Li Yu is one of the most promising and talented of the new generation of young filmmakers. Her latest film Buddha Mountain won the Best Actress and Best Artistic Contribution awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2010 and the award for Best Actress at the 57th edition of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. In 2007, her controversial Lost in Beijing won an Honourable Mention for Screenplay at the Tribeca International Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize in the Golden Kinaree section at the Bangkok International Film Festival. The film saw her taking on the censors, who came down heavily on it, initially cutting scenes and then banning it completely. Li Yu has been lauded by critics in China as a female version of Jiang Wen. From Fish and Elephant to Buddha Mountain, she has maintained her independent style without ever giving in to the temptations of populist commercial cinema.
Where were you born?
I was born in a small provincial town in Shandong in 1974, but my I.D. card says I was born in 1973, so that I could start school a year earlier. My mother wanted me to go to school and not miss another year’s worth of studying. I grew up in a small town, a really small town, but it was surrounded by mountains and rivers, a truly beautiful place. How did growing up there influence you? Actually, I don’t really have great memories of the place. When I was a kid, my parents didn’t get on very well, they argued frequently, and at school the teachers were not very inspiring. Do you know the writer Han Han? Han Han criticises education in China today, but even back then going to school was frustrating. All the teachers ever did was criticise you. The memory that has stayed most with me is when I had to write a composition: I wrote a story set in a forest, a really strange story, and the teacher accused me of plagiarism. I must have been in the second or third year of elementary school, but I knew I was being wrongly accused, and this really got me down. When I was growing up my mother would ask what I wanted to do when I was older. I told her that I really wanted to become a teacher, seeing as all the ones I had were terrible. But my chance came along in high school. Jinan TV were looking for a TV presenter and my mother encouraged me to audition, which I did. The only thing is, once you start doing this job, you realise that China does not broadcast the real news.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly your big break...
I was certainly very young at the time and I thought that it might be fun, that I’d experience new sensations. I was only eighteen. In China, and for a person of my mother’s generation, this would have been an extraordinary break, a steady job for a woman which brought fame and popularity. Thinking back, it did have its advantages, but after a while my enthusiasm for it waned. First of all, I couldn’t stand all the make-up that is applied for television. It’s really heavy, like wearing a mask. And then, news broadcasting in China — they don’t allow you to tell the full story, there’s no freedom of information, no real news, it’s all made-up. After a few years, I was already on the lookout for a new way to express myself.
When did a new opportunity come along?
It was the mid-1990s, around 1995-1996. During this period, the idea of documentary making began to take root in my mind. I remember that CCTV had a programme that ran a story about this guy, a cleaner, whose job it was to go into other people’s houses and clean the toilets which had wooden water cisterns. I thought that if even he could appear on TV, then maybe making docu- mentaries might be a start for me, it was my first flash of inspiration. And I didn’t like being in front of the cameras. I preferred to work behind the scenes. So I began working for CCTV as a documentary-maker from 1995 to 2000, and at the same time I was writing novellas and screenplays in my spare time. I wrote loads of them, even if they were a bit slapdash and half-finished, but I took it seriously, as though it were a second job. After having made documentaries for years, I got the impression that documentaries were too intimate. I felt like I was carrying out an in-depth investigation into the private lives of others with the risk of hurting their feelings. I thought I could easily use real life stories to inspire screenplays; the sentiments would be real, but not the story itself. That’s how the screenplay for Fish and Elephant, my first film, came about. That was in 2001.
You didn’t attend the Beijing Film Academy?
No, I didn’t ride the same wave as the majority of directors in China.
Didn’t you feel the need to go to the Academy?
I think that a process of study is inevitable for whatever you do. But doing this job, you realise that directing is not something you learn from a textbook. It’s not studying directing that turns you into an excellent filmmaker. Although technique definitely needs to be studied, your spirit and artistic talent are innate. I learned through direct experience, making documentaries. For me, a documentary is a form of cinema, it’s the “cinema of the real.”
