Wang Xiaoshuai: a graduate of Beijing Film
Academy, majored in directing. Born January 1, 1966.
Filmography
As Director:
Drifters (Er Di) (2003)
After the War (Jeon Jang Keu I Hu) (2001) a Korean
project consisting of three short films, one directed by Wang.
Beijing Bicycle (Shiqi Sui De Danche) (2000)
Suburban Dreams (Menghuan Tianyuan) (2000) also known as
The House or Fantasy Garden
So Close to Paradise (Biandan, Guniang) (1997) also known
as The Vietnamese Girl
Frozen (Jidu Han Leng) (1995) released under the
pseudonym Wu Ming (anonymous)
Suicides (Da Youxi) (1994)
The Days (Dongchun De Rizi) (1993)
As Actor:
Peering From the Moon (Henry Chow, 1991)
The Red Violin (Fran?ois Girard, 1998)
With his unique and sensitive filmic "auteur" characteristic,
young director Wang Xiaoshuai gradually formed his personal style
from his early work The Days (1993) to his latest
Drifters (2003). The Days was selected by the BBC as
the one and only Chinese-language film in a list of the top 100
best films. So Close to Paradise (1997) entered the main
competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998 and Beijing
Bicycle captured the Silver Bear award at the 51st Berlin Film
Festival. Being full of beautiful scenes and delicate plots, his
films are always concerned with those who are passive in society:
even though they have been dissimilated, are still struggling to
retain their dignity in life.
Childhood journeying
What has moving around so much in his life meant to Wang
Xiaoshuai? In the summer of 1966 (during the Cultural Revolution),
Wang was taken by his parents from Shanghai to Guiyang at two
months of age. He spent most of his childhood in Guiyang until he
was thirteen.
Guiyang is a small mountain city where most residents come from
other areas, particularly Sichuan
Province. They become Guiyang 'natives' after living a long
time in the city. When he was a boy, he studied painting, painting
ships and planes on pieces of paper, instead of traditional
subjects like sunlight, rain or dew.
Since his earliest days, Wang has kept moving from place to
place, a restless spirit that maybe was his fate. Even as a boy he
wanted to move from the country to the big city metropolis.
His memories of film from that time are of the
old
revolutionary films, like
Dong Cunrui
(1955) by Guo Wei and The Twinkling Red Star
(1974) by Li Jun and Li Ang. And his early "film experience" was
following older children and slinking into the cinema while tickets
were being examined and nobody taking any notice. Many of his
contemporaries enjoyed this kind of experience.
In 1979, Wang and his family moved to Wuhan, a metropolis that
linked several provinces with a huge floating population. Almost
every migrant had to face the lure of the material world and Wang
was no exception. He felt very confused as his sincere but stubborn
nature was very different from the native people's smart and
flexible characteristics. Meanwhile, the noble and glamorous nature
of Wuhan City also opened Wang's eyes wide. He only stayed for two
years but had got a lot from it.
Wuhan saw the beginning of Wang's adolescence and his first
personal journey started
there.????
In 1981, Wang Xiaoshuai came to Beijing and entered the high
school affiliated to the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His desire
to become a painter gradually disappeared in the following four
years of study. The early 1980s was a time when China's film
industry had been revived and was?making rapid progress.
Obviously, painting could no longer satisfy Wang's requirement
to better express his feeling of being in the world. In 1985, after
graduation, he enrolled in the directing department of Beijing Film
Academy, instead of continuing to learn painting.
At that time, the fifth generation film directors were carrying
out film exploration in China. Film subjects extended and many good
movies were made, including One and Eight directed by Zhang
Jundiao (1984) and Yellow Earth by Chen Kaige (1984). These
fresh works not only shocked domestic people who were tired of
revolutionary romanticism and revolutionary realism, but made quite
an impact across the world. Wang Xiaoshuai began to devour
masterworks from all over the world and became gradually fascinated
by the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Alain
Resnais and Yasujiro Ozu. Later, he added Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kitano
Takeshi and Abbas Kiarostami to his film canon.
Critical realism
Many film critics misread Wang's films and thought that they were
overly sad and desperate. For example, in
The Days, painter
Liu Xiaodong finally goes insane and performance artist Qi Lei in
Frozen gives up his life. Actually, the characters love
life. In the former, the days are still filled with hidden poetic
sentiment although simple and repeated. In one scene in the film,
Chun, the painter's wife, suddenly freezes and gazes direct to
camera for a sustained moment. It attempts to reflect the natural
emptiness of life, a touching but not affected moment in the film.
Wang found a very effective way to depict the constraints and
loneliness of life through their general characteristics. A pure,
simple and spiritual film.?
The Days was selected by the BBC as the one and only
Chinese-language film in a list of the top?100 best films
since the film industry was born. In Frozen, Qi Lei devotes
himself to?performance art. Just like Van Gogh, he longs for
human sentiment within himself but refuses to communicate with
others realistically. Qi Lei died by suicide instead of
performance, meaning that he finally discarded the artificial and
the real life.
The Days and Frozen seemed to be cold texts, but
they are delivered with Wang's affection and feeling for life. His
films made in that period have a strong philosophical flavor. As
for the mise en scene, the camera work is comparatively
sparse and scene composition impressive.?
Many directors like to shoot their first film in their hometown.
For example, Zhang Ming made Rainclouds over Wushan in his
hometown Wushan, Jia Zhangke filmed Xiaowu in Fenyang
County, Shanxi Province. However, Wang Xiaoshuai returned to Wuhan
where his parents lived when he set about to make his third film
So Close to Paradise. His camera was aimed at a teenage boy
who came to Wuhan from the countryside. More and more real images
were realized and captured by Wang, including the wailing siren,
noisy flea market, busy steamers and the river fog. In the film,
all material reality became glittery elements of a spiritual world
that reflected the wonder and mystery of film art. Thus, it can
reflect, or approach, man's spirit world.
 |
Wang's Beijing Bicycle, which was a winner at the Berlin
Film Festival Silver Bears Award, was a component of producers
Peggy Chiao and Hsu Hsaio-ming's 'Tales of Three Cities' series. In
Beijing Bicycle, Wang gave priority in the narrative to
individual growth as well as the transitions taking place within
the city itself. Wang said that "the bicycle has always been an
icon of Beijing and of China. Although the bike has lost much of
its glory, it remains an important mode of transportation."
Gui and Jian, the two leading roles in the film, have different
needs for the bicycle. Gui came from the countryside and therefore
the bike is not only a tool for living, but evidence of his
existence in the city. Losing it means his right to live in the
city has been lost. While for Jian, "his desire to either own it or
give it up is driven by pride. The functional role of the bike has
been replaced by its capacity for vanity and dignity." City and
rural living, traditional courtyards and skyscrapers, Wang
Xiaoshuai records the contradictory and chaotic images
passively.
He remains interested in depicting human nature, which is his
basic in making films. Almost everyone in them suffers a sober but
tortured self-awareness, sometimes fervent and sometimes
frozen.
(China.org.cn by Li Xiao and Daragh Moller, December 16,
2003)
