Beijing Film Academy – 1st Semester

Several years ago I was asked to blog about my experiences studying at Beijing Film Academy (BFA) on my friend’s website Asianfilms.org (which has now morphed into AsiaPacificFilms.com, an excellent resource for streaming hard-to-find films from Asia and the Pacific). Little did I realize at the time that it would propel me to become the unofficial contact for foreigners wanting to come study at BFA, as the BFA English-language website was practically nonexistent. Eventually I put up a Beijing Film Academy FAQ post which answered most of the questions to which I was frequently replying. However, when Asianfilms.org disappeared, so did the blog entries, so I’ve decided to repost them here on my new (as of early 2012) website according to their original posting dates. Though a bit outdated, I think most of my impressions and the information I give about BFA are still very relevant, despite the unbelievably rapid pace of change that affects just about everything in China. The biggest change I’ve noticed over the past five years at BFA is that a bunch of the (acting) students now drive incredibly expensive cars (when I was studying at BFA in 2006-2007, there were far fewer cars on the tiny campus, and they typically belonged to the upper echelon of well-connected professors). I guess after paying off administrators and professors at the school to secure their children a spot (yes, it happens all over China, including BFA), these extremely supportive and loving parents still had enough money to send their kids off to school in BMWs and Audis. There are plenty of stories of other ways some less fortunate students come about their vehicles as well. But I’ll save that discussion for another post. For now, enjoy the naive ramblings of a much younger me back in my days of ignorance and bliss.

Howdy, and welcome to my blog here at Asianfilms.org. My name is Jay, and this is my first installation in a series of blogs. Before I get into all the juicy tid-bits, I should probably introduce myself. I’m an American student originally from Houston, Texas (thus the howdy above, and possibly an occasional y’all here and there) and I’m currently studying cinematography in a year-long program at the Beijing Film Academy (from here on referred to as BFA). I’m funded by a generous US government sponsored FLAS scholarship, which was provided through the University of Hawaii, where I’m currently finishing up my M.A. in Asian Studies. I’ve spent about half of the past decade living, studying, working, traveling, taking pictures, and making films in Asia (primarily East Asia), and I’ve long been a fan of Asian cinema, a major factor in my decision to come study filmmaking here in Asia. That’s enough about me, but if you’d like to learn a little bit more about me or my background, please feel free to browse my personal website at www.jayhubert.com to learn more.

I’ve pretty much been given free reign to do what I want with this blog, but I understand and appreciate the huge responsibility that comes with this kind of undertaking. The main idea behind the blog is to share my experiences as an American studying at BFA, and to intersperse my stories with my insights on film and cinema here in Asia. But I’d like to think this blog is about much more than me and my experiences (I’m hardly vain enough to think that would keep an educated audience coming back regularly!). Through this blog I’d like to tap into a much more important topic, one that has become a buzzword for our generation and a controversial topic in all its diverse interpretations. Yup, you guessed it, I’m gonna talk about globalization in this blog. No, I’m not gonna bore you with trite discussions of the global impact of multinationals or equally enthralling topics, as you can pay $80,000 and go let professors feed you that stuff for four long years. My intention is to look at how film as a cultural and economic commodity – as well as an important form of cultural expression – plays a role in the globalization process, and use my experiences as an American studying filmmaking in China to express and reinforce my assertions. But certainly I’ll keep all this serious stuff to a superficial minimum, because after all blogs are supposed to be fun and only mildly informative, or at least that’s my impression from my web browsing as of late!

The reason globalization, or internationalization, or however you want to refer to this phenomena of the cultural and economic fusion of nations and people around the world is important to this blog about me and my experiences is because my ‘unique experience’ of being the rare American student studying film at BFA isn’t actually so unique in our day and age. When you consider the rapidly increasing number of expat workers, foreign exchange students, and travelers who pour into China every year, or any other country in the world for that matter, I’m hardly an exception to the increasing trend of spreading out past the limitations of ones own borders. I just happened to choose a slightly less common field to do it in, but I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last. And within the film industry as a whole, crossing borders is hardly a new phenomenon, as demonstrated by the increasing cross-pollination of actors between East Asian countries and the influx of top Asian directors to Hollywood. Again, the truly unique aspect of my situation is merely the fact that I chose to go in the opposite direction. But I’m still just doing what more and more people are doing these days, whether through traveling to more foreign countries, learning a new language, browsing an Internet site in or about another country, watching more foreign films, or actually packing up the bags and moving abroad. I’m globalizing. And so are the world’s cinemas and film industries. China is certainly no exception, and I feel very fortunate, if not a bit overwhelmed on occasion, to be involved in such a dynamic place and industry.

