrays Shanghai as a moral vacuum, where only the most ruthless types can survive. At first, this jaundiced view might peg Hui as a cynic, but beneath its bleak surface this film reveals Hui’s sympathy for victim and exploiter alike. “Shanghai is an extreme representation of all the fast-moving cities in the world,” says Hui, “and the fate of all those people who cannot catch up, those who can, and the marginalized.”

Indeed, as with all the films Hui has made in the past 20 years, Postmodern Life is about people – and for people. “I’d call Ann Hui’s films examples of ‘humanistic cinema’,” says David Bordwell, author of Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Harvard University Press, 2000) and Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin. “She’s less interested in technical experiments or physical action than in psychological dramas that reveal unexpected sides of human beings.”

Put another way, Hui has remained true to her ideals. Like other members of the so-called New Wave of Hong Kong directors that came of artistic age in the late 70s, she studied abroad and then worked for television before directing feature films. The New Wave, she jokes, was “an injection of new life into the mainstream cinema”. New Wave refers to the earlier French film movement of the 60s, though its Hong Kong incarnation was in reaction to escapist Mandarin-language studio-based productions – read fantasy kung fu films – rather than French conservatism.

“New Wave filmmakers sought to forge a new vision for Hong Kong cinema, focusing on local subjects, relevant to people’s lives, and spoken in the language people could understand – Cantonese,” says Assistant Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the Santa Barbara University of California Michael Berry, who interviewed Hui for his book Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia, 2005).

In the mid-1970s, Hui shot dozens of documentaries and TV dramas before successfully turning to feature filmmaking with The Secret (1979), The Spooky Bunch (1980) and The Story of Woo Viet (1981). The New Wave movement, it must be said, lasted just a couple of years, but Hui’s work has maintained its relevance, first to the people of Hong Kong and later to their compatriots on the Chinese mainland. No matter the genre.

Hui has directed ghost stories, political dramas, martial arts epics, romantic melodramas and comedies. “From the start she tried to make genre films that carried a personal touch,” says Bordwell, adding that her vision is distinct in genre.

Perhaps because she considers film something more than just a commercial entertainment. Hui has often said that she is not a very social person, so it may be that the medium offers her a means of expression; a proxy for life, if you will. In the 1950s, she was sent to an English primary school which did wonders for her command of that language, though at the expense of her Chinese. That said, Hui’s fluency is best expressed visually. In Berry’s book, she revealed that she views cinema as a language, one that can be understood universally, and one that helps her to express herself on contemporary issues.

That command of visual language is evident in films such as Summer Snow and Visible Secret, both of which happened to be commercial successes. There were failures, too. Ordinary Heroes (1999) was lauded by the critics, but it lost HKD 5 million. After which Hui was unable to attract investors and forced to take a teaching job for the next two years. In spite of all her festival awards and critical acclaim, she’s often had trouble financing her films. “It’s very difficult for me to find money in Hong Kong for the kind of films I make,” says Hui. Indeed, at one point, such was the parlous state of her finances that she couldn’t afford an office.

Still, she never sold out. Hui’s humanist approach to filmmaking is, as Bordwell says, “a consistent factor in her career”. Which is not to imply her work is repetitive. In addition to moral issues, exile is a recurring theme in her films (Song of the Exile; Love in a Fallen City) which is not surprising considering her background. Born in 1947 in Anshan, Hui’s father is Chinese, her mother, Japanese. She grew up in Hong Kong where she graduated in English and Comparative Literature in 1972. In 1974, she studied at the London Film School before returning to Hong Kong to work on TV productions. In 1990, she made the abovementioned Song of the Exile (1990) starring Maggie Cheung, a film with strong autobiographical elements. The story is built around Hui’s relationship with her Japanese mother, and their shared search for an identity, no easy task considering the post-war relations between China and Japan.

