Shanghai Daily News

The videos made by Shanghai's undergraduates and young people on DV cameras are now receiving international recognition but more needs to be done to encourage the popularity of this evolving art form, writes Xu Wei.

For fresh film art graduate Huang Kai, making movies is no longer a dream and the eerie scenes in his 15-minute DV work, "And I Knew," show that he is no ordinary filmmaker.

"This is my favorite DV work. I made it when I was in university," says Huang. "I was trying to tell a sentimental story in a creative way - the key color of black and white and the harsh music combine to provide an atmosphere as edgy and avant-garde as its theme."

Clad in a white T-shirt, 22-year-old Huang looks like a big sweet, naughty boy. If not for the passion and maturity beyond his years that can be seen in his eyes, it's hard to believe that this young man has already garnered so many awards on DV-making.

And now "And I Knew" - which innovatively explores homosexuality and a bittersweet love triangle - has been selected to be screened at the 7th Munich International Short Film Festival to be held in October.

The picture has won a cluster of accolades including "Best Fiction Film" at the Shanghai University DV Film Festival 2004, "Best Film" at 7th Cross-Strait, Hong Kong and Macau Student Film and Video Festival and "Best Story" in the Canopus DV Films Competition.

However, for the talented Huang - who now works as an editor on the well-known local TV program "Documentary Editing Room" at Shanghai Television Station - DV-making did not interest him at first.

"As a high school student, I was crazy about computer science and won some prizes," Huang says with a smile. "My affinity with DV-making started late in the university's film appreciation class where I was able to view a number of works by film masters. Then I began my new journey into film art."

In 2002, Huang, while a freshman, made his 40-minute maiden DV work "East-South-West-North," which depicts a contemporary delicate and complicated sexual relationship on campus.

The success of this short picture, which won "Best Fiction" award at Xi'an DV Films Festival in 2002, provided the impetus for Huang to move on to further creative work.

In his three-year undergraduate study, the energetic Huang directed more than 10 works including the documentary "Back and Forth," the music video "Girl and Quartet" and the fictional "Doctor City." All involved teams of five-to-10 people with Huang's classmates working as producers, cameramen, make-up artists and art directors.

"We took our own DV cameras out for shooting, asked friends studying in the Performing Department of the Shanghai Theater Academy to act and we noted down each cost item," Huang recalls. "Though we still lacked experience, it was important to build up a professional way of operating that we could follow from now on."

With the popularization of DV cameras, people may think university students still remain isolated in their "ivory towers" but they're wrong. Huang and his fellow student are sensitive to changes in the world they live in.

Earlier this year, Huang's "Dr City" won the "Most Outstanding Personality Prize" at the Sony China New Force DV Film Festival and was named "Excellent Mainland Film" at the 8th Cross-strait, Hong Kong and Macau Student Film and Video Festival. It was also nominated as "Best Fiction Film" at the 17th Filmfest Dresden in Germany. Only 64 works out of a total of 1,600 received a nomination.

Wang Beibei, the hero of the story, is an ordinary white-collar worker who lives a busy but monotonous life. He feels lonely and has a constant fantasy that an episode from a work by Marguerite Duras has happened to him: "One day, I was already old, in the entrance to a public place, a woman came up to me. She introduced herself and said: 'I've known you for years'."

"The story deals with aphasia, a psychological disorder common in urbanized life," explains Huang. "These sufferers have decent jobs but are overwhelmed by a nameless feeling of loneliness. Their ability to communicate with others is weakened by living in a bustling metropolis."

For Liang Yufei, a sophomore in film art at Shanghai University, inspiration comes from reality and takes the form of a mixed sense-and-sensibility style in her recent DV work "See."

The storyline has some similarities with a shocking Sudan famine photograph taken by Kevin Carter, a South African Pulitzer prize winner. The photo of a vulture hovering next to a starving child triggers people's anger at Carter's seemingly indifference to the dying child.

"The journalist in my picture sees an act of stealing on the street but she doesn't offer a hand, only recording the incident," Liang says. "In my short film, I wanted to question whether the value of news is more important than the value of a human being."

However, both Huang and Liang have had to confront the problems of finding funds to make films and being overcharged when paying fees for shooting at some venues.

"In foreign countries, with a letter of recommendation from the school, students are allowed to make DV works at places for a low fee," says Dr Liu Haibo, Liang and Huang's teacher at Shanghai University.

He says that unlike commercial films, the DV pictures made by students are usually school assignments or non-profit works.

The movies are shot on DV and edited on computers.     With the popularization of     DV cameras in the late-1990s, the new art form was                  particularly embraced by university students.

Many young film enthusiasts are now able to realize dreams held since their childhood because DV technology offers an affordable way to express their individual creativity.

"Compared with a film production company, DV works usually have flexible shooting schedules and much smaller budgets," says Yang Jian, a postgraduate student at Shanghai University and director of a 19-minute horror movie titled "W.C."

Yang was inspired by his own experience when his was a child. "The toilet of my home was shabby, dark and it was easy to imagine horrible things. I frequently thought there was a ghost behind me," Yang says with a chuckle.

Dr Liu also attributes the flourishing of DV-making to the Internet which provides a platform for DV lovers to exchange ideas and to give them access to view the DVD works of film masters.

"Just as Jia Zhangke - a talented sixth-generation Chinese film director - says: The new era of 'amateur filmmaking' is already here," Dr Liu says. "DV filmmaking breaks down the barriers of traditional film production and creates a wider and more vibrant future for China's film industry."

However, due to a lack of outlets to show DV works, there's still a long way to go for the future development of the evolving art form.

"Only a few places in Shanghai screen and exhibit these DV works," says Ying Yuli, a documentary director and film art professor at Tongji University. "As well, no special DV filmmaking foundation has been set up in local universities so a lot of excellent DV works have little chance of being widely seen."

Professor Ying's view is echoed by Yang and Huang who note that in the future, DV filmmakers will probably have to merge into the mainstream where they can learn more professional filmmaking techniques and have a bigger platform from which to disseminate their works.

"DV helps me to realize my film dreams," Yang says. "Nevertheless, for a person  who really wants to devote himself to advancing the national film industry, that's far from being enough."