Cinema China Day 9 - BFA day

This day was set aside for the Beijing Film Academy (above). In the morning I had the pleasure of interviewing Xie Fei at his flat near the Meadows. He spoke eloquently about his films and life through an interpreter, my friend Larry also from the BFA, and I got it all on film - it should hopefully appear on Firecracker soon along with an article I am writing on Xie Fei and the festival. One thing that particularly interested me was how he conceived of the role of his generation of filmmakers. Educated before in 1965 Xie, however, could not start to make films freely until after the Cultural Revolution around the same time as the Fifth Generation directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. Although his work is more classical in tone it is clear they were dealing with similar problems. He sees the main achievement of directors in this period as shifting the focus of cinema from ideologies to people. This reemergence of humanism, not unlike the period in Japan following WWII, is exemplified in a quote from novelist Shen Congwen with which he begins his masterpiece The Girl from Hunan: 'I only build Greek temples in which humanity is worshipped'. It is a phrase, i think, that perfectly sums up his ambitions as a filmmaker and the relationship between form and content in his work.

I had bagels with Xie Fei and the festival organisers Mark Cousins and Dorota Ostrowska before he gave a lecture on the role of the BFA in Chinese cinema at the old College. It made me want to go there even more. Next there was a quick sprint across town to the Filmhouse to see some recent work from the BFA. First there was a showcase of shorts, all shot on 35mm and to quite an impressive standard for student work. There was a quirky animation that explored three alternate futures based on the play of cause and effect after a begger steps on a dogs tail, in a way reminiscent of Run Lola, Run (Xie has noted the influence of directors like Tykwer and Luc Besson on the current generation of students). Another good film called Innocent as I Was, was about a kid who deliberately set out to 'lose' his absent minded grandfather after he shamelessly eats all of the meatballs his grandma has made for him. Feeling a pang of guilt when he sees how upset granny is he rushes off to find the old man, only to find he has returned safely home himself. As the boy cries, the grandfather silently pushes a bar of chocolate across the table - all is forgiven. I don't know why but this reminded me of Kiarostami's early child centred short films such as Bread and Alley and Ear. Sunshine on her Shoulders, about two pretty girls falling for the same guy and finding their friendship tested, is more of a guilty pleasure, I admit, than a masterpiece. Sentimental as it is at times, the emotions are quite subtly alluded to. Then there was Mama, a Self-reflexive film about a student making a documentary about his attempt to make a film about his mother visiting. Although it had all the potential to turn into a pretentious student film, there was far too much wry humour for that and the whole thing became quite a charming exercise in ritual self-humiliation on the part of the filmmaker. The showpiece film, called Grassland, was by a Tibetan graduate and looked at the confrontation that occurs within a small traditional society after a sacred Yak goes missing. I think this description pretty much says it all. I found it beautifully shot but pretty cliched. It has all of the ingredients required to woo a middle class audience - a simple story from a traditional culture shot in crisp cinematography with lots of shots of sublime natural surroundings. Unfortunately there's not much else to say about it. It certainly isn't as interesting in terms of form and narrative as Story of the Weeping Camel.

After the shorts was an award winning feature by one of the BFA's recent graduates: Distance by Wei Tie. About a poor, lumpen peasant who comes to the big city to find work and stays with his more sophisticated graduate cousin and his girlfriend, who are both also unemployed, the title refers to the distance between the characters but also between the viewer and the film. Its practically a transposition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Uzak, which also means Distance, onto Beijing. It not only shares that film's title and plot, but also its atmosphere of dislocation and alienation. However there is none of the wry humour that cuts through Ceylan's film, and Distance has far less empathy for its characters and is far less mature stylistically. It is also derivative of the films of Jia Zhang Ke, which focus on alienated youth.

Speaking of Jia Zhang Ke the next film on my itinerary was Unknown Pleasures, which i thought would make quite a hard double bill with Distance, but instead glowed all the more brightly in contrast. When I first saw Unknown Pleasures, which is about two nihilistic youths aimlessly roving around Beijing, I had a strong sense of malaise but this time i found the whole thing exileratingly. Actually the incredible thing is that the film manages to be both breathtakingly stylish and completely downbeat, much like the films of Takeshi Kitano, whose production company produced this film. Jia Zhang Ke is one of the freshest voices in world cinema, developing a minimalist aesthetic that is constructed from repetitions and fragments. Few people say so much with so little. Jia Zhang Ke also represents the new film literate generation of directors, gorged on films from the BFA archive and China's booming blackmarket DVD industry. Unknown pleasures contains covert references to Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, when the two decide to finally rob a bank. But these references are often ironic, such as the character's motorbike that breaks down constantly. I also loved the self-reflexive touch of a character attempting to buy Jia Zhang Ke's own films from the protagonist who is attempting to sell DVDs in order to pay back a loan.

Finally there was Black Snow by Xie Fei, a tragic drama starring the inimitable Jiang Wen, China's greatest actor, as a recently released convict attempting to return to society and live an ordinary life, but is hounded by gangsters, struggles with illiteracy and social changes, has his parole threatened by a visit from his fugitive brother and is finally arbitrarily stabbed by muggers. In this final scene he trudges through a crowd of people, destined to move against the tide of society to which he so desperately wanted to belong, their voices inaudible over the exaggerated staccato of his footsteps. Various voices play out moments from his past before he collapses in a square, the camera drawing out in an overhead shot. The expressive power of the film is remarkable and was made even more so by the quality of the new digital print.