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Zhao Dayong
By KIRK SEMPLE BEIJING

OVER the course of six years Zhao Dayong, an independent filmmaker from Guangzhou, China, spent many months living among the residents of Zhiziluo, an impoverished and forgotten village in the rugged mountains near the Myanmar border, and filming their lives.

Using his own money and simple digital filmmaking equipment he made “Ghost Town,” a quiet, hypnotizing, three-hour documentary that provides an extraordinary and intimate portrait of Chinese life.

Like independent filmmakers everywhere, Mr. Zhao worked with no guarantee of an audience, or even a place to show his work. By his estimates only a few thousand people have seen “Ghost Town” in China since he finished it last year. Several hundred more are scheduled to see it Sunday afternoon when the film has its international premiere at the New York Film Festival.

But what makes Mr. Zhao’s commitment particularly noteworthy is that his project was apparently illegal.

The Chinese government has decreed that all films must be approved by government censors before being distributed and screened, including in overseas film festivals.

Mr. Zhao, 39, said getting the approval of the censors was never a consideration. “It’s like asking to be raped,” he said this month in an interview here. “The government certainly has its own agenda. They want us to stop. But at the same time we know we’re doing something meaningful.”

This mixture of defiance and principle defines China’s nascent yet highly dynamic crop of independent filmmakers who pursue their art in apparent violation of the law.

For decades the Chinese government had nearly full control over all aspects of the film industry, from celluloid filmmaking technology to financing to distribution and screening. An underground filmmaking subculture emerged in China in the late 1980s, but it began to flourish only about a decade ago with the advent of inexpensive digital cameras and postproduction computer programs that helped put filmmaking further out of reach of the government authorities.

Many of this latest generation of Chinese filmmakers have no formal film training and shoot on minimal budgets, often with small crews, or alone. Ying Liang, whose films have won numerous prizes on the international circuit, shot his widely celebrated debut film, “Taking Father Home,” using a borrowed camera. Relatives and friends were his cast and crew.

“Unlike in previous generations, the stars of this generation are not only Beijing Film Academy graduates,” said Karin Chien, a film producer in New York and president of dGenerate Films, a company she founded last year to distribute this new crop of independent Chinese films outside China. “They’re journalists, they work at television stations, they’re painters, they’re people who just picked up a camera and made a film for $1,000.”

Output is still small. Several leading filmmakers put the annual production of unsanctioned, independent films at fewer than 200. But this work has provided unusual ground-level views of China that possess an unvarnished authenticity often missing from mainstream, government-sanctioned films.

“There’s been an extraordinary explosion of young filmmakers — quite a few of them are quite talented — who are dedicated to record and tell the real story of what’s going on in China,” said Richard Peña, program director for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which produces the New York Film Festival. “That story is really more fascinating than the story that the regime wanted to be told.”

These achievements have come at a price.

About 20 filmmakers have been banned from making films for two to five years, according to Zhang Xianmin, an independent film producer and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Others have received intimidating phone calls, had tapes confiscated or been detained and interrogated.

But according to several filmmakers and film scholars both here and abroad, the government recently appears to have adopted a somewhat hands-off, though highly watchful, posture toward this film vanguard, leaving it to operate in an undefined gray area.

It seems that as long as certain incendiary topics are not broached — among them the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, the Cultural Revolution, the outlawed religious group Falun Gong — then independent filmmakers are allowed to work.

Yet no one is absolutely sure where the boundaries are, or whether the government will start to clamp down more fiercely.

“You don’t know where that limit is,” said Zhang Yaxuan, a critic and documentary filmmaker who is organizing an independent film archive for the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. “You have to try to touch it. In the process of trying, you know.”

Huang Wenhai, a documentary filmmaker in Beijing, said that the process of filmmaking here “is the process of conquering your fear.”

Despite this pressure and uncertainty, there are now at least four major independent film festivals around the country and at least two theaters, both small, dedicated to showing Chinese independent films.

