MWFF 2017: Chinese Delegation Photo Highlights

Montreal World Film Festival

Montreal World Film Festival has great ties with the Chinese film industry. Serge Losique, the festival's president, in his youth worked on his first film in China. This year, a special Chinese section was instituted at MWFF entitled Chinese Film Festival with three best film prizes. Here are the winners in this category:

CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL

1st Prize:  THE AMBER by Chen Peng'ao (China)

2nd Prize:  THE BLOOD HOUND by Jianhua Liu (China)

3rd Prize:  ACROSS THE RIVER by Zhang Yueling (China)

On December 2, 2017, the festival also held a special press conference with all the Chinese film directors in attendance at MWFF 2017. The Chinese films artistic aspirations but mainly the promotional strategies especially in the western world were discussed. The group photo of the Chinese directors together with two key discussion and ideas animators is at the top of this article.

THE HIDDEN SWORD

The crew of the Chinese film The Hidden Sword that won the Best Artistic Contribution Prize at the festival's Closing Awards Ceremony, held two well attended special events at the MWFF 2017, both of them open to the general public:

On August 28, 2017, at Astral, they presented a Master Class with the director and screenwriter Xu Haofeng that lasted over 2 hours.

A day later, on August 29, 2017, at the Hotel Intercontinental, the film's team held a press conference where once again they talked about The Hidden Sward film, the history of the traditional sword fighting, the techniques of the masters, the necessity of the sword arts being preserved and passed onto the future generations, and also about how the film was conceived, made and promoted.

The members of the The Hidden Sward production team also attended the festival's closing ceremony on September 4, 2017 where Xu Haofeng received the prize on the Cinema Imperial stage.

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FOOTSTEPS

The team of the Chinese film Footsteps often attended screenings of other films at the festival which provided several picture taking opportunities.

Here are photos of the Footsteps director Wong Wai with his leading actors and crew members.

Footsteps consists of 4 stories dealing with the same theme of a woman's position in the society, how she behaves within a family and in a relationship to a man. The two main characters play the principal roles in all four stories which are spread from each other in 20 years periods, each story representing a one generation gap. It becomes very obvious how interestingly confident and liberated a woman progressively becomes, how much more personal freedom, power and confidence she gains.

Click on images to enlarge them. 

For more information about the festival visit the Montreal World Film Festival's website.

Article's dedicated web address.

MWFF 2015: WOLF TOTEM

WOLF TOTEM

2015, Colour, China, France, 121 min., World Greats 

Production Team

Director : Jean-Jacques Annaud

Screenwriter : Alain Godard, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Lu Wei, John Collee. D’après le roman de/Based on the novel by: Jiang Rong

Cinematographer : Jean-Marie Dreujou

Editor : Reynald Bertrand

Cast : Feng Shaofeng, Shawn Dou, Ankhnyam Ragchaa, Yin Zhusheng, Basen Zhabu

Music : James Horner

Film production and Sales : Prod.: Max Wang, Xu Jianhai, China Film Co., Ltd. / Beijing Forbidden City Film Co., Ltd..

This is a beautiful film to watch. It shows the vast vistas of grasslands and hills in Inner Mongolia, a northern region within China that borders with Mongolia, a country north of China. The cinematographic shots of the landscape and the sky are truly spectacular. The colours are rich and the light is used in the way to depict the true depth of the vast vistas.

The films documents the daily life of a nomadic tribe of horsemen that for centuries had lived in harmony with the surrounding nature and the animals, mainly wolfs and deer that inhabit it. They learned to adjust to the cyclical rhythms of their environment and various dangers the wilderness presented like the seasonal changes, extreme weather events, or the aggression of the wolfs. They also had a deep rooted respect for everything that surrounded them, a spiritual understanding of how everything is connected and how things affect each other, and a knowledge how to do live in harmony within their world.

The film also shows how the tribe's world of living in harmony and respect for surroundings began to fall apart as law enforcers and settlers encroach on their territory from the south. The ecosystem that functioned in perfect harmony for ages becomes all messed up, aggressed and annihilated, and the entire wolf population destroyed.

This film might not be for those who like high action movies, though it has quite a few tense, fast-speed-action moments. It might be rather for those who love to discover the old, traditional wisdom of living and surviving in the harsh, dangerous, natural environments and who would like to learn more about the tribesmen's innate understanding about all that exists in nature around them.

