At the just-concluded FIRST Youth Film Festival, the documentary "Far Water Can't Quench the Thirst" directed by Zhou Zijie appeared in the special screening session of the theme of "Short Songs in the World" on Documentary Day, and received a lot of praise from the audience. In the shortlist of the Sapporo International Short Film Festival just announced, "Far Water Can't Quench Near Thirst" was also successfully selected for the international competition unit, and hit the highest award, the first prize of the film. As the most important international short film festival in Japan, it can stand out from more than 2,000 submitted works, which shows the quality of director Zhou Zijie's works.
Director Zhou Zijie uses video to write his own private vision, divides the time structure of the film with the number of days he has returned to China, and uses the combination of multiple media to make this film very personal. His filmmaking journey has ranged from tabletop films to short feature films, and now home video documentaries, with plans to continue to shoot documentaries.
From his mature fictional images, we can often see the multi-media experimentation, and also realize the game and fragility of intimacy. However, in the course of the interview, he revealed that he has gone from constantly chasing media trends to now wanting to participate in the creation of simple documentaries, and his retrospective and reflection on his past experiences is surprising, and it also makes people look forward to his next two unreleased feature documentaries.
Film introduction: I am about to graduate from school, and I was questioned by my parents about work and marriage for the first meal I went home for many years. I honestly told them that I was going to work on documentaries in the future, but it led to the most heated argument in the history of the family. With only two months to go back, can I convince them...
Taking private family images is a bargain with the devil | "Far Water Can't Quench Near Thirst" interview with director Zhou Zijie
Interview: Du Jinyu, Lin Xichang
Finishing: Lin Xichang
Editor: Zhang Laodong
DOC: I would like to ask your parents what are their thoughts on you making documentaries and learning film, or what is their attitude towards you studying film?
Zhou Zijie: I don't support it, I don't understand, I don't am interested. Originally, they wanted them to come to the screening on the 23rd, but they felt that staying from 23 to 28 was too long, and they were not interested, so they didn't come, and they don't know when the next screening of this kind will be. But they have never been particularly supportive of filming, because when they went to Beijing VICE for an internship in the documentary department as an undergraduate, they didn't support it, and they had to borrow money from friends to buy air tickets, and they didn't know where to sleep that night. It wasn't until later that they started making commercials, and the advertising revenue was slightly higher, that they were able to understand this a little bit financially. But they still don't support it, they feel that without five insurances and one housing fund and preparation, it is useless to shoot anything.
But for the record, I didn't hide the machine when I was filming, so I just put it there, but maybe because my parents are rookie actors, and rookie actors don't feel the machine if they leave it there for a long time (laughs), so I told them to shoot. But for the transformation of the material shot by the machine on the big screen, they didn't know that the power would be so great. So I privately think that showing it to everyone is a bit like a deal with the devil.
Stills from the documentary "Far Water Can't Quench Near Thirst".
DOC: Have they seen the film now?
Zhou Zijie: I originally wanted to show them in the open air on the 23rd, but I didn't come. At that time, I was also a little hesitant, after all, it would be a little cruel to my dad if it was hundreds of people watching them scold me at home, because everyone seemed to like my mom very much, but I was worried that hundreds of people watching my dad together, this thing would be a bit of a murder to him. (laughs)
DOC: I'd like to ask you again, for example, I've seen some of the films of creators who are shooting private images for the first time. Their parents will sometimes unconsciously start acting in front of the camera, are your parents used to facing the camera at the beginning, or will they be uncomfortable at first?
Zhou Zijie: Actually, if you shoot your parents, they will forget about it after about two or three hours after you put the machine there. I didn't expect a quarrel because of that meal at home, after all, it wasn't a project in the first place. It's just that I haven't been home for two or three years, and I think it should be a happy meal when I go back. As a result, a quarrel broke out at the first meal, and the machine was originally placed there, and I wanted to record a particularly happy picture, I haven't seen each other for two or three years, and everyone has a good chat and eats. As a result, I chatted and talked about the wrong direction, and began to talk about my career planning, urging marriage, and asking me to take the civil service exam, and then the second sentence was that your character can't be a civil servant. That dinner was actually more than two hours, but the final presentation was only two minutes.