Meanwhile Chinese audiences largely remain out of reach. With cinemas and television off limits to their unsanctioned films, independent moviemakers are mostly restricted to screenings in front of small audiences in art galleries, bars, universities and homes.

As a result the most accomplished filmmakers have found their largest audiences overseas, especially at international film festivals.

“I feel very frustrated,” Mr. Zhao said. “I’m a Chinese filmmaker, and of course my audience should be the Chinese people, especially since my films are about ordinary working Chinese people.” He added, “That would be more valuable than winning an international film festival.”

Mr. Zhao began his career in the fine arts. He studied oil painting at an art academy before dropping out and working as a professional artist and advertising director in Beijing and Guangzhou. He eventually founded his own advertising firm as well as a journal for contemporary arts, and he opened a gallery in Shanghai.

His first documentary was “Street Life,” a portrait of recyclers on the streets of Shanghai, which had its premiere at the Viennale in Austria in 2006. “Ghost Town,” his second film, is a series of vignettes and scenes that explore the economic struggles, religious beliefs and relationships of the residents of Zhiziluo, which had once been a local county seat for the Communist Party but was largely abandoned by the government.

Mr. Peña said he had heard about the film for some time but finally viewed it in the 11th hour of the festival’s film-selection process. “It’s one of those films that, when we saw it, there was little question in our minds that it should be included,” he said. “Ghost Town” is the first documentary from China’s new generation of digital independent filmmakers to be included in the New York festival.

Mr. Zhao, who continues to support himself by shooting television advertisements, said he had no illusions that his films would ever make him much money.

“For me, making films is a way of life, not the means to it,” he said. “And I really enjoy this life.”

Zhang Jing contributed research.
 
 

From left, director Steven Soderbergh of 1989's ''Sex, Lies, and Videotape,'' with actors Laura San Giacomo, Andie MacDowell, and Peter Gallagher at this year's Sundance Film Festival. (Getty Images Photo / Andrew H. Walker)

First an Intro by Mitch Santell

My Great Uncle Alfred Santell was a teenager when he started in the film business back in 1914. If anyone had told him before the end of 1929 that the stock market would crash and would this would bring in a global depression, he might have said, "your nuts."

Now fast forward 2008. The decline of the film business I believe started in 2008 with the writer's strike. It has continued to shift as more and more studios are going on line. Studios can no longer afford to pay a single actor 20 Million Dollars when you could make five to ten pictures for the same amount.

In looking at the film business now, I so admire Steven Soderbergh for his willingness to take action and risk. His most recent film he is releasing on DVD at the same time he is putting it in movie Theaters.

Now onto our article which was originally written by Ty Burr at the Boston Globe.
PARK CITY, Utah - Two decades ago, a young, unknown filmmaker named Steven Soderbergh arrived in this mountain resort town with his first movie under his arm. The 1989 Sundance Film Festival transformed him into an overnight star of the American independent film movement; the critical and financial success of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" established Sundance as the the white-hot center of the alt-movie universe.

Twenty years later, the festival has cooled to an uncertain ember, reflecting a business model that is slowly but surely dying. Soderbergh arrived at Sundance 2009 with a rough cut of his latest film, "The Girlfriend Experience," which follows an upscale Manhattan call girl as she negotiates a bleak new economic era. Like the film's New York City, the Sundance that Soderbergh returned to was a chastened affair. Night may be falling on the land of "Little Miss Sunshine."

The economy is in tatters, and the indie film numbers aren't adding up. A number of specialty distributors closed shop in 2008, and the big buys of last year's Sundance - "Hamlet 2," "American Teen," "Choke" - proved a bust when they were released at lower altitudes. Park City lodging was down 10 percent during the 2009 festival; the corporations kept their tents and gift bags at home.

While some films sold this year, the action was muted and the figures didn't stagger the sensibilities.

