Click here to watch the clip from the second episode of "A Long Trip".
I've never done such a weird project as "A Long Trip," and everything seems to have been done in my dreams.
From the beginning of the survey, all the conversations took place in my middle of the night and early in the morning, across the time difference, across the ocean. A film that records the life of studying abroad under the epidemic, because of the barrier of the epidemic, it has become difficult to shoot and build trust with people who have never met. And this is a paradox, if there is no epidemic, everything will become meaningless.
My intersection with Huai Xuan began with a call for international student stories in early 2021.
She left a short line in it, "I'm talking about talk shows on the New York subway." With these ten words, I sketched in my mind a typical portrait of a talking enthusiast I have ever seen, in order to dream of honing his mouth in the New York subway station every day, laughing, full of passion for life, and most importantly, sloppy.
The "scrawled" artists in the Subway Station in New York.
Such a character can probably be better than a story of being racistly discriminated against by white people on the school basketball team, or a story of depression due to academics and loneliness, and I added Xuan Xuan's WeChat with the mentality that talk is better than nothing.
And what she brought me was a laughing and sloppy version of the new drift upgrade: reading three professional bully, my father died early, lived on scholarships and part-time jobs, after graduating from college, I came to New York alone to do theater, and as a result, I encountered the epidemic, the theater was closed, and I could only occasionally go to the subway station to talk about talk shows...
Remembering his father who had suddenly passed away, Huai Xuan began to meditate.
I observed her with a sense of work and a little indifference—including the fact that her basic narrative may have been re-edited by myself and detached from her original appearance: although I don't know what she is going to do next, she already has the basic elements of a protagonist of the story, full of suffering and determined goals.
Although just a very nihilistic goal, drama. Do drama, how grand, what kind of drama, how to do it? I didn't know anything, maybe she didn't know it at the time. It was risky for our shoot, and I hesitated, but her drive was appealing and made it feel like she could always get something done.
I reported the topic of Huai Xuan's selection, and sure enough, the boss chased after me and asked you what is the story line? What exactly are you going to shoot? What is your protagonist going to do?!
In order to catch up with the next schedule, Huai Xuan squatted down next to the subway station and waited for the subway.
I asked Xuan Xuan in a chat tone, what are you going to do tomorrow? She said, I'm going to put on a show tomorrow. I was shocked, that may not catch up. She said, oh no hurry, I'm going to do another play at the end of the month, and that's my own translation. This one-man show "Good List", translated by Huai Xuan and starring on Zoom, became the starting point for our shooting.
She and several like-minded friends (director, producer, lighting engineer...). Because of the cooperation of the "Good Stick List", the "Good Stick Club" was established. They are scattered all over the world, but they are a group of particularly creative and highly mobile girls.
I had the privilege of meeting Ge Fei, a member of the Beijing branch of the Good Baseball Club, a native of Chongqing who interned at the Drum Tower West Theater, left work at 8:30 p.m., walked back to her small rental house in her hutong, used the washing machine as a desk, and set up a computer to review yesterday's performance with the members.
Xuan Xuan and his friends are discussing the filming of "Rooftop Sleepwalking".
In this way, our shooting main line unconsciously has... The next play... Next... This main thread seems to be a living, living vine that will climb upward toward the bright light on its own.
The schedule is the most densely arranged schedule I've ever seen. "Yesterday I helped my sister make a movie, oh it's okay, you missed it, but you can come and shoot me tomorrow, I have a rehearsal tomorrow." I always missed her itinerary without paying attention, which made me drumm in my heart, afraid that I would miss some important scene.
But she always had a fuller schedule behind her. She taught English part-time at two study abroad institutions, had a full-time job at a drama company, helped the professor with translation, and was an image editor, in addition to writing and writing her own play "Rooftop Sleepwalking".
Xuan Xuan sat on the street in New York and flipped through the script of "Rooftop Sleepwalking".
The play was inspired by the house she rented in New York, which had a triangular roof like a ship.
I tried out her first draft of the script, which had a similar core to The Good List, and about the melancholy of loss, I realized how deeply she was trapped at some point in the past, maybe her childhood, maybe the day her father died, maybe it was during this epidemic, during which the ship could finally be properly trapped here, rampage on the docks and lose her temper, but never go anywhere.
As the filming progressed, I witnessed HuaiXuan's exhaustion and collapse again and again, witnessed her self-doubt and loneliness, and I became closer friends with her in one deep conversation after another.
So this friend, whom I had never met before, became a part of my epidemic life in some strange dramatic form. I followed her itinerary, first learned about her schedule for the next few days, communicated with the photography in New York, and then saw her image of a week ago about a week later.
As the performance approached, Xuan Xuan was rehearsing on the rooftop.
Honestly, before filming started I doubted the significance of this project for the audience.
Why would anyone want to see what international students are doing under the epidemic? Even if they want to see it, they may want to see the curious, pompous, or tragic life abroad. Why would anyone care about a specific individual, what an ordinary person is doing?
But I'm now convinced that at least this project makes sense to me.
Such unseen connections and continuous records are in themselves against the wanderings, calm despair, and lost melancholy of us as ordinary individuals in the great age of force majeure.
It was late at night, and looking out from the rooftop of The Xuan, New York was silent.
After the performance of "Rooftop Sleepwalking", Huai Xuan went to the California Academy of the Arts to study acting, and then completed their third play with the "Good Baseball Club" friends at her usual speed.
It is a pity that the club's story was not told in our documentary due to limited space. But I sincerely hope that Huai Xuan and this group of girls who love art will continue to love art, create art, and appreciate art. As long as art heals us and connects us, there is no reason to stop.
Issue 4017
Video | Tencent Video Documentary "A Long Trip"
Written by | Shao Qiongyao Edited by | Sing
Produced by | Tencent News