Likewise, The Postmodern Life of my Aunt is a study of identity and exile. Ye Rutang, a native of Anshan and the product of an era strikingly different from modern Shanghai, is also caught between two cultures. Granted, Hong Kong, or indeed any large city, might have served just as well as Shanghai as a symbol of moral decadence. But with financial backing coming largely from Cheerland Entertainment Organization, Class Ltd., and Beijing PolyBona Film Distribution Co., Ltd. – the setting, for marketing and monetary reasons, had to be set in a city on the Chinese mainland. And so Shanghai was the obvious choice (audiences will note scenes shot in Changfeng Park and along Sichuan North Road).

Unfamiliar with Shanghai, Hui commissioned prize-winning novelist Li Qiang (Peacock) to write a screenplay based on elements peculiar to the city. In the end, however, Hui discovered that “the Shanghainese way of life is very much similar to the Hong Kong lifestyle. Since the early 1950s,” she says, “many Shanghainese came to Hong Kong and chic Hong Kongers adopted, at least in part, a Shanghainese style in terms of clothing, entertainment and food.”

Hui regards consumerism, and the accompanying change in social values, as the inevitable consequence of any fast-growing economy. “Present day Shanghai,” she says, “is reviving the [consumer] lifestyle, and along with it the 1970s/1980s Hong Kong spirit of go-getting.”

Needless to say, the anything goes attitude is part of the parcel.

Although contemporary Shanghai serves to exemplify the materialism and venality of a developing society, Hui doesn’t judge its inhabitants too harshly. “The film begins in a light-hearted way,” she explains, “then moves towards tragedy, but it never quite reaches its grandeur.”
END

(*) Lai Feng was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army. After his death he was characterized by propaganda as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to Chairman Mao. His lifestory was used as an education tool for the masses.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2006 issue

Sub head:
Cinefile: Five Questions For ...
Alexi Tan, director of John Woo-produced gangster drama Blood Brothers

Alexi Tan’s star-studded directorial debut, Blood Brothers, can be described as a character-driven period film with a modern attitude. Entirely shot in China and set in the 1930s, the film concerns three friends (Daniel Wu, Tony Yang, Liu Ye) who move from the countryside to Shanghai, a glittering city of vice and decadence. There, they do whatever it takes to become rich, risking their friendship in the process.
Educated in London and New York, young director Tan has impressed with a string of award-winning commercials and short films. One of these – Double Blade (2003), shot in LA and starring Taiwanese idol Jay Chou – convinced filmmakers John Woo (The Killer, Bullet in the Head) and Terence Chang to help produce Blood Brothers, a film that Tan sees as a tribute to various film masters.
Indeed, the gangster drama was inspired by themes of honor and brotherhood from Woo’s Hong Kong films, storytelling from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, and modern attitude from the likes of Quentin Tarantino. Tan sat down with that’s Beijing to discuss his Chinese answer to the western genre.

that’s: Is this a John Woo film or an Alexi Tan film?
Alexi Tan: It’s a combination of all my collaborators' work [costume designer Tim Yip; action director Philip Kwok; cinematographer Michel Taburiaux; producers John Woo and Terence Chang]. John’s hand is there and every time he had an opinion or a say, I would always tell somebody beside me “a master touched my soul.”

that’s: How did you work on the story?
AT: I actually wrote the film with female writer and Beijing native Zhang Dan. I am not a native Mandarin speaker so I was not comfortable with writing a Mandarin script. To be honest, at first I was very wary about working with a female writer, because I was doing a movie about brotherhood and she knew nothing about Sergio Leone’s films. [But] I made the right choice because she was able to inject a lot of things from a woman’s point of view into the female characters. Even if this is a film about brotherhood I made sure that women are not merely fixtures. As a matter of fact, we researched Shu Qi’s character, Lulu, extensively.

that’s: How about the action?
AT: John Woo’s very strong with action and he would tell me how he thought the action of a scene should be done. However, I would tell him I really see this movie like Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West where the action is real and fast; it’s all about the build up. Like the long wait for a train in the film opening and then the kill is made in a second.

that’s: Indeed, you build tension, whereas Woo can do a non-stop action scene for 30 minutes.
AT: Yes, and … because he can do those things the best, there is no need for me to do a B-grade level of that. This is what would have happened if I had done it that way. He’s done the two guns and dove thing; we have too much respect for him to try and redo it ourselves.

that’s: Did you ever imagine what your directorial debut would be like?
AT: I dreamt about it, that’s for sure. When I was shooting the film it was really strange; it never really occurred to me what was going on. After the film, I really realized that John Woo produced the film and he was telling everyone he was supporting me. When I am watching the film now there are, of course, many elements that I’d like to redo. If they let me re-shoot now I would delay the whole premier – I am my own worst critic.