Ten years have passed between Fish and Elephant and your latest Buddha Mountain. What lasting memories do you have of your first film?
Fish and Elephant was like my first love, the kind that “has many faults but is still sweet.” That film has a certain force and it left an unforgettable impression on me, just as everything does when you do it for the first time. It was the first time that I had directed and edited a film, and I remember on set with the actors I would often tell them how to act. At the same time, compared to how I am now, and also compared to my latest film Buddha Mountain, I feel very removed from it. I was 26 then, and various factors had contributed to my wanting to make a film. Fish and Elephant is mine just as much as the others, it may have its faults, but it’s still my offspring.
You began your career making documentaries for TV.What else drove you to turn to cinema?
Maybe it was the desire to have my say, to express myself, to narrate my inner world, what’s going on inside of me. Making documentaries certainly didn’t help this side of things. If you want to narrate your own life, you can only do that by making fiction feature films. There’s a lot of me in both Lost in Beijing and Buddha Mountain.
You write novellas and screenplays — how is your relationship with literature? Do you relate more to literature or to cinema?
Certain subjects and contents in literature are hard to translate and represent on film, especially sentiments or aspects that belong to your inner being. At the same time, things that suit the big screen don’t necessarily sit well in literature. In film, you can find a certain enchantment, something delicate and sublime, impossible to express in words. Cinema and literature are two different ways of expressing yourself and narrating, and I feel at home in both worlds.
Are you still taken with the idea of writing the screenplays for your own films?
Yes. Writing screenplays and directing films have a point in common, both are a projection of yourself to the outside world, and they contain sensations that you’d certainly want to explore in a film and in a novel.
In literature, as in cinema, the author always has to make compromises to reach a wider audience. Which of the two worlds do you think makes most compromises?
There’s no doubt about it: cinema. The result is also different. The public reacts differently when exiting a film theatre or finishing a novel. In China, this is particularly marked, seeing as book sales are dwindling. Today is tutu shidai, or rather “the era of the image.” Most people today prefer to “read” images than to read books. Readership numbers, especially amongst young people, are constantly falling. The amount of information that we receive today is far greater than it was in the past. We try to keep up with worldwide current affairs via the internet, and we think we are “reading” and gaining knowledge, but I think that the way of receiving and absorbing all the information is different, because in truth we hardly remember anything, we don’t feel the same emotions or think the same thoughts that are triggered by reading a novel.
What directors have most influenced you?
Kitano Takeshi, because his films reveal an extraordinary force, the spirit of the warrior, the samurai. Kim Kiduk, because his films stray from the dominant trends, from the current styles. He manages to tell tales of prostitutes, violence, humanity and sentiments, Jiang Wen, because when I think of his films, I find them to be as rich and strong as wine. And then there’s Quentin Tarantino and François Truffaut.
All auteurs ...
The independent auteurs have their own distinctive style, a strong personality that you come across in their films. I couldn’t say that any one film influenced me. I see so many, I love genre film, even Hollywood-style, like The Godfather, for example. I love animated films, like Miyazaki Hayao’s works and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. I love the feel of independent cinema because it’s original, it expresses a unique vision that cannot belong to anyone else. Hollywood cinema is not really free because it is conditioned by the market. Chinese cinema is limited by the censors before you even take into consideration the market, so here cinema has even less freedom of expression.
You don’t like predefined frameworks ...
No, I can’t stand the thought of being tied to a “framework”, held back by restrictions, conventions, cookiecutter models. And I don’t like to be equidistant, on middle ground or even “in the right”. In Chinese, this would be defined as the “Golden Mean” [Confucian thought]; that is, to believe that the best thing is to sit on the fence, never pushing yourself forward but never being left behind. To me, this means refusing to show you have personality, individuality, it means not expressing an opinion, staying dead-centre. I’m not like that and I don’t think like that. Imagine something that is perfectly round... I prefer things that have corners and angles, things which reveal their vitality.
Your four films differ greatly. What is your idea of cinema?