But I could go on forever about that. This being my first blog, and first impressions being of the utmost importance, I’ll save my ramblings for future blogs. I’ve got a lot to cover in this first installment, as my first semester at BFA has already concluded and there are so many things to tell you about. I’ll try to keep my recollections of this past semester as brief as possible, giving you a general overview of BFA and my take on the school, as well as some of my more notable experiences here thus far.

Ever since I began to avidly consume Asian cinema about seven years ago, I’ve heard mention of Beijing Film Academy, often in the same sentence with ‘best film school in Asia’. It definitely could hold its own in that competition, although I’m no expert on the matter and this is the first film school I’ve attended in Asia. After one semester as a student in a one-year ‘jin xiu’ (similar to continuing education in the US system) program in the cinematography department here, I have mixed feelings about the school. Overall, I feel that the school is packed with excellent resources for film students, from the renowned faculty to the extensive library collection to the wealth of equipment. There are also ample film screenings and events, and I can’t count on two hands and two feet the number of famous filmmakers from around the world that came to campus last semester. At the same time, I felt that a lot of my classes were not terribly useful, some of the facilities are rather dilapidated (although the newly built sections of the school and the central quad are beautiful and very well maintained), and few opportunities were provided for us to get our anxious little hands on equipment and shoot. A lot of these negative things can be attributed to the fact that we are an extension class and not offered the same quality of education that is reserved for the full undergrad and grad students who had to bust their butts off to test into the school. Regardless of the drawbacks I’ve encountered, I’d say that there are enough assets available here to get a first-class film education no matter what program you are in, as long as you take full advantage of the environment.

My one-year ‘jin xiu’ class in the cinematography department appears to a relatively new program, opened several years ago in all of the major departments (that I know of at least), possibly as a way to bring in more revenue (the tuition fee is the same for these classes as for the undergraduate and graduate programs), and possibly as a way to console the many applicants failing to test into the degree programs. I’ve not talked to anyone about ‘jin xiu’ classes in other departments, so in terms of specifics I can only comment on my own experiences in the cinematography department. The tuition is paid up front for the year of study, and at 35,000 RMB (about US $4,600) for Chinese students and 46,000 RMB (about US $6,000) for foreign students, it’s significantly cheaper than most film schools in the US, but fairly expensive compared to most other university tuition fees in China.

Classes in our program are taught in approximately 4 hour blocks, with one class in the morning and one class in the afternoon (our Monday class this past semester took up morning and afternoon), and different classes each day of the week. The semester is then broken in half, with each class lasting for nine weeks and then most classes being replaced by new classes. Evidently throughout China Wednesday afternoon is a study/meeting period for teachers, so Wednesdays we only have class in the morning. In total we had well over twelve different classes this past semester, ranging from B&W Still Photography to Photographic Materials to Lighting to Basics of Cinematography to Editing to Scriptwriting to the History of Western Cinema. And then there was the old guy with the heavy accent who mumbled incoherently all the time. I don’t think any of us in the class ever figured out what subject he was teaching. Besides this guy, most of the teachers talked fairly coherently and stayed on topic, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they were saying anything useful or remotely interesting. There were several excellent teachers, most notably our Photographic Materials teacher (an older woman with a great sense of humor who would occasionally use slang that would have us on the floor laughing), our Screenwriting teacher (a much younger female with a more serious approach to teaching, but very interesting nonetheless), and the guy who taught a large combined class (with degree students from directing and cinematography) about the audio and visual language of film. There were a few fairly famous professors (nobody I knew but my classmates assured me they were hot stuff in their day) who graced us with their presence, usually presenting fairly decent lectures. There were several professors who just didn’t have their hearts in it, or perhaps were just too overwhelmed by the inherent boringness of the subject matter they were teaching. And then there was Xie Zheng Yu, the brilliant but crazy young cinematographer who in turns I liked and hated. But I’ll get to him later. He’s quite a character.

