brappy!

Director Li Yang led our class on Tuesday. He spoke at length about He was the director of Blind Shaft, which he claims is the first completely independent film made in the PRC. Because he worked outside the system, his film was banned, and he was banned from working within the Chinese film system for 3 years.

For his next film, he worked within the system, and it is about to be relased. Some interesting things that he said included:

• Chinese directors have rights to final cuts of their films
• As a director, you must have immense problem-solving skills
• To make a good film, you must follow the "5Ws" of Journalism - "What do you want to say? How do you want to say it," etc.
• "Lacking freedom, artists lack imagination"
• Government-sanctioned films in the mainland often just want to show the positive side of the life in the mainland, not the real life here.

What is becoming readily apparent, through hearing all of these filmmakers speak, is that there is a lacking market for Chinese films, and that a major struggle for their future will be to find an economic model for making film work. Few talk about opportunities in television, advertising, etc. Perhaps next week, we will discuss that more.

After Li Yang spoke, we went on a hutong tour, then had dinner. The hutong tour is well documented in this photoset. I don't think I can add anything to the masses of literature written on hutong life, other than to say that they're interesting, but likely poorly-suited for modern life in an urban environment.