Director Zhou Qingyuan (Cinematography / Yang Nan)
Since the release of the 1905 movie network special film "The Great Father", the Douban score has remained at 7.1 points. This film brings us to the attention of a strange but surprising name - director Zhou Qingyuan.
He has an indissoluble relationship with the Chinese film and television market, and in the early stages of the release of "The Great Father", his work "Dada" was introduced and released in 2019. The reason why the filming of "The Great Father" was also promoted was because in 2016, when he took the film "Brilliant Years" to the Shanghai International Film Festival, he was invited to participate in the exhibition.
Looking back at the Chinese film market in recent years, many overseas filmmakers have come to China to "work".
Singaporean director Chen Zheyi, one of the main competition unit judges of this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, was filmed in China for the latest short film "Love Apart" at the Cannes International Film Festival, and the cast used Zhou Dongyu and Zhang Yu, and as early as 6 years, he had supervised the production of the Chinese film "Goodbye, See You In Nowhere".
Not to mention the most well-known "Manslaughter" director Ke Wenli. It seems that Southeast Asian directors coming to China to co-produce films has become a certain trend. However, it is not only Southeast Asian directors who prefer the Chinese market. Behind this trend, does it mean that the Chinese film industry is becoming more and more mature?
A trend
"The Great Dad" is not Zhou Qingyuan's first time.
As early as 2019, the mini-drama "Extreme 17 Slippery Soul", which was remade from the Thai drama, was launched in Shenzhen, and the director was Zhou Qingyuan. Shortly after the same period, his film "Dada" was released in Chinese mainland. In the early stages of release, the film did not have much publicity support, and in the end it was almost a "day trip", with a box office of only 2 million. The film was Malaysia's box office champion in 2018.
Although the overall box office reputation is flat, it also makes many viewers find that the director has his own routine for shooting inspirational stories. Coupled with the previous game's "Brilliant Years" about football, and the skateboarding story of the drama "Extreme 17 Skating Soul", it seems that he was invited to shoot "The Great Dad" related to marathon sports, which is not abrupt.
For this transnational cooperation, Zhou Qingyuan said that he was not persuaded because of the sports theme, mainly the father-son relationship in the story, which can make him empathize, "is beyond the gap between countries, races, regions and cultures, and is a universal expression of emotion." This emotion also reminded him of his previous work "All the Way with You", but that work was about the relationship between father and daughter.
Zhou Qingyuan is not the first overseas director to come to China to make a film. In the past period, many directors have chosen to work with Chinese teams to tell Chinese stories with an international perspective.
In 2019, the movie "Manslaughter" turned out to be the best, making the audience remember the newcomer director Ke Wenli. The director, who is also from Malaysia, was introduced by a friend and met Chen Sicheng, who was looking for a director for the drama "Detective Chinatown", and the two hit it off and began to cooperate.
After the cooperation, he received the "Manslaughter" project handed to him by Chen Sicheng. He was attracted by the family element in the script and once again promoted the collaboration. The ultimate success is beyond words, and now another drama he directed, "The Female Psychologist", has been completed.
From the perspective of the film market in Southeast Asia, it is necessary to mention the Singaporean director Chen Zheyi. His debut film "Mom and Dad Are Not Home" won the Golden Camera Award (Best Debut) at the Cannes International Film Festival, won the attention of countless fans, although the film was never released in the Chinese mainland market, but whenever there was a festival, it would be sold out.
Before the second feature film came out, he produced the short film collection "Goodbye, See You Here" as a producer and screenwriter. Behind the scenes are Chinese director Xin Yukun, Thai director Sivaro Konsaku, and Singaporean director Tan Sai Kit. The biggest investor behind this movie is a film and television company in Chinese mainland.
After 6 years, Chen Zheyi's second film "Tropical Rain" came out, and there was also a Chinese mainland film and television company involved, and even made a distribution plan for release in the mainland market. Although due to various days and hours, there was no follow-up action, but under the operation of this film and television company, Chen Zheyi filmed the short film "The Year of the Eternal Storm" in the short film "Year of the Eternal Storm". The film was filmed entirely in Beijing, and the cast consisted of Zhou Dongyu and Zhang Yu.
In an interview in 2019, Chen Zheyi told us that he hopes to come to China to shoot his own feature film works in the future. Although there is no sign of this project at present, from the perspective of "Separated Love", which came out of nowhere, there will definitely be follow-up.
Of course, in addition to these directors in Southeast Asia, under jackie Chan's international appeal, many European and American directors have also come to China to shoot commercial blockbusters.
In particular, director Rennie Haring, after cooperating with Jackie Chan on "Jedi Escape", cooperated with Chinese film and television companies to shoot the movies "Silent Witness" and "Ancient Sword Qitan Flow Moon Zhaoming". Among these three works, in addition to "Jedi Escape" winning the second place in the box office of domestic films in the summer of that year, other films can be described as "full of losses".
At the same time, the Chinese production team also prefers to hire internationally renowned directors and screenwriters to form an international visual effects production team to create a film project, such as "Heavenly Fire" and "Ghost Blowing Lantern Heavenly Stars" directed by British director Simon West, and "Beacon Fangfei" directed by Danish director Billy August.
