As a dedicated cinephile who has followed Lou Ye’s career closely, I can’t help but admire his unwavering commitment to pushing boundaries and exploring social dynamics through film. His daring defiance of China’s censors with “Summer Palace” earned him both acclaim and punishment, solidifying his status as a hero for young and aspiring filmmakers.
I supported Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye during the Xining International Film Festival, but I had to cut my stay short once my mentoring responsibilities were fulfilled. However, every time my name was announced at the festival before it concluded on Saturday, the crowd cheerfully applauded in response.
Young and ambitious filmmakers who attend First look up to Lou as a role model or inspiration.
Lou has earned respect not just from films such as “Suzhou River,” “Spring Fever” and “Saturday Fiction” which have had international festival careers, or the five-year ban from filmmaking that he picked up by defying China’s censors with romantic drama “Summer Palace.” It also comes from his audacious and relentless focus on social dynamics.
In his newest production titled “An Unfinished Film,” which had its debut at Cannes and could lead to another formal censure, this piece followed the typical pattern. However, its inception varied significantly.
During interviews held in Cannes, Lou shared that the concept for his film was initially developed in 2019 with plans to breathe new life into leftover footage from previous films featuring Qin Hao. This approach mirrored that of another renowned indie director, Jia Zhangke, whose “Caught by the Tides” also showcased at Cannes this year and repurposed clips spanning his filmmaking career. However, due to the unexpected disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Lou was forced to reimagine the entire project, transforming it into a tale about a team of filmmakers trying to maintain connections with their families while in quarantine and separated from them.
The production included numerous sequences showing video calls between the characters and their loved ones, which posed an issue.
Lou remarked, “The movie screen stretches out horizontally in a wide expanse, while a phone screen displays in the opposite format. You could call a phone screen’s layout ‘opposite-to-film.’ However, with phones being the prevalent screens in today’s world, it’s nearly inconceivable to ignore them in films.”
Instead of creating the entire movie inside a computer as some films do, Lou opted to recreate authentic dialogue and have live actors deliver the lines. Although it proved difficult, he feels it was effective for this particular project.
“Interacting with a phone screen doesn’t create a tranquil and carefree atmosphere, instead, it feels restrictive and stressful. The periods of quarantine and lockdowns during the pandemic have conveyed a sense of restriction.”
Lou has verified that “An Unfinished Film” remains incomplete. He’s undecided if it’s for a new edit or a follow-up, but he plans to keep developing this deeply personal production.
He’s making good progress on another film, which goes by the titles “Three Words” or “Re-Tros After the Applause Nan Documents.”
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2024-07-29 03:26