Then he tried to get onto another course to study sports he also failed at that. He admits he wasn’t good enough and failed to get in. “Drawing and taking photos was a hobby to kill time in the dull life in the factory.” The reforms in China that came after Mao Tse-tung’s death set Zhang and those other young artists around him on a completely new path, a collision course with what Zhang calls their destinies.Īs a young amateur photographer he applied for a place in college to study his craft. “People had no long-term plans and ideas for my generation at that time,” he says, referring to the era in which he grew up. Zhang remembers having to sell his own blood to buy photographic equipment when he was younger. As he sits there and elaborates on his working history, it is hard to imagine his heartbeat raising above 50 bpm. He speaks measuredly and with the air of somebody in total control, befitting the man who invented the now-ubiquitous blockbuster form in China. His face is smooth and angular, like it was carved from granite. Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern was filmed just a 40-minute drive away-which, given the size of Shanxi Province, is considerable in itself.) Zhang, meanwhile, looks more like a football coach or professional golfer. (When in Pingyao, it is easy to think that you are a million miles from anything. After all, this is the place where he shot his first major success. The loving crowds for the masterclass and the home-grown nature of the festival have an obvious therapeutic effect on him. He looks happy to be there-at foreign festivals, he can sometimes appear lost or indifferent, retreating behind the language barrier. Zhang notes the youthfulness of the audience and says that the crowd size before them is a testament to the enduring pull of the cinema.Īs always, Jia has a childlike way of speaking and holding himself. Both men perch on camping chairs and face out onto their massive audience. Together the two men were as much a study in contrasts as are-were you to compare them, as Zhang did in the masterclass-their respective bodies of work. Beside him was Jia, there to moderate the discussion. Zhang himself appeared on stage in the festival’s main outdoor venue-a stadium-like space named after Jia Zhangke’s masterpiece Platform (2000)-in a baseball cap and sports jacket emblazoned with official typeface celebrating the 70 th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. It should hardly be surprising that the man responsible for so many of China’s most prominent media events of the last thirty years-including the Jet Li blockbuster Hero (2002) and the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics-would inspire such feverish mania, and yet… it was. The hordes of people scrambled past our queue to form a parallel entrance queue for his eleven AM masterclass. Hundreds of adoring fans of one of China’s-and the world’s-most prominent directors, Zhang Yimou, began to spill through a nearby barrier, stampeding past bored-looking security standing uneasily in their black suits. Then an all-encompassing tsunami of shrieking swelled and crashed around us. In Pingyao, I could tell, they do things differently. A timid volunteer would later inform me, following a number of difficulties getting into any of the movies I was interested in, that it would be better to arrive at seven AM, a full two hours before the office opened. Now I found myself in a labyrinthine queue for tickets at nine AM that, judging by the rate people were emerging from the nearby ticket office, would last forever. Bearded and turtlenecked, I had been eagerly asked for pictures by random people attending the festival. I had seen Zhao Tao standing tall and beautiful in the queue for the opening film, apparently invisible to those around her. Already I had seen Jia Zhangke, festival founder and one of the greatest of all directors, mobbed by legions of fans. That adjustment is at least threefold: to the time zone, to the food and to the place. This was the second morning of the festival and, like all international delegates, I was still adjusting to being in China. I was loitering around the ticket office of the Pingyao International Film Festival, waiting for the day to begin. Jia Zhangke, Pingyao International Film Festival, Zhang Yimou In Directors, Festivals & Events, Interviews
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