At first, they didn't care about the machine when they saw it, and they didn't care about it after a long time. In fact, sometimes when I photograph my mother, she will say don't cut randomly, don't shoot randomly, but my dad just doesn't care much about the camera.
DOC: I'd like to ask you how many times you've participated in FIRST as a creator, because the last time I know was when I saw your "Chongqing Oscar" in the open air in 21 years. This is a special screening for Documentary Day, so is there any difference in the experience?
Chow Zijie: I think the open-air screening is quite interesting. When it was screened that day, the security guard next to me chatted with me, and after he watched it, he said that it was good that you could do what you were interested in, and he said that if you wanted to do anything, you could do it, but I actually couldn't answer him. Because in a sense, I'm doing what I want to do, but I don't know how to reply to him. In terms of feelings, the last time an ultra-short film was screened at FIRST, it was actually 17 years ago when I made a youth film festival with VICE that was a down-and-out director, and I came to make a cute documentary as a media.
The ultra-short film is just a joke, and this time I'll be a little more nervous when I put it on, because it's about family things, and my big face is also on it. I'm still a little nervous, I really feel like I'm making a deal with the devil, it's a private image after all.
Other documentaries will continue to be filmed, but this private video short film may not be done again in a short period of time, after the filming of this film, the problems at home have not changed much, and there are too few things that can be changed in a film, but I think everyone can sigh when they see it, and I feel that what other people's parents say is the same, and there is the same pressure, which is OK. After the screening, some viewers came to chat with me, and it became the "Laozhong Only Child Mutual Aid Association".
DOC: There are a lot of different media used in the film, such as Ozu's film "I Was Born, But ......", and there are also different images including edited materials, color and timing, and the use of black and white for the footage of the interview with your mother, do you have any skills or other ingenuity when dealing with the material?
Zhou Zijie: I found out the material of the table tennis in China and the United States by cutting and cutting, and I looked for it on the video website, because I had the impression that reading history books had such a relationship between Chinese and American table tennis. At that time, I was thinking about how to mediate the conflict between me and my dad, but in fact, it has not been mediated very well. Because my dad tends to run away from this kind of problem, when I play with my friends later, I obviously hate my dad very much, but I find that I behave very similarly to my dad when I quarrel with my girlfriend, which is very bad. At that time, I felt quite scary, although I hated him very much, but when there were big mood swings, I would still unconsciously become the person you hated the most.
The news scale format is its original format, Ozu because at that time the black and white was only 4:3, and the others were 16:9. The photo was only 3:2 in those days, and I didn't deliberately get the frame. Why do you want to use the interview with my mother in black and white, I just think that the interview and daily life can pull out a little visual difference.
Screenshot of the movie "I Was Born, But..."
DOC: Your previous creative focus was mainly on short films, which were fictional episodic images, and then this time the creation of the short documentary focused on your family, will there be any changes in your mentality in shooting?
Zijie Chow: When I was filming my family, I realized that the camera is really a very violent thing, and it turns out that when you shoot actors, you don't think it's particularly violent. When you are facing your family or yourself, you shoot it, but as for whether to use it, I think it will take a little longer to consider, because I shoot this 23-minute film, in fact, there are many hours of material, I can cut my dad into the most kind and dedicated dad, I can cut my mom into the worse kind, I can cut myself into a complete victim.
You don't really think too much about it when you shoot it because it's so real-time that you don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how it ended up like this. But when cutting, I will think more about it, and I am more influenced by the book "Return to My Hometown", as well as some books by Anne · Ernaux.
Book "Return to Hometown"
Because I was the first college student in my family, I felt that I had to be cautious in the process of narrating, and I added the part where I lost control of my emotions very late, and I was not too embarrassed to show that part to others before, and I could just cut myself out. But I don't think anyone is perfect, and there are some home/private images that tend to be from the victim perspective, but I don't think it should be all like that.
I think that if I am so violent to my parents, then I must also inflict the same violence on myself, so that I can get by in my heart, and if violence must occur, then it must be treated equally.