Blood Brothers hits cinemas across town on August 16.

(c) that's Beijing Magazine
Deputy Chief editor: Oliver Robinson
August 2007 issue

For those in the film industry, thinking outside the box often appears to be mission impossible. Actors, particularly after they’ve won an award, are easily typecast. Directors, well, once they have a hit in one genre, are expected to follow suit. Take, for instance, the actor Liu Ye, who is forever cast in the role of weak coward. Or director John Woo, who is stuck with action films despite his decade-long desire to make musicals.

Yet Academy Award-nominated independent documentary filmmaker Christine Choy (Cui Ming Huei) has artfully avoided labels. Although many have tried to define her. The Shanghai-born, 53-year-old might be variously described as “a versatile artist”, “a hip teacher”, and “a prolific activist filmmaker” as well as “an open-minded, free-spoken lady”. Indeed, she’s an attention-grabbing speaker, one who never runs dry of anecdotes.

In the 1970s, Choy gave Tsui Hark (Seven Swords) his first script-writing job after he graduated from the University of Texas. She’s also a good friend of Chen Kaige (The Promise), with whom she often argues politics. But in addition to hobnobbing with the industry elite, she teaches film at New York University (NYU) classroom, where she’s nurtured the talents of then unknowns, such as Todd Phillips, Bianca Jagger and Marla Hanson.

Her own journey began early, at eight she left China for South Korea; at fifteen she left her family to study in New York. Later, after receiving a degree in architecture from Princeton University, and another in urban planning from the Columbia University, Choy, in the 1970s, found herself in New York in the company of a group of anti-everything activist filmmakers from the Newsreel film company. It was there that she learned her craft, producing political and militant films on topics Hollywood couldn’t care less about.

Since then, Choy has made more than fifty non-commercial documentary films on a wide range of issues, and in the process given voice to countless individuals who would otherwise never have been heard (or seen). She’s made films about child care (Fresh Seeds in a Big Apple, 1975); civil rights (Who Killed Vincent Chin?, 1988); kung fu (Shaolin: Art of Zen, 1994); the Nanjing massacre (In the Name of the Emperor, 1995); her family home in Shanghai (Ha Ha Shanghai, 2000); and America’s fear of China (Agent Yellow, 2003), to name but a few.

And along the way, she’s won both critical praise, and numerous awards. More recently, she’s returned to Shanghai, and now works at Shanghai Television.

In our interview with Choy, she discusses her career, filmmaking in China, and her enthusiasm for new projects.

that’s: In addition to your film work, you’ve spent considerable time in University both as a student and a professor. What is your attraction to academia?
Christine Choy (CC): One day I woke up and thought about how I might send my children to university as I had no savings. One of my friends said that if I became a university teacher my children could attend for free. At that time, I had already won some [film] awards and was nominated for an Academy Award. I didn’t care about awards, but universities seem to think highly of them. So I was accepted by NYU. I had never taught at university before and I didn’t know what I was doing. [Yet] I was a very popular teacher back then, because I let everybody smoke in the classroom, drink coffee and take their shoes off. I focused a great deal on internationalization, as I believe creative energy has to come from many different perspectives.

that’s: After teaching, you left New York for Hong Kong.
CC: In 1998, the Hong Kong government wanted to set up a school for creative media and asked me to start it. They just had money and a garage. I was born in a Shanghai house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, went to America, became an architect and came back here to design a garage! Still, I hadn’t been an architect for too long, so the offer to design a whole school made me feel as if I were in heaven.

that’s: Even so, 2001 was a terrible year for you …
CC: In 2001, my contract in Hong Kong City University was over and I left for the US. Then, 9-11 happened and the whole country became sadistic; it was a nightmare. That year was the worst year I ever experienced. I saw people turn very reactionary; Muslims categorized as evil. It was depressing, but what could I do? I did another three years at NYU and then I took a sabbatical and came to Shanghai.

