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New frontier for novice filmmakers
By Nicola Davison (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-29 09:03 Beijing sets the scene for independent foreign films China is a new frontier, a 21st century Wild West with fewer cowboy hats - unless you're shooting a Western. And chances are there is a Western being filmed somewhere in the country because it is a growing location for foreign filmmakers just getting on their feet.
One such filmmaker is Montague Fendt, 26, who next month is showing his first feature length film Beijing Taxi at the New Beijing International Movie Festival. Fendt, who moved to Beijing seven years ago from Switzerland, co-directed the film with a Chinese-Australian and a Beijinger. Each directed their own story and the three were interwoven, a bit like the film Paris, Je t'aime. "This project could have never worked anywhere else but in China," says Fendt. "We made the film, shot in 18 days with great equipment and crew, on a tiny $40,000 budget. If you try to shoot an independent feature in the US or Europe, it will cost you three times as much." A major draw for Fendt was his autonomy. He wrote the script, directed the film and worked with his own contacts. Starting out in Europe or the US is more complicated - you're not going to make a film for a long time because the first step is usually the bottom rung at a production company. Then there's the survival issue. Lots of filmmakers want to make art, but need to make a living to make art. In China, Fendt could throw himself into the gritty world of filmmaking proper and it didn't matter as much if he made mistakes. With low production costs and a low cost of living he could afford to. For documentary filmmaker Van Yang, 25, from Chicago, China presents a rich world of unexplored niches. His current project, a documentary called Red Hot Green China, looks at the untold story of environmentally aware China. For many documentary makers, China is a place of great interest, but little known to the rest of the world. "These films are not going to be big blockbuster hits, but they're going to tell something intimate about a culture not everybody understands," says Yang. "The opportunity is that there's this vacuum. The Chinese media hasn't shared enough about the real China." Increasing media focus coupled with dire economic circumstances in the West is part of the push. And it all sounds rather wonderful - China as the land of opportunity. But Michael McDermott, founder of Beijing-based production company Gung Ho Films, thinks the hype leads to false expectations. "You can't just come here and say 'I'm going to be a filmmaker'," says McDermott, who trained at UCLA before coming to China 19 years ago. "It won't happen overnight. I know a lot of people who are coming here without the language. They think it'll be really cool to come here and then take something back to the States. The first movie I made here was in '97, which was seven years after I moved here." And what about Chinese filmmakers? Classic Chinese film has a unique aesthetic, quite different from Western techniques. Fendt doesn't see it as a problem, but an inevitable consequence of a globalized world, a fusing of foreign techniques with Chinese tradition. He says more productions coming to China bring increasing openness to change in the industry. "The Chinese crew we worked with on Beijing Taxi probably learned more than we did," says Fendt. "They saw another way of movie making, from a 'dreamer' kind of view, and less from a business point of view." As with many people living in Beijing, Fendt finds there's appeal in being a foreigner, as a guy from the outside. And, for now, he intends to stay: "I think it would be a waste for me to live here 10 years and then go back home and shoot film there. It just wouldn't make sense." |