As if mirroring this uncertain landscape, few of the movies at Sundance 2009, which wrapped yesterday, connected with audiences or the zeitgeist. There were films that were well received - the dark "Sin Nombre" and the rollicking "Rudy and Cursi" from Mexico, the blaxploitation goof "Black Dynamite," an inner-city melodrama called "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," which won both the Jury and Audience prizes for Dramatic Film when the awards were handed out Saturday night. There were more movies, however, that felt like business as usual, and business isn't what it used to be.

All of which begs the questions: Whither Sundance, and whither the American independent movie? In some senses, the festival returned to its roots this year. Hollywood star vehicles like the Richard Gere police drama "Brooklyn's Finest" and "I Love You Phillip Morris" (Jim Carrey playing a true-life gay con man as if he were Ace Ventura) were derisively received, while offbeat items like "Push" and the truly bizarre "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" (man gives birth to fish) prompted excitement and head-scratching. If you were seeking Big, you were disappointed. If you cherished the small, there were rewards.

Still, no film became the film - the one you just had to see at Sundance - even as, ironically, last year's festival was vindicated on Thursday when the 2008 entry "The Visitor" and Grand Jury Prize winner "Frozen River" received acting nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.By far the festival's most galvanizing onscreen moment was the inauguration of President Obama. On Tuesday morning, crowds clustered around TV sets; deals and panels came to a halt, and the screening rooms of Park City were mostly empty. How could mere movies compete with a reality this historically and emotionally resonant?

By contrast, the coming-of-age comedy-drama - a genre pioneered and perfected at this festival - is showing its age, and if you're looking for what ails Sundance, Greg Mottola's "Adventureland" offered dispiriting evidence. Based on the filmmaker's college years and set at a tatty amusement park, the film is amusingly written and has the necessary hip oldies on the soundtrack, yet it says nothing that dozens of previous coming-of-age movies haven't already told us.

At least "An Education," a glossy drama set in 1961 London that won the World Cinema Audience Award for Drama, introduced a new and buzzed-about star in the thoroughly charming person of 23-year-old Carey Mulligan. The British actress also appeared in the death-in-the-family drama "The Greatest", while "You Won't Miss Me," starring Stella Schnabel (daughter of painter/director Julian) and France's "Unmade Beds" spun grittier, less easily resolved, and more satisfying variations on the coming-of-age formula.

And, as usual, the documentaries were superb. Year in and year out, Sundance's nonfiction offerings are richer, truer, and more provocative than the narrative features, and a strong 2009 slate of environmentally minded documentaries like "Crude" (Amazon Basin damage), "The Cove" (dolphin depredation), and "Dirt: The Movie" (what it says) was balanced by other sharp observations. "Afghan Star," an unexpectedly touching look at a war-torn country potentially transformed by an "American Idol"-style TV show, was one of the few Sundance films this year that drew cheers from its audiences - and, on Saturday night, an Audience Award for World Documentary.

Yet the question hung there in the blue Park City skies: How do you sell a movie like "Afghan Star" or "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" in a hard new world? The festival's most crowded industry panel was not coincidentally called "The Panic Button," in which seven of the specialty film business's leading lights - including Soderbergh - argued over where it was all going.

Sony Classics copresident Michael Barker insisted that "There are silver linings here," citing "Frozen River" as proof that the process works. Focus Features head James Schamus, taunted by moderator Geoffrey Gilmore as "the fool that bought 'Hamlet 2,' " grinned, took it, and said, "If [the movie] came along this year, I'd do it again."

Yet there was a growing realization not only that the rules have changed but that they may not have been very good rules in the first place.

Everyone agrees that the standard models of indie theatrical distribution and exhibition are broken; everyone at Sundance and in the industry is grappling with how best to replace them.

Some are even sure they have answers. Consultant and panelist Peter Broderick touted a brave new world of "hybrid distribution," controlled directly by the filmmaker that combines website direct sales, video on demand, Internet and TV deals, cellphone distribution - and, yes, a theatrical release when and if necessary. Much of this is already in place, Broderick pointed out, and, in some cases, has proven successful. What look like microprofits to a studio can be extremely macro to an independent director.