that’s: Are you here permanently?
CC: I like the idea of Shanghai as my hometown. In any case, the stories in the US have dried up, and there is much that is interesting in China. In England or France for example, it took hundreds of years to get industrialized; China was instantly industrialized. As a result, this country is facing a lot of contradictions, and contradictions make good movies! I am glad China produced 350 films last year; more than Hollywood. A lot of them were garbage, a few were good and some films were loved by the audience, like Crazy Stone.

that’s: Recently, the documentary medium seems to have reached a wider audience. Both Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11 and Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth, for instance, had widespread success.
CC: Scare tactics! They scare you, both Moore and Gore. It’s a very simple formula. Moore is with these gun lovers and describes what’s going to happen and the big man behind it all is Bush, of course! Gore also uses this tactic: “If you don't watch out, you’ll soon see what will happen to the earth -- fifteen years from now, Shanghai will be under the ocean, so let’s do something about it.” It’s all very emotional.

that’s: It’s also very manipulative.
CC: Of course. All movies are manipulative but when it’s manipulative for a good cause I think it’s wonderful.

that’s: You view the documentary film as a quest for truth. That was your aim in films such as Who Killed Vincent Chin?, In the Name of the Emperor and Agent Yellow.
CC: I did. I tried to find an answer. But none of these films actually provides an answer. It gives the audience a direction; audience may decide what is true or not. I give an angle to it, but the angle, of course, is manipulative and is subject to a point of view – mine.

that’s: For In the Name of the Emperor, a film about the Nanjing massacre, you tracked down some Japanese soldiers. How much of the truth did you uncover?
CC: The project began in 1992, but at a time the Koreans and Japanese were investing heavily in China. I couldn’t make the movie at the time because the Emperor of Japan was about to visit China. I was so mad. Later, my producer suggested I go to Shanghai, which is not far from Nanjing. She went to Nanjing, found some survivors and started asking questions. But we couldn’t use their answers because they were uniform. Then I had another crazy idea. I gathered some students from Fudan and Jiaotong Universities in a hotel room, and asked them what they knew about the Nanjing massacre. Guess what? None of them knew anything. Next, a friend of mine who lived in Japan said she knew some soldiers. We went to Japan, very hush hush, drove to a crazy little town in the mountains not far from Tokyo, and went to the soldiers’ homes. After the interviews, I returned to NY, read the transcriptions and found I was sitting on a gold mountain. This was incredible stuff. Later, I got a phone call from an American banker who had some old footage of Japanese soldiers torturing Chinese citizens in Nanjing, and their victims in the hospitals. He gave me that footage. I put it together with the soldier’s testimony. The film was very successful and Iris Chang used the manuscript of the film for her book The Rape of Nanking.

that’s: In retrospect, is it easier to make films in China or in the US?
CC: Financially, it is easier in China because the labor is cheap. But aesthetically the local industry is weak. Their approach is formulaic and they’re not into experiments. In the US, the labor is expensive, but you get what you pay for. A documentary editor in the US costs about USD 3,000 a week and a cameraman about USD 700 a day. But they are really good! And they take their time; they know how to do the details. Here, the editor just needs two days to cut a film. I couldn’t believe it. Soundtrack composition is also weak here. No matter what the film’s subject is, they add piano music or violin solos. Yet China has so many different instruments; it’s musical tradition is so rich, but they never use it. In America, you can mix singing; hip hop; blues; jazz; country music; etc.

that’s: Talk about your current projects in collaboration with the Shanghai television and the Zigen Fund.
CC: The Zigen Fund is a non-governmental organization that has been in China for 20 years. Its main focus is rural areas; they provide educational support to girls from the Miao ethnic minority, for example. At USD 10 a year per person, they have already given support to 17,000 young women, at least up to high school level. None of them were able to go on to college, but they are the first generation of Miao people able to read. The previous generation was illiterate. My film The Shanxi Story deals with rural education in China, while The Guizhao Story is about Miao people and their health issues. In a village [where I shot the film], there is only one doctor. She’s a Miao, trained in Western medicine, but she has to play other traditional roles as well -- she’s a farmer and a mother. She’s a very dedicated woman. I found her story very interesting. It was like a symbol; in times of progress you cannot just get rid of traditions. You need a kind of process so traditions are not cut off. And especially these people, the Miao, who have lived in the same mountainous region for more than 1,000 years. This film is about modernization, what it brings to society, but also about the idea of preserving traditions.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
Photo courtesy Mick Ryan www.mickryan.com.
August 2007 issue