DOC: Through the perspective of your parents' generation, the film talks about some points of view, including pension issues, that is, what is your attitude towards this issue?
Zhou Zijie: I think this question can only be answered when we start to face the problem of our parents' pension, and I think this question should have no historical basis to refer to, because from the policy of our only child for twenty or thirty years, to the aging of our parents' generation will be very exaggerated.
But now in my parents' generation, my grandparents will have three or four children to take care of, and the cost can be shared equally. But at that time, we really don't know what will become of it, because now the cost of care is very expensive, the labor cost is also very high, the number of people cannot be taken care of, and the cost is also very stressful.
I don't know what it's going to become, but I think there's a reason why I'm back making documentaries. In the past, when I was filming commercials, I would go home four or five days after the Chinese New Year, and although my income was a little better and more stable, I felt that maybe I couldn't do it well with financial support and time companionship at the same time. I think it's OK to choose no matter what, or you should grasp it yourself, for example, you can pay for high-quality pension conditions, or spend more time with your parents.
Zhou Zijie and his parents on the red carpet of the FIRST Film Festival
DOC: The next question is whether the film has a structural division through the number of days you return to China, is this a decision made at the beginning of the creation of the film, or is it an idea that came from the editing process?
Zhou Zijie: Editing. Some of those days are not as accurate as I remember.,If you flip through the material, most of the dates may be matched.,The specific dates for the subtitles are indeed 13,15,Because I did come back for a month or two at that time.,It's the last holiday.。
I think time is quite important in the documentary, because I also saw a video on my phone that interviewed my dad three years ago, and my dad didn't cooperate at all. Then I looked at the footage I took randomly at home, and there happened to be a section in the same position. I didn't realize it when I was shooting, but when you looked at the material, you found that it was the same sofa and the same angle, just one shot with a mobile phone and the other with a camera, and this cut was three years apart. In the past three years, my father has had a change in his posture, and I have also switched from the phone to the camera.
DOC: Do you think there is any difference between the creation of ultra-short films, documentary short films and feature films? And then I would like to ask if you have any plans for feature films in the future?
Chow Zijie: There are two feature documentaries in rough cut, but that one is too sensitive. There are also two long-term projects currently underway in the Sichuan-Chongqing region, which will be a little more modest. It's for institutions/spaces, because I think it's a bit too cruel for some feature documentaries to keep pointing at an individual, and I think it's a bit too cruel to stare at a person's behavior for two hours. But if you point to an institution or a system, it will be better to point to a space, and you will feel better.
There is also a short story, I accidentally ingested hallucinogenic fungi before, and now I'm more interested in "real". Because if cinema is to provide a spectacle, maybe in 2024 "real" will become a spectacle, maybe I will have a higher demand and interest in reality now. But very classical fiction such as "Dead Grass", "Dead Leaves" and even "French Fondue", I still enjoy watching it, but I don't want to do it. One is to understand that the business level is not up to the mark, and the other is that resource scheduling is not possible, and I think it is more appreciated.
When I was in QA after the film festival, sometimes I heard the audience say, "I think of this film" and "I think of that structure", I felt a little tired, and it would be good to sleep and dream for two hours. I think the fundamental reason why I don't make feature films anymore is the high cost, the need to mobilize a lot of resources, and the lack of business standards.
For example, if you also want to show frustration or low self-esteem, if you want to talk about this scene in a 20-minute sequence in the fiction, then I think it may be recorded at the moment, and I think the part it conveys to me will be closer to what I have seen since I was born at the age of zero. For example, I think the communication in this year's "Unknown Species" will particularly move me, because when everyone chats, they will overlap words, or listen to a homophone with a fork, and follow the fork to chat, and children will also talk nonsense, which will not be as clear as your script. "Unknown Species" particularly touched me, seeing that the son told his mother about the rules of school fights, not to hit the eyes, not to hit sensitive parts, my mother began to shed tears, and I was caught off guard by the macho man crying. I think that's closer to what I understand to be true, no matter how it's made. Maybe it has something to do with age, but I think it's more real and impressive now.