By far the best thing about my program so far has been my fellow students. With about 60 registered students, our class is filled far past capacity, yet another sign that the department is using this program to bring in a little more cashflow. Of the 60 registered students, four of us are foreigners: two Koreans, myself, and a German. The Koreans, like so many of their fellow countrymen I’ve met studying here in China, stopped bothering coming to class after the first few weeks. Chris, the ‘German guy’ who speaks perfect English and excellent Chinese, is a much more motivated student, but like me finds some of the classes unbearably boring and often skips off to the library or campus café to do some self studying. He’s been a good pal so far, and helped me with several of our rather simple assignments. More importantly, he’s got a crazy creative streak in him similar to mine, and between the two of us we’ve come up with some really offbeat ideas that our classmates (and occasionally even our teachers) have found quite amusing. As for the 50-plus Chinese classmates, almost across the board they are one heck of a swell bunch, and even the few of them that I probably wouldn’t introduce my sister to are at least reasonably amiable. There are some real characters in the class too, from the short, fat guy who amazingly knows every beautiful girl on campus (oh yeah, given that we’ve got one of the best acting departments in the country, there are quite a few lovely ladies about campus… I should have mentioned that up above in the pluses of the school), to the dreadlocked grunge punk who asked me the first week of class how large my death metal MP3 collection is, to the uber-fashionable Jackie Goldfish, one of my closest friends in the class (and also my new fashion advisor) and the only guy I’ve ever seen wear an all-white suit to school, complete with shiny white shoes. Pimpin.

The background of the students is as mixed as their personalities and fashion. Very few of them come to the class with extensive work experience in film or TV cinematography, and the ones that do typically have only had superficial contact with it. I’d say over half the students have some experience with media and design related fields, many of them (like Jackie Goldfish) coming from advertising backgrounds. And then there are quite a few students with little or absolutely no experience or knowledge of the field, like the poor guy who always asks stupid questions and has half the class laughing at him or telling him to shut up (playfully, of course… we do have a fair bit of camaraderie going in the class). The students come from all over China, and there are a handful of minorities in the class (besides us foreigners, of course). Much to my dismay, the ratio of guys to girls is rather skewed, with a whopping three girls in the entire class, two of which come to class not too much more than the Korean guys. Maybe there is a connection there, but I’m not one to spread gossip. Even in a blog. I suppose the dearth of women in our class didn’t really surprise me though, as even in the US there are few female cinematographers, and it seems to be even less common over here for women to pursue this field.

We had several assignments throughout the semester, but to be honest not nearly as many as I’d hoped for, and not nearly as professional either. The first few assignments were all part of our still photography class, and they were the same kinds of projects that most traditional intro photography classes around the world involve. Despite being rather simplistic, I was grateful to have this class and these projects because in my six-plus years of pursuing photography as a hobby and passion, I was never able to take a class. Also, as so many traditional photographers in the age before the digital revolution ‘robbed us of our souls’ have professed, going to the darkroom for the first time is a very magical experience, even for someone like me who was an early adopter of digital photography and only abused film heavily for the first year of my addiction to this art. But in all I think I only shot and developed about four rolls of B&W film during the semester, and consistently got poor contrast in my prints despite adjusting developing, fixing, and exposure times to compensate. Maybe it was the fact that the B&W film the department supplied us with a few rolls of was the cheap local brand ‘Lucky’ (yes, I’m serious, that’s the name of the film) that costs about $0.50 a roll, rather than spending a little more of our tuition dollars on a few good rolls of Ilford Delta or Kodak. Or maybe it was a sign that I should just stick to my digital camera!