While most war films begin with the origin of a conflict and build to the climax of a decisive battle, in The Cold Flame, however, director Leon Yang Shupeng has forgone the fireworks to focus on the aftermath. Set in Northern China, near the end of the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the film examines the lives of soldiers recovering from the horrors of battle, and locals bonding with their saviors.

And bond they do. Indeed, the 37-year-old director seems far more interested in romantic conflicts than in military ones. The film is shot from point of view of a dishonest orphaned teenage girl (Gong Siyu) who falls for an older, badly-injured army officer (Zhang Hanyu). She helps him dress his wounds, all the while spinning a mesh of lies in the hope of winning his love. But the object of her desire, cannot find it in his father figure heart to return her feelings. In reference to the pair’s obvious age gap, and the attraction of a young woman for an older man, Yang says, "When [children] grow up and learn about sex and love, many [of them] become interested in the people around them, especially adults.”

That said, while a decent effort at portraying a difficult subject, the film is not without flaws. Some enigmatic flashbacks, uneven pace and emotional strings pulled a tad too tight, detract from the story, but not enough to cripple the work entirely. Yang deserves credit for bringing a fresh perspective to the genre. The performances he elicits from the 14-year-old girl, and her little brother (both non-professional actors), are both touching and vivid. That said, the most colorful personality of the film is undoubtedly Yang himself.

Though he worked at a variety of jobs – from firefighting to journalism – before entering the filmmaking industry, this self-taught scriptwriter and filmmaker has clearly benefited from his studies at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute where he majored in painting. The Cold Flame is beautiful to watch, and Yang is acutely attuned to the visual impact of color, structure and light. It’s not surprising to learn that the film was inspired by a 1940s painterly photo of a young girl dressed in ill-fitting army fatigues.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
August 2007 issue

While interviewing New York-based theater and opera director Chen Shi-Zheng, the story of the deadliest shooting in US history on the campus of Virginia Tech, was making headlines around the world. Which proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Granted, the US has long been plagued by expressions of violence, in part because of its notoriously liberal gun laws. But news of the latest massacre added a weird element to the discussion with the Changsha-born director. Chen’s US-financed directorial debut Dark Matter (DM) is based on a similar event that occurred 16 years ago in the University of Iowa.

Indeed, it concerns the real life story of Lu Gang, a Chinese physics student enrolled in a PHD program who shot and killed five people and wounded one before turning the gun on himself in 1991. Yet Chen’s film goes far deeper than the newspaper headlines, exploring cultural shock, unscrupulous academic competition, university politics and disenchantment.

Starring Liu Ye (Curse of the Golden Flower), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) and Aidan Quinn (This Is My Father), DM reflects on how young Chinese immigrants struggle to make their mark in a culture that is at once seductive and impenetrable. And how in the process, they often downscale their American dreams to fit American realities. Lu Gang’s on-screen alter ego Liu Xing, played by Liu Ye, is however an extreme example in that he refuses to compromise. A promising physics student, he devotes himself to research on dark matter, an uncharted area of modern astrophysics. Quickly appreciated as a brilliant scholar by his advisors, he nevertheless struggles to grasp the politics and social dynamics of an American university, with tragic results. When his chance of achieving success is dashed by school politics, he unleashes his rage on his former mentor and colleagues.

DM doesn’t focus on the actual killing spree, nor does it offer pat explanations. What’s important here is that Chen fills the gaps before the final showdown using his own experience. He, too, was an uprooted Chinese living and working in the US. And he, too, was torn between admiration and puzzlement.

