Interview: Director calls for establishment of short film developing system in China

Short film is one of the few approaches to study and explore the film language, and China should establish its short film developing system, said Chinese director Hu Wei in an interview with Xinhua.

Hu's 18 minutes short film "Ce qui nous eloigne" has been included in the Orizzonti section of the 73rd Venice Film Festival. French female star Isabelle Hupert played the leading role. The film illustrates a Chinese couple going to France to visit their daughter who was adopted from childhood, providing insight into cultural differences and identity recognition.

Explaining the theme of the film, Hu said: "Identity recognition and discretion is a long-term theme of exploration for me, which concerns the self-identification and self-positioning of artists."

He said since there is no national boundary for art, world artists would first confront with the identity issue, and exploring such a theme in works also serves as the channel for the thinking on his personal identity.

"Film is the time art. It does not have any relationship with duration. 18 minutes is enough to express this theme," said Hu.

The young director delivered impressive performance in various international short film competitions.

By virtue of Butter LampIn, he was awarded in 2013 with the Best Short Film of the 50th Golden Horse Award and also entered the competition unit of "Critics' Week" in Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, he was nominated as the candidate for the Oscar Best Live Action Short Film.

In Hu's opinion, the relationship between short film and long film resembles that between poems with novel.

Short film is one of the few approaches able to study and explore the film language, being quite pure and authentic to the essence of film, he said. All candidate short films of big film festivals present the bold exploration on the film language and drive the development of film art.

He told Xinhua that feature film could hardly achieve pure artistic exploration due to the limitation of cost.

On the contrary, short film has the advantage of low cost. Besides, as the broadcasting channel is targeted for elite audiences, directors thus have larger room for exploration, Hu said.

Regarding the absence of domestic short films, he calls for the quick establishment of short film developing system. "I hope that more people could realize the importance of short film and a systematic development mechanism, including special supporting and broadcasting channel, could be established as soon as possible," said Hu.

Hu has studied and lives in France, and said that France has a relative mature system from manufacturing to broadcasting. "ARTE TV station broadcasts the packaging short film of 90 minutes each week. The audience rating is sound. MK2 theaters would also broadcast short films," Hu noted.

In terms of the commercial tendance of Chinese films, the director that focuses more on the film art said film has amusement and commercial property as the industrial system and it's natural to focus on the commercial return. He also emphasized that filmmakers also have responsibility to produce some qualified products.

According to Hu, Chinese film market is developing rapidly and brings opportunities to filmmakers. "Everything is possible in China, and if a sound short film production and issuance mechanism could be established, it would play positive role in enriching the diversity of modern Chinese films," he concluded. Endit