Latest update February 11th, 2015 2:56 AM
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Li Xiaofeng said he watched GOLDFINGER for 40 times when he was a teenager. He liked Sean Connery. He moved to Beijing after been touched by Zhang Yuan’s BEIJING BASTARDS. After dropping out different universities, he joined director Lu Chuan’s crew of KEKEXILI. In the past 11 years, he was a literary consultant, screenwriter and film critic. He even acted as the leading role in Zhang Yuan’s DADA’S DANCE in 2007, but what he really wants to be is a director.
Second time producer Shen Yang (BLACK COAL, THIN ICE) made the decision to support Li after reading his synopsis at China Film Pitch and Catch in 2013. What she values is Li’s experience of writing and working with China’s top directors.
After 7 months of preparation and 43 shooting days, Li’s first feature NEZHA was selected into the 19th Busan International Film Festival New Currents section.
NEZHA is a story about two girls coming of age. Middle school classmates Xiaolu and Xiaobing become best friends. Xiaolu is innocent and direct while Xiaobing lives a more tumultuous life, torn between her depressed mother and her alienated father. Li successfully depicts both teenager girls’ delicate feelings and changes. NEZHA’s imagery looks poetic and full of the lust for life.
The 36-year-old Li Xiaofeng has accomplished a film that smells like teen spirit.
On the ending of NEZHA: We wrote about 4 different ending, but chose the imagery of Xiaobing riding a bike as the end. In the previous editions, Xiaobing just commits suicide. But we leave an open ending – there is no statement how she is. She might as well just leave her hometown and build a life elsewhere.
On nostalgia: The film is set in 1990s and I am presenting an impression, not a re-presentation of that era. For me, 1990s was an age of the new replacing the old, when people started to be thirsty for money. In merging the old and the new, things were mingled and tragedies happened, though not so big and historical as those in the 1960s and 1970s.
On favorite directors: Xie Jin, Edward Yang and Akira Kurosawa. When you watch THE HERDSMAN (Xie Jin, 1982), you can still feel its poetry. The opening scene of vast grassland with galloping horses echoes the hustling cars in the city in next scene. This is the beauty of cinema. For me, the cinematic beauty and poetry are more important than the story of a film.
On filmmaking: The whole society is now oriented towards economic development. But when it values money and success the most, it would affect the way of thinking in the film business. What is the charm of directing a film? It is to realize a creator’s dream. To pursue the dream, despite the unpredictable and uncontrollable factors. It is the most attractive craftsmanship in the film industry. I hope to restore some more classic aesthetics of filmmaking, like what Akira Kurosawa once said film should has its own beauty. Film is a very self-distinctive way of artistic expression. Film stands on its own. The classical aesthetics means a self-evident delivery: you don’t have to say much, but what you say can reach the audience.
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