Seeing as how we are cinematography students, you’d think we would have been spending more time on video and film cameras. About two-thirds of the way through the semester, we got to see a 35mm camera in the flesh for the first time, and as a class actually shot some test footage around campus and in the studio. Again, since there are 60 of us in the class, and since this was the one activity that EVERYONE felt like showing up for (I saw my two Korean classmates for the first time in two months), each person got to have one or two goes on the camera, and even that was pretty much just pressing the start and stop button and panning or tilting the camera to follow the actors. Either that or you were the focus puller. As soon as you nailed the shot, the next two guys would come have a go. I think in the four times we shot, I got to molest that big bad camera for a total of about 3 minutes. Not exactly the kind of experience that’s going to land me a DP or even assistant camera position on a feature film straight out of school, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. The other problem is that when we were setting up for these shoots, they wouldn’t let us students do the lighting. They brought in the lighting crews from school that did all the work. But since many students in the class have little experience with cinematography or lighting, it’s probably best that we watch first anyway and take notes, as I’m sure the school wouldn’t be too happy losing an entire class to a mass electrocution (although then again we are only a continuing education class). At any rate, there is plenty to learn just from watching, and like I said above in the intro to the school, it’s all about what you put into your time here, as there are plenty of resources to learn from. But I do hope that next semester we can put a bit more of our classroom learning into action.

We finally got to shoot our own projects the last three weekends of classes. Unfortunately, the department only issued us DV cameras to shoot on, which was a step down for me after shooting my last short film in Hawaii on an HD camera. Fortunately half the cameras they were issuing were Panasonic DVX100s (the model number here in China is the DVX180, the only place in the world I’ve heard of that Panasonic changed the model number for their top-selling prosumer DV camera), a camera I’d shot with numerous times before and was quite enamored with. The other half of the cameras being issued were Canon XL-1s (no, not even the XL-1S), a camera I’d also shot on and was less than enthusiastic about. So I encouraged my classmates ahead of me in line at the equipment checkout place to borrow the Canon XL-1s, which most of them wanted to do anyway because the XL-1 looks cooler and has a bigger lens (but doesn’t even come close to producing the film look that the DVX100’s 24P feature does). We checked the cameras out in groups of three, but I only ended up borrowing the camera for two of the three weekends and my group members, whoever they were, didn’t even show up for checkout, so I had it all to myself. We were supposed to shoot one short film, 2-5 minutes in length, for our Friday production class. There was no set theme, but the teacher required that the story have a clear plot, and that we incorporate as many of the cinematographic techniques that we’d learned that semester as possible.

Although this was a rather bland, straightforward assignment that gave us lots of creative freedom but very little guidance, we had another optional assignment given to us by our Thursday morning Cinematographic Techniques teacher, Xie Zheng Yu. Yes, this is the young guy I mentioned above. I had no idea who he was when I walked into his first class that started in the second half of the semester. Even if I had looked at the syllabus, I wouldn’t have recognized his name. But I soon discovered that the one movie he had shot was one I had randomly watched while traveling in China in 2002 and quite enjoyed, especially the quirky cinematography. The film, ‘Missing Gun’, was the debut feature of BFA graduate Lu Chuan, who went on to shoot the hit ‘Kekexili: Mountain Patrol’. However, Xie Zheng Yu is best known in the commercial industry, where he’s shot a vast array of work, all of an extremely professional level. He took up half the first class to show us his reel, and we were all quite impressed, although this should have been our first indication of how he planned to teach – using himself as the defining mark of excellence, and bouncing everything else off of his own skewed standards and biased perspectives.