Before immigrating to the United States in 1987 and graduating from the New York Tisch School of the Arts in performance studies, the now 44-year-old director made a living singing Elvis Presley songs in Mandarin, as well as traditional Chinese operas. Talented and versatile – much like the King – Chen has worked to create new artistic forms of expression as a director, a choreographer, singer and actor. To do so, he has crossed boundaries between music, opera, theater and dance and produced some intriguing variations of the classics (Peach Blossom Fan, The Peony Pavilion, Orfeo, The Return of Ulysses), works that he has staged around the world (France, Denmark, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore). DM, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, is Chen’s opportunity to break out of the theater’s four walls and tell a modern life-and-death story on film.

Below, Chen discusses life in the US, violence, Dark Matter and his latest opera project.

that’s: Many young Chinese dream of studying in the US. Is DM a warning that they should pursue their dreams with caution?
Chen Shi-Zheng (CSZ): I definitely did not make it as a guidebook or warning for Chinese students studying in America, although I hope they will be part of the film’s much wider, global audience. Dark Matter is concerned with disillusionment, power and the urgent importance of really paying attention to each other and trying to understand cultural differences. It’s also about how individuals perceive and react to pressure, and by that I don’t mean just Lu Xing, but also all of the other main characters, and what motivates them to do the things they do.

that’s: The US is seen to embody a culture of violence. Might Lu Gang or the character of Liu Xing have reacted differently in another environment?
CSZ: It is absolutely incorrect to characterize the US as a violent country. Violence happens there, yes, but violence happens everywhere, and there are certainly countries that are far more violent – even in Asia. It’s generally a very peaceful place, which is why the news media focuses so much on violent incidents, giving maybe people outside the US an exaggerated idea about it. I didn’t know Lu Gang, and I doubt that even anyone who did could say how he would or wouldn’t be in different circumstances, or why this happened seemingly so suddenly. In fact, one of the criticisms I’ve gotten about Dark Matter is that there’s no indication before the tragic ending that anything is wrong. From what I have researched about the actual incident, it seems that nobody saw it coming; Lu Gang just suddenly snapped. Even though Liu Xing is a completely fictionalized character, I did try to capture that idea in the film.

that’s: You portray Liu Xing’s attempts to negotiate between his expectations and reality as a failure.
CSZ: Generally speaking, it is very common for anyone who leaves one country for another to have unrealistic expectations. You go because you have extremely high hopes that your life will be better than it was in the country you left. Then it’s a bit shocking to find out that it is not a perfect paradise. How you handle that disillusionment is probably more a matter of personality than anything else. In the case of Liu Xing, he thought he would have complete freedom to make an impact on science and get a lot of support for his work from his idol, his professor, but he ran into a resistance he didn’t expect and the result of course was very tragic.

that’s: How autobiographical is DM?
CSZ: It is not autobiographical. As an artist, of course my own experiences are expressed on some level through my work, and yes, I did (and still often do) feel a sense of dislocation in the US. But I also think that artists generally feel like outsiders wherever they are.

that’s: How might outsiders – Chinese immigrants, for example – prepare themselves for life abroad, especially in the USA?
CSZ: I’ve been in the United States for quite a while now, since 1987. Times have changed both in China and the US since then, and I think that my expectations at the time were probably different from the expectations that young Chinese students have now. Also, you can’t really say that New York City is typical of the US. In NY, there are so many people from so many different races, backgrounds, countries and experiences that in a way you can feel very comfortable there, because everyone is different. In other parts of the country I feel more aware of being Chinese and different from the people who grew up in places like the Midwest. It’s very clear to me, though, that it is crucial for all sides to be open-minded and tolerant of each other’s differences and to realize that we’re all part of the same human race.

that’s: Your three leads – Liu Ye, Meryl Streep and Aidan Quinn – also come from very different backgrounds. How did you integrate their diverse approaches to the film?
CSZ: They were all amazing, and working with them was a great gift I will always treasure. They are completely professional and communicated on the level of brilliant actors. In the theater and opera world I have been mixing Eastern and Western elements together for a long time and have come to understand how the approach in each tradition is fundamentally different. As a director, I am kind of a bridge between them and I ask each side to experiment with the other’s approach. It’s very exciting, because it always creates something completely new and unique that is beyond East meets West.