Film's Official Synopsis

In Jean-Jacques Annaud's film adaptation of Jiang Rong's best-selling novel, a young Beijing student is sent to live among the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Mongolia. Caught between the advance of civilization from the south and the nomads’ traditional enemies -- the marauding wolves -- to the north; humans and animals, residents and invaders alike, struggle to find their true place in the world. “Annaud is also clearly taken with the ecological message of natural balance that plays such a big part in the tribe’s relationship with the animals and landscapes around them and one of the film’s tangential pleasures is how Wolf Totem suggests the passing of the seasons, its impact on the yurt-dwelling nomads and the way it implicitly acknowledges how a centuries-old lifestyle is quickly being destroyed by the enormous country’s need to feed its ever-growing population.” -- Boyd van Hoeij (Hollywood Reporter) 

Director

French film director, screenwriter and producer Jean-Jacques Annaud began his career by directing television advertisements in the late 1960s. In his first feature film, BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR (1976), he used personal experience obtained during his own military service in Cameroon. The film won an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. His third film QUEST FOR FIRE received two Césars for best film and best director. Among his subsequent films: THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986), THE LOVER (1992), SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET (1997), ENEMY AT THE GATES (2001), TWO BROTHERS (2004), DAY OF THE FALCON (2011). 

Projections

Saturday August 29, 2015 - 07:00 PM - CINÉMA IMPÉRIAL
Saturday August 29, 2015 - 09:30 PM - CINÉMA IMPÉRIAL

MWFF 2013: The Ferry

The Ferry

PRODUCTION TEAM

Director : Shi Wei

Screenwriter : Shengsheng H. D'après/Based on: The Ferry. De/By: Shengsheng He

Cinematographer : Wang Yang

Editor : Wang Qiuyue, Zhang Sheng

Cast : Zhou Guangda

Music : Wang Yuanping

Film production and Sales : Peng Yanfang, Qiang Chen, Hubei Film Studio, 139 Wangsongyuan Road, Jianghan District, Wuhan, Hubei Prov. (Chine), tél.: (+86-27) 8548 89 03, chengiang1963@163.com Ventes/Sales: China Film Promotion International, Room 305, Red Chamber, 25 Xinwai Street, Beijing 100082 (Chine), lucy.cfpi@gmail.com

OFFICIAL FILM SYNOPSIS

"Deep in the Enshi mountains, the Tian family live near an old ferry. To keep a commitment made by their forebears, three generations of the Tian family have helped people cross the river without collecting a penny for the ride. Using a wooden punt, they ferry the villagers across the Dasha river which divides the village. A widower in his 60s, his son away outside the village, Tian Huai’en is the third generation of the family to work the ferry. These years Huai’en has been living alone in a small stone hut built by the villagers, spending every day and night with his ferry, living a lonely and monotonous life. One day, his son Chuanjie takes a break from his job to visit his sick dad. He does not understand why Huai’en insists on running a free ferry. To explain, his father recounts how when Chuanjie’s great grandfather and his family came as refugees, the villagers sheltered them. The Tians began providing the free ferry as a token of their gratitude, and a tradition was established. Now Chuanjie wonders whether he should relieve his father. After spending his vacation rowing the ferry, Chuanjie realizes its significance. As his contribution to its future, he decides to save up and replace the wooden punt with a motorboat. Will the tradition continue?"

The film, based on a true story, features superb photography of the natural, mountainous, rural setting. It was filmed in Hubei Province in China. The film skilfully portrays the poetry of the running river, the sounds the water or rain makes, the harmony of colours and forms. But most importantly, it stresses the traditional family and simply human values like, for instance, honour expressed in keeping a promises once made from one generation through the succeeding generations, as well as the honour and pride in one’s work skilfully performed - a free service provided to the local community.

The film deals with the relationship between a son, who arrives for a 10 day holiday from a busy concrete filled city, and his father, who lives in the heart of nature and talks to the water and the river, across which he ferries people back and forth many times per day. At first, their is a conflict between the two, but as the film progresses they both come to understand and respect each other.

At the Montreal World Film Festival 2013 Press Conference, the film's director Shi Wei has stated that he had based his film on the ancient Chinese way of seeing the world, of finding the middle way: there are the heavens and the earth, and in the middle their are the people, and the goal is to harmonize all those spheres of existence.

