MCLC: interview with Lou Ye

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Xin Zhou <xin.zhou66 at gmail.com>
Subject: interview with Lou Ye
*******************************************

Source: Film Comment (6/30/14):
http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/interview-lou-ye

Interview: Lou Ye
By Xin Zhou 

For sightless performers, it takes a special kind of trust to go before
the camera, knowing that they won’t be able to see the results. Chinese
director Lou Ye’s recent film, set in a massage center staffed by the
blind, implicitly explores this process, as well as love, frustration, and
everyday life for the workers. In a number of scenes, the images are even
blurred or dimmed in a deliberate attempt to imagine how the blind
perceive the world.

It all takes place in the city of Nanjing, where Lou shot Spring Fever
(09) during his five-year ban from filmmaking by the film bureau of
China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), and
where that film eventually had its China premiere at the 6th China
Independent Film Festival. Since then, Lou has enjoyed a relatively smooth
and prolific period of his career, completing three films since 2011. As a
pioneer of France-China art-house co-productions, he is a regular
recipient of grants and production funding from the National Center of
Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC) in France, an influential force in China
through its support of emergent and established “independent” filmmakers.

Commercially speaking, it’s a good time to be a fictional filmmaker in
China today, though the avant-garde ranks of the last generation of the
collectively trained Beijing Film Academy graduates who tasted celluloid
filmmaking in the Nineties have been overtaken by more polyphonic and
vernacular documentarians, video-makers, and independent festival
programmers.

FILM COMMENT interviewed Lou Ye about how to visualize the experience of
the blind, the prospect of political and commercial censorship, and the
explosive domestic box office in China. Blind Massage screens on June 30
and July 2 at the New York Asian Film Festival.

Q. This is your second film shot in Nanjing, though you were born and
raised in a family of intellectuals in Shanghai.

Nanjing gives me the impression that it’s more ordinary than Shanghai, but
the same as Shanghai. There’s something in there, something deep, that’s
invisible but very attractive, which does not change with time.

Q. Did you do any research about the relationship between the blind and
cinema? It could be a hypnotic experience for a masseuse
 to sit in a cinema space.

Yes. For example, I tried to listen to a film in a cinema for the blind
like the blind do. This is a film about without sight, so it added various
restrictions to many visual aspects. But the film is made for people to
see, therefore since the very beginning, we’ve been working within a
paradox.

Q. What was the filmmaking like, in terms of visualizing the experience of
the blind? Everybody except the nonprofessional blind actors and actresses
are in fact able to see...

Actually, I asked the professional actors with sight to be sightless
during the shooting. They wore opaque contact lens that rendered them
nearly unable to see, and they needed the assistant directors to guide
them to their marks during the shooting (for example, Qin Hao who plays
Sha Fuming and Huang Xuan who plays Xiao Ma). This is the same as the
other blind actors/actresses. Or they closed their eyes (such as Guo
Xiaodong who plays Doc Wang) and gave themselves completely to their sense
of touch and to the help from the blind actors/actresses around during the
blocking and shooting.

And of course, with the participation of the blind actors and actresses,
our shooting went beyond the daily routine of a common production. For
example, for each set or each location, before the shooting day, there had
to be two or three days for all the blind actors and actresses to get
familiar with the space and touch all the props on the set under the
guidance of a specialized AD for the blind—cups, tables, and chairs. Then
we’d be ready to shoot. No grip track nor lighting cable was allowed to
run across the set to avoid possible stumbles. Once a prop was in place,
it could not be moved or else the blind actors and actress wouldn’t be
able to reach it working from their memory. Trying to visualize the
experience of being unable to see, with the visually handicapped, was
already very exciting itself.

Q. From the beginning, the film doesn’t intend to be funny or
entertaining, and this dramatic mood is amplified by the ambient
 sound scored by Johan Johansson. But my impression of the novel is that
it begins with quite a few ironic jokes.

I prefer to tell you directly what has happened. And I think making this
sightless film itself is ironic. On this point, it’s similar to the novel.
And the music is also very simple and straightforward.

Q. It’s possible to interpret your use of the sightless as a metaphor for
your own relationship to the mainstream world.

To me, the world of the sightless is broader and greater than a metaphor.

Q. Zeng Jian, the cinematographer of Blind Massage, has collaborated with
you since Spring Fever. It feels like most of your collaborators come from
an independent film background.

Actually, my collaboration with Zeng Jian dates back much earlier. He was
the still photographer of Purple Butterfly [03], the editor of Summer
Palace [06], and then the cinematographer of Spring Fever [09]. He knows
my films very well. Some of my collaborators are from independent film
background, some are not, and they’re all very excellent.

Q. Does the exploding box office in China frustrate you or your production
company? Or even lure some of your staff to more commercial filmmaking?

There’s definitely some influence, because everyone is talking about box
office with you. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the Chinese film
industry in its early phase. As to my staff, on the contrary, many of them
do come from the world of commercial filmmaking. On this point,
independent filmmaking is kind of the same as a blind massage center,
where people getting tired from making money can take a break.

Q. Do you want to talk about censorship? How did it go this time? Any
interesting stories to share?

I don’t want to talk about censorship. This time had nothing different
from the previous experience. In general, no matter how the directors here
appear to be relaxed, in the face of the censorship, there’s no
interesting story, and there won’t be any.

Blind Massage screens on June 30 and July 2 at the New York Asian Film
Festival.