that’s: Liu Ye is a very versatile actor who has appeared in Chinese blockbusters (The Promise) and art-house films (Lan Yu). What did he bring to the role of Lu Gang?
CSZ: He’s so brilliant and has such great instincts as an actor that I wanted to give him a lot of space to find the core of the character. I also loved the idea that it was his first time in the US and I wanted to capture his real reactions to it, to get a very genuine feel. I didn’t want him to be too rehearsed or studied. I’m really happy with the results; he’s great and he gave a very honest performance.

that’s: This is your first feature film. What differences did you find between working on film and the stage?
CSZ: On the stage everything happens live, so if there is a mistake there is nothing you can do about it. In film you can have multiple takes. But actually, this film was made with such a limited budget and on such a tight schedule – we shot the whole thing in just 21 days in Utah and three days in China – that in itself it was very challenging. The upside is that a film will potentially be seen by many more people. It also exists as a tangible, material thing, whereas with live theater or opera, when it’s over it’s gone.

that’s: Your current project is altogether different. Monkey: Journey to the West is an opera/circus spectacle involving 45 Chinese circus acrobats, vocalists and martial artists.
CSZ: This is a really exciting project. I am working with Gorillaz [the award-winning virtual Brit-pop band], who are an amazingly talented couple of guys [composer Damon Albarn and animation designer Jamie Hewlett] who also happen to be really “hot”, especially with young adults. I wanted to take a new look at this important Chinese classic that is not only serious but also wildly imaginative and fun. I’ve spent the last two years casting the performers for a huge number of roles from among circus companies and other performance groups. Monkey is a combination of live performance and animation, so it is very complicated, and we worked very hard to get it ready for the premier in Manchester, England last June. It will also go to Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris, and then to the State Opera House in Berlin this summer, and I believe also to the Lincoln Center Festival in New York next year.

Special thanks to Kathrin Veser
Photo courtesy of American Sterling Communications LLC

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2007 issue

Published in a shorter version in that's Beijing
Chief editor: Oliver Robinson
July 2007 issue

China’s unique landscapes have made it an irresistible draw for foreign co-productions such as Jade Warriors, Shanghai Kiss and Painted Veil; yet when it comes to Chinese directors, very few have been brave enough – or perhaps foolish enough – to produce films abroad. True, the cost is prohibitive, but this hasn’t deterred Guangdong-born Taiwan-based director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai).

Hou’s most recent film, Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Vol du Ballon Rouge), shot in French with a French cast, was produced by France-based Margo Films and the Musée D’Orsay. The film celebrates the 20th anniversary of the latter, a temple of impressionist and Art Nouveau. The story explores the life of Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), a self-absorbed single mother overwhelmed by the complications of modern existence, and her seven-year-old son, Simon (Simon Iteanu), who is followed around Paris by a mysterious red balloon.

Red Balloon isn’t the first project where Hou has employed the concept of ‘delocalized’ Chinese productions. Indeed, after filming Café Lumière (2003) in Tokyo, he realized he could export his filmmaking style to pretty much anywhere. “During the Café Lumière shoot,” explains Hou, “I gave the [Japanese] actors certain freedoms to do things their own way, and the results were quite pleasing. And so I approached [Red Balloon] the same way.”

Hou usually starts a project by scouting locations to discover characters and eventually writes a script which typically mixes reality with fiction. In Red Balloon, the 60-year-old director blends elements from Albert Lamorisse’s short film Le Ballon Rouge (1956), which offers a French vision of 1950s Paris, and Adam Gopnik’s book Paris to the Moon (2001), a contemporary American take on the French way of life.

Somewhat surprisingly, the result is fresh and free of nostalgia. Hou offers an international eye on Paris; the film is shot in colorful and authentic locations, including the producer’s apartment. “The first day of principal photography,” says producer François Margolin, “Hou came and started to do the washing up in my kitchen. It was his way of getting into the mood and the locale.”

And it worked. Even French critics showered the film with praise when it premiered in the Cannes sideline competition, Un Certain Regard.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2007 issue