Ning Cai: National films are the staunchest watchmen of national culture

Editor's note: From September 13th to 16th, the 26th China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival was held in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. During the period, Xinhuanet interviewed several Inner Mongolian filmmakers to jointly look forward to the development of ethnic film and television dramas through their review of Inner Mongolian national films.

Hohhot, September 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Mongolian director Ning Cai has returned. And the 26th China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival is back!

After running away for half a lifetime, he is still a teenager when he returns. From actor to director, from front of the stage to behind the scenes, the roles and themes are ever-changing, and what remains unchanged is that he adheres to the pure heart of national films.

Director Ning Cai was interviewed (Photo by Cao Zhen, Xinhua Net)

"The mission of national cinema is my original intention"

"Quiet Emin River", "Horse in the Monsoon", "Red Manchuria", "Eji"... All along, Ning Cai has focused the lens on his hometown, telling the glorious history of the Mongolian people, the colorful life of the steppe people, and thinking about the survival and development of his own ethnic group under the social transformation through screen images.

As a Mongolian director, Ning Cai understands the grasslands and the hearts of herders, and this empathy and spiritual connection make his creations directly hit people's hearts and resonate.

Released in 2005, "Horses in the Monsoon" is a realistic film about grasslands, which triggers people's thinking about protecting grasslands and protecting the environment through gripping stories.

The film became the only film to win the Asian Film Award among the many films entering the Hawaii International Film Festival.

On the way of inner Mongolian national films, a strong creative team represented by Ning Cai has gradually grown, and directors and creators who enjoy high popularity at home and abroad, such as Saifu, Mai Lisi, and Wang Xinmin, have made great contributions to Inner Mongolian ethnic films and even Chinese ethnic minority films.

The film and television dramas produced in Inner Mongolia have won more than 100 important awards at home and abroad, including the "Golden Rooster Award", "Hundred Flowers Award", "Huabiao Award", "Feitian Award", "Golden Eagle Award" and "Five Ones" Project Award.

Behind the halo is the original intention of countless Inner Mongolian filmmakers.

Ning Cai said that the mission of ethnic theme films is to tell the story of the nation, inherit the national culture, and find the spiritual habitat of the national culture for the ethnic minorities.

"The mission of national cinema is my original intention," he said.

Telling your own story well is the core of national culture. National films should be kite lines, and the audience of national films cannot be like broken kites, Ning Cai repeatedly emphasized.

"Impress yourself and impress the audience with quality, creativity, connotation, and form"

Ning Cai said that there are too many so-called touching in the impetuous environment, so it is necessary to find something that the national theme film should adhere to in the impetuousness.

Don't forget why you set out just because you've gone too far. He knows this.

In today's environment of industrialization, marketization and socialization of film and television drama production, Ning Cai has not rushed to make quick gains. Compared with letting national films go out, he believes that the audience's inner identification with national culture is more important.

"I want to shoot, and I can shoot now, but I always feel that there is still something almost there, and I need to polish it in all aspects until I am satisfied and I am touched." When talking about the next step of the shooting plan, Ning Cai said.

Only by creating a batch of films with quality, realm, connotation and deep understanding can we truly enhance our influence from the inside out. Impressing himself with quality, creativity, connotation, and form, impressing investors, and impressing the audience is the goal he has been pursuing.

After walking through the glory, how to recreate the glory, Ning Cai's pursuit of quality and meticulousness to art may be the best answer.

"To cultivate the children of steppe culture"

"Cinema is a dream, take the dream as a horse, open the future, and let the spirit gallop on the top of the film art firmament." This is the enrollment slogan of the Genghis Khan Academy of Film Arts, jointly founded by Ning Cai and The Xilin Gol League Vocational College.

This is the first film school in Inner Mongolia to open a full-length film school. He introduced that this year has successfully completed the enrollment plan, including screenwriting, directing, acting, photography and so on.

Earlier in 2012, in order to cultivate ethnic film and television talents from major schools, Ning Cai and his alma mater, the Shanghai Theater Academy, actively fought for it, and the college agreed to open a Mongolian class. Ning Cai took his alma mater teachers from Hulunbuir to Alxa, and traveled to almost every Mongolian middle school, recruiting 35 ethnic students. At the same time, he persuaded the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to recruit 15 students majoring in composition and screenwriting in Inner Mongolia.

From adhering to the national culture of Inner Mongolia to prospering the national culture of Inner Mongolia, every step of his is sonorous and powerful.

Ning Cai said that the cultivation of national film and television talents is very important, they are all "sons" of grassland culture, they understand grassland culture, give them time and space, and wholeheartedly support them.