The film clearly shows that no on-screen violence or portrayal of sex is required to make a film that could make us reconnect to many of our common sensibilities and emotions, to our humanity, love and respect.

MWFF 2012: Latitude 52

LATITUDE 52
Montreal World Film Festival

First Films World Competition
2012 / Colour / 97 min / China

PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaking : Degena Yun, Leon Du
Scriptwriter : Zheng Xianmin, Zhang Jianjua
Photography : Zhang Hao
Montage : Zhang Jianhua
interpreters : Qi Hang, Wang Zheng, Boris Bedrosov, Fedor Selkin, Ren Shan, Ya Ru, Svetlana Tsvichenko
Production House : Yan Xiaoming, Mu Ren, Ming Zhenjiang, Mailisi Film Co. Ltd., 8-2201 Jian Dian Garden, Wen Hui Yuan North Street, Hai Dian District, Beijing (Chine), tél. & fax: (+86) 10 6225 43 01,dongguiyouxiang@163.com

Official description of the film:

LATITUDE 52 (LAO SHAO QIA)

In the late 1960s, growing ideological tensions between the two most powerful communist nations caused a final split between Soviet Union and China. In the dead of winter, A’ersileng, a young Chinese soldier, arrives at the tense border to man the Chinese watchtower. Under the command of Sergeant He Dazhuang, they watch over the border together, but A’ersileng struggles to adapt to the solitude. After a series of incidents, he is sent out to search the border for Soviet spies. There he stumbles across a love letter sent to Sergei, a Soviet soldier, blown over from the Soviet side. Between A’ersileng and Sergei -- two soldiers guarding two sides of the border, separated by a barbed wire fence, unable to meet or speak -- an unlikely friendship grows. A hidden friendship, so strong, that in the face of danger A’ersileng risks his life rushing across the border to save Sergei. But it is this fated first close encounter that would also to be their last. Years later a female Russian officer comes to China and delves into this faded past...

I met the two Chinese film directors Degena Yun and Leon Du, as well as the Russian actress Svetlana Tsvichenko on the terrace of the Hyatt Regency hotel that hosted the World Film Festival 2012 in Montreal. Leon Du told me that the film’s script was based on the recollections of a former Chinese boarder guard Zhang Xian Min who described many true instances of edgy situations on the Russian – Chinese border, but most interestingly, also true friendships that also developed along the border line during the very strained period of political tensions between the two countries.

The most compelling theme of the movie is the friendship that grows despite the spiked wire fence between the two watchtowers on the opposite sides of the border. Both towers have two solders stationed there for their military duty. The Chinese solders watch the Russian watchtower and minutely check on what the Russian guards are doing, and the Russian solders do the same. They do it day-long, day after day. They watch each other through binoculars, and pretty soon they learn a lot about each other. The two main characters on the opposite sides of the border learn to really like and respect one another, even to the extend that the Chinese solder risks his own life to save the Russian solder's life. During this incident he even disregards the strict rules and crosses over the boarder line.

The film clearly shows that a true friendship and a concern for another human being, even if that person is of a different race and political alliance, will flourish even under the most restrictive and repressive circumstances, and that the artificially created political differences and antagonisms fade in the face of the true human values.

The choice of the actor Qi Hang who portrays the main character -  the Chinese border guard who risks his life - is superb (see his photo above, at the very beginning of this post). He fits the role very well, and is able with his unassuming way of acting to project the humanity aspect into the toughest of the situations. With his performance, he makes a loud and clear statement that at the end all that really counts for us human beings is the humanity in each one of us, and not the political associations or other artificial persuasions that keep us hating and mistrusting each other.

The photo on the left shows  the two directors of the film (Degena Yun in the middle and  Leon Du on the right). To the left of them is the Russian actress Svetlana Tsvichenko who portrays a daughter of the Russian solder whose life was saved by the Chinese border guard. Years later, the character she plays arrives to China to find out all the details about what had happened on that fateful day on the Russian – Chinese border that preserved her father’s life.

Here are two more photos of Svetlana Tsvichenko on the terrace of the Hyatt Regency hotel, Montreal, 2012.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Image at the very top of the article courtesy of MWFF and the director of the film.

All other photos in this article by Nadia Slejskova.

© 2013 Nadia Slejskova