Two outcomes
Directors who have developed in the Chinese film market have not consistent results. It is not difficult to find that the situation of Southeast Asian directors in China seems to be better.
The reasons for this are nothing more than two: the subject matter they shoot is more grounded and can arouse the empathy of the audience; the entire Southeast Asian film environment is relatively close.
Throughout the film history of Southeast Asia, their Chinese films have long been influenced by films in cantonese-speaking areas, and can even be traced back to the early works of brands such as Shaw and Jiahe. In the history of the Chinese film market, the Southeast Asian market is the largest production market for Cantonese films. This has made many audiences in Southeast Asia influenced by Chinese films since childhood.
The wall of the male protagonist's room of "Tropical Rain" is mostly a Jackie Chan movie poster
At the same time, most Southeast Asian countries are actively promoting the revival of Chinese language education. The Singapore documentary "The Song We Sing" shows this history very well. This promotion campaign, until now, many countries in Southeast Asia are still working on it. In the movie "Tropical Rain", the heroine, who is a teacher of the Chinese, is in this predicament.
This situation also exists in Malaysia.
After returning from studying at the Beijing Film Academy in the 1990s, director Chow Ching Yuen found that Malaysian Chinese cinema had stopped for a time around the turn of the millennium due to various elements. In 2010, he launched the New Year film "Big Day", which emphasizes local culture, calling on more local Chinese directors to awaken to cultural identity and sense of home and country.
The release of "Big Day" has set off a wave of commercial genre production in Malaysia. Under this wave, Malaysia's film production is also slowly changing, Zhou Qingyuan admitted at a forum in the 2021 Shanghai Film Festival that the situation between Malaysian newcomer directors and China will be diametrically opposed, "Our directors are first commercial films, and after public recognition, they have the opportunity to put in more personal expression." ”
Compared with their success, the situation of European and American directors is not so clear.
Jackie Chan's fame in the international film world has given him the opportunity to invite many Hollywood directors to cooperate in China. For these directors who start shooting action movies, they naturally will not miss the "olive branch" thrown by this "martial arts superstar".
After the cooperation, it seems that they have tasted the sweetness, and they are still seeking more possibilities in China, but most of them have not continued to be brilliant, or even "returned home". Although the data shows that director Rennie Haring has a number of subsequent Chinese projects, those films in the early stages may have squeezed the trust of Chinese investors in the Hollywood director.
The Chinese film market has become the world's second largest market, many Hollywood filmmakers look at the Chinese market, with their own experience and technology, to integrate into China's capital, it seems to be a "win-win" thing, but most of them have pounced.
We see that works such as "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" and "Ancient Sword Qitan Flow Moon Zhaoming" are themselves full of Chinese national style costume works, even if Hollywood filmmakers with special effects experience participate, the whole is still unsatisfactory. As for the visual breakthrough expected by the public, it is not reflected in the finished film.
Since the official announcement of "Ghost Blowing Lanterns and Stars" directed by Simon West, the most common question among netizens is, "Does Simon really understand Chinese culture?" And the filmmakers seem to be intentionally or unintentionally weakening the identity of the director, judging from the current official poster, only the names of the three actors were played, and the other creators had no information.
Even if the film "Beacon Fangfei", which has won two Palme d'Ors, danish directors such as the Palme d'Or, still start from the text, various and Chinese their own thinking logic is inconsistent, resulting in unsatisfactory results.
The future can be expected
Although with the simultaneous development of the Chinese film market and the industrialization process, Chinese filmmakers have become more and more posture to tell their own Chinese stories, from the perspective of cultural diversity, we still welcome more overseas directors to make films in China.
As Zhou Qingyuan said, when they cultivate young directors, they prefer to use limited costs to achieve commercial film shooting. This model allows them to achieve more film aesthetic possibilities at a small cost in the shooting from the beginning. Most of these directors who have come to China to shoot, except for directors like Ke Wenli, who have never made a long film, still have long film experience and have received good market feedback in China.
In this state, the development of new markets can still have their own new bottom. At the same time, Chinese producers may have the opportunity to realize greater possibilities by combining past local experience.
In particular, most of the directors in Southeast Asian countries have been educated in Chinese since childhood, and they are close to Chinese audiences in emotional cognition. Moreover, in the educational growth of this group of directors, most of them are enrolled in international film academies, and even many of them, like Zhou Qingyuan, have the experience of studying in Chinese film and television academies such as the Beijing Film Academy, and the addition of these factors can bring them closer to the preferences of Chinese audiences.
In addition, their parents are Chinese immigrants, which also allows their next generation to have a certain identity. Ke Wenli once told us that he wanted to come to China to make films because he had Chinese blood. Perhaps this opportunity is more like a journey to find his roots.
European and American directors can play their own strengths, especially the advantages of controlling the big scenes, weakening their shortcomings, or hiring script doctors to sort out and modify the script more groundedly.
In the past, those Hollywood directors joined the film, their past successful Hollywood projects will naturally become the "golden signboard" in the publicity, if not used well, it will eventually become a "black spot".
All in all, we welcome more overseas filmmakers to develop in the Chinese market, and this development is to combine Chinese characteristics with their own advantages and integrate organically, so that this "cooperation" can have real significance, and only then can we have the opportunity to win the recognition of Chinese audiences and promote these film stories to the world.