From the get-go, Xie Zheng Yu had our attention. He was young, brash, and had a penchant for using ‘colorful’ language in class. It felt like in class he was talking about film (and everything else) the same way he’d be chatting about it with his old buddy over beers on a slow Saturday night. And he most likely was. He also still had a strong Guizhou accent when he spoke Mandarin despite having lived in Beijing for more than a decade, which took a little time to adjust to but perhaps added an extra layer to his already colorful discussions. But perhaps the most distinguishing feature of his teaching style, if you could really call what he did teaching, was that he had no qualms about cursing anyone and their work that he pleased, and throughout the semester he did that on a regular basis. His classes had little structure, and I sometimes wondered if he spent any time preparing lesson plans, as the first half of his classes mainly consisted of him going off on random diatribes about this director and that movie, often to the point that I’d have to pull out my syllabus and remind myself that we were sitting through a Cinematographic Techniques class. But nobody seemed to mind. He was entertaining, and he was like no other teacher we had that semester, or probably had ever had in any subject in the past. To me personally, and a few of my closer friends in the class that I talked to, however, he was not cut out to be a teacher. Rarely were his attacks on people (sometimes whole cultures… in the first class he made a rather inflammatory remark about Korean cinema and the Korean people as a whole… fortunately by that point our Korean classmates had stopped coming to class, or there might have been a brawl) or films backed by any substantial analysis. He merely didn’t like them, and he would very colorfully tell you how bad they sucked, but rarely back up his arguments with any sound reasoning. On a slow Saturday night in a bar chatting over beers, that’s fine. But in a classroom at a renowned academic institution, he was out of his element.

One of his comments in the first class that got the most laughs was his comment about how the best film genre in which to test your skills as a filmmaker was porno. Yes, I’m serious. And unfortunately, so was he. In fact, he brought up porno films quite often in class, and that should have also been an early indication of what was to come later in the semester when he gave us our sole assignment. One day towards the end of the semester when he was off on one of his tirades, he gave us an optional assignment (from the spontaneity of the moment, it seemed he hadn’t even planned it ahead of time) to make a short film that involved a porno-related or porno-style joke. Yes, at the most renowned film institute in a country famous for its strict film censorship, I was being asked to shoot a pseudo-porno for a class assignment. Dear Chairman Mao must be rolling in his grave.

Since we were soon to begin our other assignments for the Friday class, many of us just planned to make one film that satisfied both assignments. But how could you make a porno with a solid plot (requirement number one for the other assignment) and incorporate numerous cinematographic techniques (requirement number two). Maybe this nutty professor of ours was on to something. He certainly had us thinking. Chris ‘the German guy’ (who was quite enthusiastic about this idea of shooting a porn) got his act together right away and shot his assignment that weekend, but since we didn’t have access to the video cameras yet, he shot his with still pictures and made a slide show. It was a simple but clever story about two guys playing video games while their girlfriends watch from the couch behind them. The girls get bored and begin to touch their respective boyfriends, at which point the boys drop their controllers and turn around to attend to their girlfriends. One guy turns and checks out the other guy’s girlfriend, then reaches over to join for a little touch. A fight ensues, and as the guys inflict each other with vicious blows straight out their video game, the girls lose interest and slip out the door. Bruised and bloody, the guys sadly stand in the doorway pining for their ladies, but when it’s obvious they won’t come back, they return to their video games. Innocent enough, and about as soft as porno can get, if you can even call it that. But all in all, a job fairly well done given the circumstances.

Despite the fact that the class thoroughly enjoyed the film, and the fact that Chris was brave enough to be the first to show his film, Xie Zheng Yu immediately began to rip it apart. “You think this is hot shit, don’t you? What kind of story is this? I don’t even understand it. This is crap! And you call this porn? The only skin I saw were those girl’s hairy arms!” Of course he didn’t bother explaining why the project was crap. No analysis of the film itself. And more importantly, he didn’t bother going through and analyzing the photography, which was the whole point of his class anyway. Chris is not one to be intimidated by anyone, and at 6’4” and a solid build, he towers over everyone in the class, even sitting down. He spoke up from the back of the classroom and exclaimed that all the prostitutes he’d tried to hire to act in the film weren’t willing, and the only girls he could find to act wouldn’t take off their clothes. We all laughed at this (although it turns out Chris was telling the truth), which threw off Xie Zheng Yu for a moment, especially since I think he realized for the first time at this point that it was a foreigner who’d made the film. He must have had a little respect for the fact that Chris had actually been brave enough to speak up (most of our Chinese classmates rarely did), and engaged him in discussion for a little while. But again, he just kept saying that the story (which was amazingly easy to follow) didn’t make sense and he couldn’t follow it. Chris asked him to put the slides up on the screen again, and then walked up to the front of the class to explain.