The most unsettling thought, though - the real game-changer - is that the movie theater audience may have gone away for good. Said panelist Mark Gill, head of the independent production company the Film Department, "My son doesn't care what format [a movie] comes in. He cares how fast he can get it and if it can come to where he is."

That may be the hardest lesson to take in at the close of Sundance 2009: That everything learned in the past quarter-century means absolutely nothing going forward.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movies.com.

 
 

This is very cool. Recently saw a blog sharing the true story of making the film Dream Awake. Check out the below the lessons learned through the process.

Looking forward and backward at the same time ...

Guess it's that time of year once again, resolutions and all that?  I'll certainly toss out a few here, but more importantly I'd also like to throw out what I'd do different when I shoot my next film.  In other words, what lessons did I truly learn from this one?  Now some of us might call this listing our regrets, but I prefer taking that in a more positive stride.  I mean, aren't we all here to learn, life being quite a demanding school and all that? ...

Lessons Learned
(I'm sure there are more)

1) Hire the 1st AD sooner -- Scheduling a low budget indie and then logistically pulling it off is paramount in the low budget realm.  A good 1st AD is essential to making that happen.  We had him, but he came aboard awful late in prep.  That did handcuff us some, but it wasn't deadly.  However, next time that will be higher on my priority list ...

2) Hire an editor for the shoot -- I now see the logic of that.  Having someone doing a rough cut when we were shooting certainly would have helped, not only to see what we had but to insure that we go after what we didn't ...

3) Hire a publicist before, during and after the shoot -- Is there such a thing as too much publicity?  For indies like us I doubt it, but when it's very minimal you're starting out of the gate behind the curve.  We didn't hit this one right ...

4) Hire someone to really control the budget -- Since we didn't do #1 on cue, that put us behind the momentum of the shoot in keeping track of cash, cash flow and cash reserves.  Having someone experienced and aware of this should help close that gap ...

5) Be more competent -- This one I direct directly at me, being the director and all, and everything else I was, or still am.  As a perfectionist at heart, I was sometimes disheartened at how thin I had to spread myself out.  I knew sometimes I had to set certain priorities of the moment and let other things drop by the wayside, always hoping others could pick up the slack.  Sometimes that happened, sometimes not.  But no matter what, I was (am) always responsible in the end ...

6) Fewer challenging locations -- Yeah, let's go film a feature on a high mountain and bring up a lot of people and equipment where no motorized vehicles can go.  And then let's do it in the heat of the summer and go where there are no facilities for everyone.  And let's do it all low budget under the regulations of the federal government and local Native American tribes.  Right ...

7) More prep time -- Don't we always want this luxury?  Yeah, but I only want a couple more days. Just a couple more, can't I?  It may seem that upfront more prep time will add to the budget, but properly managed more prep time can certainly save you time (and money) on the back end ...

8) Less post time -- This is only so because ours has gone on longer than normal, and certainly longer than was ever intended.  If we had done things normally, this probably wouldn't be here.  Anyway, next time we will have a real Post Supervisor, as I've shockingly realized this is not my forte ...

9) More $$$$$ -- Ha, no brainer, huh?  Cash dough, we can always stand to swim with more.  The trick is taking those extra dollars and stretching them out better than before, since this is where the rubber will always meet the road.  Good luck doing that in this economy.  You may have to hit up that rich eccentric Uncle, or learn to count cards in Vegas ...

10) Less hats to wear -- As a low budget indie filmmaker this is usually difficult to avoid.  But, please forget about the romance of being a filmmaker, because just being in love with the idea of being a filmmaker can never sustain you when you have to actually do the hard work.  On the other side of that coin, when those hard realities do set in, don't try and to do it all.  You may harm the project beyond what you can repair.  In other words, get out of the way of your ego and don't fall in love with yourself ...

11) Relax & have more fun -- At the heart of it all.  Always keep your vision and grow with it, but let go, relax and have fun within it.  There were times I got so caught up in the frenzied moment that I didn't savor it enough before it passed.  Each day slow it down a bit and take it all in, because who knows, you may never get to make another film again ...