I like cinema that breathes, which possesses and transmits this sensation. I don’t like the traditional way of shooting films. Nothing that has a stereotypical, old-fashioned or inflexible style. That’s why I like to shoot using a handheld camera, or one perched on my shoulder. Lars Von Trier is one of my favourites because of how he shoots his films, because it gives you the impression that the lens is always close to the people. If I had to film you right now, maybe the lens would train on your eyes, to give the idea that there is no distance at all between you and the camera. If I could not detect your expression, your emotions, I wouldn’t feel as if I had reached my goal.
You feel it’s important to evaluate the distance from your subject.
I don’t like for there to be any distance at all, I want to cancel it out. The closer, the better. I’m often told that my films do not contain medium or long shots. I like extreme close-ups. For me, medium shots are the same as not shooting anything at all — they may allow you to see the whole picture, but they express nothing, so I prefer to stay either extremely near or extremely far. When you’re making documentaries, establishing a distance without causing discomfort to your story’s subject is very difficult, but in fiction, you can shape everything so as to aim for the most appropriate distance — as close as possible.
What persuaded you to make Buddha Mountain?
The film’s story reflects reality, the world of the new generation. China’s youth are lost and confused. Young people today don’t even know what love is, what it means to them. My generation knows how to talk about it, we have our certainties about concepts of love and family. Like the three kids in the film, the new generation is always confused and vague, because they have no direction, no life path. The idea was to bring to the big screen China’s youth, so that they could see themselves mirrored when watching the film, because this is what they are. They live in society as bewildered beings: this is the sensation of loads of today’s kids. Another interesting aspect is when two generations meet and are compared and contrasted, each with their own problems and pain. Imagine being at a train station: everyone gets on the train, they get to know each other, they grow to love each other, but aren’t necessarily in love, and then when they get off at the next stop, they go their separate ways. As life has given them the opportunity to share a part of the journey together, life itself changes, it takes another direction. That seems very poetic.
In all your films, the female world predominates.
If you add together the female characters of my films, you get me. Directors express themselves through their characters which reflect and impersonate your behaviour, your attitude. It’s not a given that they are a carbon copy of you, but they reveal parts of your way of being and of perceiving things, what for you is real and true, your way of observing the masculine point of view, life, your way of understanding parents. It’s the same thing for male directors; they bring to life on the screen their vision of the female universe. Kitano Takeshi often differentiates women greatly. In his films, you can read his entire vision of the female universe. In my films, the female presence is not a vision of the female universe, it’s a genuine existence, you see the various “faces” of Chinese women, their sensitivity, their tolerance, their powers of endurance, their way of interacting with their family, their husbands. Each film reveals one of these aspects.
After Lost in Beijing, Buddha Mountain saw you working with the actress Fan Bingbing for the second time.
Can we refer to her as your alter-ego?
Maybe, but I’m not too sure. We might work together again in the future. I’ll leave that to chance or destiny. I’d like it to be a choice or a natural situation, something beyond my control.
The relationship between parents and their offspring returns in Buddha Mountain.
I’m very interested in exploring family relationships. It is also a social issue, as a family is a miniature society. I like to observe the contradictions that lie at the heart of a family. Each family has its own personal difficulties, its dilemmas. You find the same dynamics in many Chinese families, but also different misunderstandings. I like to describe some situations that you find in modern-day families.
Ten years have passed since your first film, and the film industry in China has a changed a great deal. How has this conditioned your way of making movies?
Over the course of ten years, the process of personal growth and that of the film industry have inevitably run on parallel lines. The whole industry is obviously making giant steps, but there’s a lot of confusion in the development process. You could say that the film industry is doing fine because it’s making a lot of money, but its regulations have not be perfected so, generally speaking, positive and negative aspects exist side by side in an extraordinary manner. It’s still like it was before, we don’t get given enough space because we insist on making the films we want to make. Personally speaking, I have not made much effort to encourage the public to watch my films, mainly because the Chinese public looks to the market: only if a film reaches the market, via the big screen, will the audience sit up and take notice and, therefore, go and see it, so even I have tried to take advantage of this opportunity. I think that the industry is moving in the right direction, even if it is still in chaos. In the future, it will develop in a more regulated fashion, but for now we have to face a series of problems.