Xie Zheng Yu told him to sit back down and started going off about how filmmakers aren’t supposed to have to explain their films after the screening, at which point I’d had enough and barked back that film teachers were supposed to back up their assertions and accusations and that if he was too thick to understand a simple story that the rest of the class had so easily grasped, he should let Chris explain it to him. Oh boy did he fly off the handle! I know I should have kept my mouth shut, and should have showed more respect for my teacher, but I’d had enough of his lack of respect for others and his failure to provide us with a valuable learning experience. That and I had to stick up for my fellow foreigner! But surprisingly, my technique worked, as once Xie Zheng Yu calmed down a bit and stopped cursing me and Chris and the rest of the class, he did a frame by frame analysis of the film and told us what was wrong with each shot and the story (according to him). It was the first time he’d analyzed anything that thoroughly in class, and Chris was very happy to have the in-depth feedback, however negative it might have been. Our efforts were short-lived, however, as the next week a short film by Jackie Goldfish (that I acted in… no, I didn’t take off my clothes… it merely involved a sexual innuendo while eating dumplings in a restaurant) shot in video and another classmate’s project shot with still pictures were both torn to pieces by our beloved teacher. He began with his favorite line to any student brave enough to show their work in class (“You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?!”), and continued with a short barrage of insults about how it was complete trash, and then accentuated this by dragging the file on the screen to the Recycle Bin. “There, I’m doing you a favor.” This time I didn’t even bother protesting. It was a lost cause. Not that I was going to give up. I’d already shot my first film two weekends before (but had no time to edit it), and was shooting another, even more ‘yellow’ (the Chinese word for things pornographic) film the upcoming weekend, so the next week I would have not just one, but two films to present to dear Teacher Xie.

My films were both quite simple, and both based on ideas I’d mainly thought up while sitting through some of our more boring classes over the previous weeks. Unlike most of my previous short films shot in Hawaii, which were long and a bit on the dark side, these films were short, funny and totally spontaneous. Neither had dialogue, and since they were both just one-day (actually, one-afternoon) projects, I didn’t even bother writing up a script. For each one I just asked two of my classmates to be actors, I bought one ‘yellow’ (actually it was pink, but that’s all I’m going to tell you) prop that ended up being used in both films, and I just went out and shot. It was a lot of fun, and the final result came out surprisingly good considering what little time we invested. The night before Xie Zheng Yu’s last class, I stayed up late editing the films. Knowing full well the first thing Xie Zheng Yu would say after watching the films, at the end of the credits I added one last line – “No, this film is not shit hot.” And after all that hard work and almost no sleep, I dragged myself into class early the next morning only to find out that our dear teacher decided not to bother showing up for the last day of class. He hadn’t notified the department, and he didn’t answer his phone when they called him. Needless to say, I was falling more and more in love with this dear man every day. What a guy.

Fortunately I was able to show my films the next morning in our final class of the semester, but for a different teacher who might actually give some useful criticism. What fun would that be? Walking into class a little late, I was distraught to find that only a handful of my classmates had bothered showing up. I wasn’t keen on screening my films if none of my classmates were there to appreciate them. But slowly over the next hour or two as we worked our way through several different student films and listened to the teacher’s insightful feedback, more and more students filed in. I suspect most of them had also been up most of the night editing and had still been putting the finishing touches on. Actually, a good number of students didn’t even submit projects, most of them because they hadn’t finished editing, but I think some students also just didn’t bother shooting anything. But there were enough finished projects to take up the three hours of class, and I strategically put off showing my film until enough students had filed in. My first film was a riot, and my classmates were laughing so loud that students from the next room ran over to our classroom to see what was going on. So by the time I started my second film, there were well over 100 people packed into our classroom, most of them standing at the back. My second film did not disappoint either, but I think the poor kids from across the hall that had no idea about our ‘yellow film’ assignment were rather shocked by the content. Not that it kept them from laughing and then cheering loudly when the credits rolled.