Stills from "Unidentified Species".
DOC: What was your undergraduate major?
Zhou Zijie: I studied communication as an undergraduate, and I filmed commercials in Shanghai for two years. Later, the advertisement was about to make people stupid, and I was also very anxious, and I occasionally had night sweats when I slept at night when I was shooting an advertisement, which was too anxious. Because the pressure of the project is getting bigger and bigger, the brand is getting bigger and bigger, and the artists are getting bigger and bigger, and the doubts in my heart about this matter are one thing and the other is different.
At that time, in addition to night sweats when I was sleeping, I once woke up at two or three o'clock and sat up and said "change 35", and my girlfriend was scared to death. Anyway, the whole person was very wrong, and I realized that something was not right, because the mood also became bad, and the intimate relationship would also go wrong, and I felt as if I really couldn't do this anymore, so I went to school.
Director Zhou Zijie's advertising shooting scene
Studying abroad was too expensive, and I couldn't earn tuition fees for studying abroad by shooting advertisements, so I had to ask my parents to help, and it was very realistic to persuade them at that time, that is, to show them a bank account, and then let them be admitted to the school in Baidu. So the reason for the contradiction in the film is also because they feel that they have paid so much money, and they think that the advertising income should be higher when they come back, who knows that I am not interested in that thing anymore, and I think about what I want to do again, and now I am back to the documentary.
From documentaries to commercial MVs to short films, I have participated in feature films, and I have also participated in the filming of online dramas, and that is a nightmare that I don't want to remember. After that, I went to school, and this went through six or seven years. When I was studying, I was also interested in the media interaction of VR/motion capture, a new technology, one is that I am really interested in new directions, and the other is that I know that the income will definitely be very good, so I put the logic of commercial images into VR/AR interaction, and it is likely to be that direction in the future. But I think it's a bit like praising my father day by day, maybe I can't chase anymore.
DOC: Do you just want to go back to the most simple documentary and re-examine yourself?
Zhou Zijie: I think I have a lot less anxiety about death after making the documentary, and if I wasn't so anxious, I might not be too anxious about chasing the trend of the media, although you know that is the general direction, but I am not so anxious. There are also a lot of media, new methods, and new structures and perspectives in documentaries, so that point also bothers me, because the perspective of a documentary can also be extremely cold and sexy like sensory anthropology, and it can also be based on various materials and media, and that varies from person to person, and I may go in the direction of humor (laughs).
DOC: Your short documentary was shortlisted for FIRST, and you have plans to shoot a feature documentary in the future, I would like to ask you if you have any experience in shooting, including preliminary research, shooting and editing, etc.?
Zhou Zijie: Don't stop the camera. Because I found that when I was a photographer or a director to shoot a feature film, if I clicked it and recorded it for more than ten or twenty seconds, you would feel unprofessional when you cut it yourself, and others would feel unprofessional when it was commercial. But if the cost of the documentary is now in the civil era, it can really be rolled for six hours a day, and the final editing may only use one or two sentences, so you don't have to roll when the subject is about to speak. Because if you can solve the pressure on storage, you usually only use one or two sentences at the end of the day, I think the conversion rate is already very high.
Then when editing, I think the proportion of editing is bigger now, and when I cut it, it's equivalent to a second director, so sometimes the editor is more like a director. You may not have to think too much about it in the early stage, but you still have to think about the editing framework preliminarily, otherwise it will be too scattered, and you still have to discuss specific projects. But you can be as pure as muscle memory in the early stage, and as the project grows like a tree, you can see a little bit of the veins of a tree trunk, and you can see that this is a tropical plant, for example, and your plan can be closer to a tropical plant. And then you change slowly, slowly, and we change with it. If you think it's a banana tree when you set off, chances are it won't be a banana tree. But if it grows and finds that it is a banana tree, then if you take it with you, it is more likely to be a banana tree.
There is also physical health, put physical health first, and physical health in front of the machine.
DOC: Director, you are from Chongqing, and Chongqing is also a soil that has cultivated a lot of localized films, do you think Chongqing has brought any help or influence to your creation?