What new problems are on the horizon for directors in China?
Apart from a few underground or independent films, the others are of a single genre — commercial. I’m not interested in making that kind of film. I hope that the Buddha Mountain public realises that you can still make this kind of film in China. I hope that we all have more than one choice. It’s better to be able to choose, not just for the public, but for the industry itself. In 2001, the Chinese market was a disaster, this year it has been a major success. Over the course of these ten years, I have witnessed the process that has brought the industry to develop along both positive and negative lines, because I have to bear in mind the limitations imposed by the censors. As directors, we have to exist and keep making films, stuck between these two gigantic facts of life: the market and censorship, and we have to decide what kind of film we want to make. This is the dilemma facing every director in China: deciding what film to make to adapt to this market. The market has the potential to be huge, but the screening theatres are functional to the marketplace, so the films that differ from those that are normally in circulation only stay on the screens for a few days, meaning that the public has very little chance to see them, even if they do manage to hit the screens. Many directors reflect on this type of problem, which can limit their work, just as they have to consider the possibility that no one will be willing to invest in their film if it is not standard commercial fare. Take, for example, the director Ning Hao. That was the situation for him. His first film, Incense (Xiang Huo), was not commercial. With Crazy Stone (Feng Kuang Shitou), he went more in the direction of the market. This is partly not being able to get by without the market, or having no alternative. Having said that, I think I will try to persevere a little longer.
In China, the strange thing is that there are two parallel markets: the big screen and DVDs.
The development and evolution of cinema in a country take place in screening theatres. Films that really matter are the ones that bring the audience into the cinemas.
Box office takings are what real cinema is about. The DVD market is supplementary. China has an unusual situation, that’s true, because you can only see one type of film on the big screen. The success of DVDs is due to the fact that they offer variety to the public. You could never begin to imagine seeing the same variety distributed on the big screen because of the censors, even if they are extraordinary films. This is a problem without a solution. DVDs have informed and educated the “eyes” of the Chinese, but I’m obviously referring to pirate DVDs here. Seeing films on DVD has allowed the Chinese public to build their “intelligence.”
Why doesn’t the film industry make the same considerations?
The film industry knows it gives the public too limited a number of films, but the problem is censorship. You have no idea of how many films would be banned by the censors for sensitivity towards certain content. On the other hand, the theatre managers reflect upon what the public wants.
For example, the film Let’s Meet in Heaven (Wo Men Zai Tianshang Jian) by Jiang Wenli, a wonderful little film, stayed on the big screen for one day only, because it had no audience. And Jiang Wenli is a very famous actress in China, and the film had no lack of publicity and promotion. I must also add that the new generation, people born in the 1980s or even the 1990s, is the devourer of popcorn cinema. And I don’t think this is only true for China. Let’s take Xu Jinglei for example. In the past she also made thought-provoking films, but they didn’t attract the public. Go Lala (Du Lala) did terribly at the box-office, it only took 100 RMB. Another problem is the lack of screens for auteur cinema. This is due to another regulation, which leads to hardly any auteur films being made. A film like Jiang Wenli’s could have run for a whole year. Commercial films, auteur films, big and small budget films all running in the same cinema cannot compete on the same level, so art-house film-lovers have no choice but to see them on DVD, so therefore the DVD market is bursting with health. At the same time, you cannot be dumbfounded by the market and the cinema chains, because it’s business for them, they’d go bankrupt otherwise and this would mean the public had even less opportunity to go and see films.
What can you tell us about your future projects?
At the moment, I’m looking into two projects. One is a story by the writer Han Han and the other is a psychothriller with a Chinese vein. It’s very interesting. It will be neither commercial nor artistic... it will be in my style.
Maria Ruggieri