My films were definitely the biggest success of that morning’s screening, but I don’t say that to brag about myself. I say that because I was actually disappointed with the quality of most of my classmates’ films. After a whole semester together, this was our first chance to actually get a taste of what our fellow classmates could do, and for me the taste was a bit bitter. There were exceptions of course, and several films I quite liked, but on the whole, I had hoped for much more. Had there at least been some decent cinematography, I would have been more than pleased, seeing as how we weren’t in a directing or screenwriting course. But I’d say over half the projects looked like something a middle schooler who’d never touched a video camera before would go out and shoot (then again young kids these days are so much more tech savvy than us old people). But I guess for many of my classmates this was the first time to shoot a film, and even many of those who’d shot things before had never edited. So perhaps I’m being too critical, and perhaps I’m basing my judgments on what I’d grown accustomed to back in Hawaii, where many of my classmates had the money to go buy their own equipment and experiment on their own all the time. Few of my classmates have that luxury, and for many of them this was the first and one of the few chances they’ll have to go out and shoot something. Also I think that had I been in one of the degree courses at BFA, where the caliber of the students is much higher, the quality of the work would have been much better.

Besides the great response I got to my films my last day of classes, another one of the highlights of my time here so far at BFA would have to be interviewing director and professor Xie Fei for my first podcast on this website. Ever since I first started watching Chinese films and researching Chinese cinema, Xie Fei’s name was popping up all over the place. Perhaps the most famous of the 4th Generation of Chinese directors, his works have been feted both at home and abroad. Unfortunately before coming to China this time, I had only had the fortunate to enjoy his early film ‘A Girl From Hunan’ back in the US, as none of his other films were available where I looked. Even here in China when I first started asking around at DVD stores for his films, everybody knew Xie Fei’s name, but nobody had his films. As art and cultural films, they are not the kind of films that fly off the shelf in a place where everyone is hungry for the newest Hollywood action film or Korean drama, not too different from audiences back in Hawaii (or anywhere else in the world). Which is a real shame considering that there are audiences the world over who are interested in watching this kind of movie, but with such limited distribution those people aren’t always guaranteed they’ll find these films, if they even know to look for them in the first place. This is part of the reason film festivals are so important in helping films like Xie Fei’s getting discovered, but even the ones that are picked up for distribution rarely work their way into local video stores. And that is why I really like the idea behind this website (no, I’m not getting paid to say this!) and have agreed to help out with it, because it realizes the potential of the Internet to help these films find an audience, overcoming the limitations of traditional distribution channels. This is one of many things that Xie Fei discussed in the interview. Despite being a very friendly and warm individual with lots of amusing anecdotes to share, he also has very interesting and informative insights into the future of the film industry. Please check out his podcast (link) and listen for yourself.

By far the biggest highlight of my time here at BFA began with a most fortuitous encounter. Back in November after I had recently returned from a trip to Hawaii to attend the Hawaii International Film Festival, BFA hosted a Japanse film festival at school. This is just one of many themed festivals they hold throughout the year to display important cinematic pieces from around the world for the BFA community and Beijing at large. I was busy trying to catch up with work after missing almost three weeks of classes, and didn’t catch any of the screenings. One day on my way to class though, one of my classmates ran by and asked if I was going to the press conference. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he said that Tian Zhuangzhuang (one of China’s top 5th Generation film directors) and a famous Japanese actress were giving a press conference in the first floor of our main building. I decided to stop by and have a peak, and up on stage saw Director Tian, his cinematographer (I assumed that’s who it was), and Japanese actress Matsuzaka Keiko, who had acted in Tian’s most recent film about a famous Chinese Go player that mastered the game and became grand champion in Japan. I stayed around and soon the floor opened to questions. Of the first four questions, three were asked by Japanese exchange students in the crowd directly to the Matsuzaka-san. While listening, I browsed through the festival brochure and read her bio and self-introduction, and was interested in her statement that she would like to improve relations between Japan and China through films, as it closely relates to my own personal goals. So as Director Tian finished answering the only question so far that had been addressed to him, I bravely hollered from the back in Chinese “Can one of us Laowai (foreigners) ask a question?” Director Tian chuckled and said of course, and when someone brought a microphone over to me I immediately began asking Matsuzaka-san what kind of films she thought could help improve relations between the two countries. The only thing is that I was asking in Japanese, which threw off the crowd and probably the actress as well, and I guess it probably didn’t help that I was the only white guy in the whole room.