Chow: I realize, for example, that every creator has a different medium and a different way of doing it. I feel like the land in your hometown where you grew up might last a little bit. Take Chongqing or Sichuan and Chongqing as examples, I think the biggest influence on me is humor. Sichuan and Chongqing may really be a big city flood, and if you don't have over your knees, you can go out to play mahjong.
Although this is the experience of the city or the land itself, looking back is also because it is far away from the political center, and political changes did not affect so much in the early days. For example, Chengdu is still the most LGBTQ-friendly city in China, also because of historical reasons. Chongqing because it has been a companion capital, so the political atmosphere will be a little stronger, on the whole, everyone will still be more life-oriented, because "less into Shu", or feel that the southwest food, climate, and life rhythm will be a little slower, although it is land, but there will be many political and historical reasons behind the land.
DOC: The forms you use in your videos are very varied, and I've always liked your films. For example, your "Fangxin Arsonist" uses the Peking Opera "Selling Water", and "Chongqing Oscar" uses the form of a tabletop movie, I would like to ask you if there are more forms you want to try in the future, and how do you think about the relationship between form and content? For example, will it be in a similar form of combining plot and documentary?
Zhou Zijie: I think it is also divided into specific projects, but I think that fiction and plot are half and half or different proportions, if it is not done well, fiction and documentary may cancel each other, but it will be better if they complement each other. Because the audience will watch it for an hour or two, and if you find out that you are all joking around after watching it, you will have a feeling of being deceived.
Because I'm going to shoot an agency later, I might want to try Wiseman's kind of very concise but somewhat humane, it's people cutting, not AI cutting, I think his films are quite sexy, although they look cold, but they still have the humor of his old man and what he wants to say. I want to try all kinds of forms, cold, sexy, cool, loving, I want to try everything.
Documentary filmmaker Wiseman
DOC: I would also like to ask a question, about your previous film "Arsonist of the Heart", what is the source of your scriptwriting?
Zhou Zijie: Some of them are listening to the personal experiences of friends, and some are fictional, plus some of my own real leftovers, such as 'Mr. Du' on the mobile phone, I don't know why friends in the southwest will give intimate notes to what kind of teacher is, and it is not like the meaning of the teacher in the film and television industry, and there are also people passing by and saying "what to watch"... My experience is the leftovers in it, but the core experience is what my friends talk about when they chat. But I don't know why that project happened in retrospect, maybe it shows my interest at that time, a bit of a straight man, and then I wanted to tell a joke. But now when I watch that film, I will reflect on it and feel that the subjective initiative of the female characters in it is a little too weak. (Interviewer: But I think the whole thing is still very good) It's just a "joke", and when I reflect on it, I still think it's quite a big problem.
Stills from "The Arsonist of the Heart".
Concave and convex mirror DOC: There are also Peking Opera elements in it, and the editing rhythm is also very outstanding, I want to ask if the Peking Opera element is you want to use to assist in editing when editing, or do you plan to use it in the early stage?
Zhou Zijie: I thought of it when I was editing, and when I was editing, I was looking for Sichuan opera at the beginning, because in Sichuan, I found that there are not so many resources in Sichuan opera, and the quality is not so good. I can only choose from three or four Peking Operas, and extract the usable singing passages from three or four Peking Operas to form a Peking Opera Frankenstein, which can just be placed in the position of the editing, to be slightly parallel, and to make up for the places where the rhythm of my own drama is not so fast.
DOC: You just mentioned that you felt that the female image of the film at that time was not subjective enough, and now you have also reflected a little bit on the objectification of this female image, and then I want to ask you if you make this film again, what changes will you have or what aspects you will do better.
Chow Zijie: If time were to go back, there would be no need for this project to exist. Because the main thing is that I still don't understand a lot of things, and I haven't figured it out yet. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that this kind of project doesn't exist, but its significance is more likely to be that it really recorded my aesthetic taste at that time, and it did record my state at that time, but if you look back at it from 2024, I think it can not exist. There is no problem, there is no need to exist.
Director Zhou Zijie's work photo