After the conference one of the Japanese students (not a BFA student) who’d asked a question came over with his girlfriend and introduced himself in Chinese and told me that he is a filmmaker based in Beijing and his girlfriend is a student at BFA. As we were enjoying a rather pleasant exchange, a Chinese man came up and politely interrupted. I didn’t recognize him at first, and when he straight out asked me for my phone number, I was a bit taken aback. Since there aren’t too many of us foreigners around campus, I’ve had some students come up and randomly ask for my phone number before, but usually only after first exchanging introductions and some pleasantries, and usually because they either wanted to call me later about practicing their English, keep me on file in case they needed a foreign actor for a project, or get help with translations. This guy was too old to be a student though, and he didn’t even bother introducing himself before asking for my phone number, so I was a bit taken aback. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind introducing himself first, but just as I did that I realized who he was. He was Tian Zhuangzhuang’s cinematographer who’d been sitting up on stage with him during the conference. He’d put on a hat and I hadn’t recognized him, and the only reason he didn’t take the time to introduce himself is because the rest of his entourage was already streaming out the door. I apologized and blurted out my phone number immediately, and he punched it into his phone as he ran off and hollered back that he would give me a call that night.

It turns out this cinematographer, Wang Yu, has shot twelve or thirteen major 35mm productions for China’s and Hong Kong’s biggest directors over the last nine years, including several of my all-time favorites. When he called me that night and listed off the first two films he shot – Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly, both directed by Lou Ye – I told him he could stop there because I was already in love with him. It turns out Wang Yu had recently had a few opportunities to work with foreign directors, and because he often had to go overseas to do color timing on his films, he wanted to improve his English. With his busy schedule and the special vocabulary required for his field though, he didn’t want to just hire a regular English teacher to sit down with and study. A few days before we met he said an idea popped in his head to see if there were any cinematography students at BFA, his alma mater, who were from English-speaking countries and might be willing to teach him English in exchange for learning cinematography from him. Of course he figured there was little chance of finding a foreign student studying cinematography here, especially a native English speaker, and then just a few days later, Viola! There I was. And I couldn’t be happier with such a setup, as I’d been thinking long before I came to China this time that I needed to find a way to get on board for some actual Chinese film shoots, and that’s exactly what Wang Yu was offering. In Chinese this kind of encounter between two people who are destined to meet is called ‘yuan fen’. And boy oh boy did Wang Yu and I have some serious ‘yuan fen’ going for us!

What’s even funnier is that Wang Yu also lives in my apartment complex behind BFA, a small community that is connected to the Beijing Film Studio and used to be home to many Chinese directors and stars (and still is, but to a lesser extent). Still, it’s a big complex, and that first night when he asked me over to his apartment, neither one of us realized he lived in the building right next door to mine; it’s a two-minute walk from my door to his! Like me, his Chinese zodiac is a horse, which means that even though he is a full twelve years older than me, we are supposed to have a lot in common. That first night I went to his place and met his lovely wife and adorable newborn baby daughter, and staying up until 2 AM chatting and getting to know each other, it was obvious we were both very happy to have found each other. And we’ve had ample opportunity to bond over these last few months, as he often invites me to his house, and he’s already taken me along to be his assistant on three big commercial shoots. But he’s not only been a great mentor to me, he’s also become a very close friend. He’s definitely one of the most laid-back, humorous, and sincere people I’ve met so far here in China, and I’m so glad that I went and opened my big, fat mouth at that conference.

Wow, as I was writing this last paragraph Wang Yu just called and told me that we are heading off to Shandong province this coming weekend to shoot another commercial. YIPPEE! It’s amazing the opportunities I’ve already had so far in my short time here in Beijing, and I’m so glad I made the move to come over here to attend film school. Conditions certainly aren’t ideal, and some of my classes leave much to be desired, but at the same time this place has come a long way in the past three decades, and as a foreigner with a unique perspective on things here, I think the chances to succeed in my endeavors are very high!