Cinema alumni share the spotlight
A tight-knit group of Concordia film production graduates has won back-to-back awards at several prestigious international film festivals.
Gu Tao, Pan Feng, Yu (Fish) Xun and Aonan Yang are celebrating multiple wins for the documentary film On the Way to the Sea and its sequel, The Vanishing Spring Light.
How did four former Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema film production students struggling with the rigours of their academic programs, their burgeoning creativity and student life in Montreal come to win multiple awards just a few short years after graduation? The answer is fate, friendship and a leap of faith.
When the 2008 earthquake hit his home province of Sichuan, China, and claimed 70,000 lives, Gu knew there was a story to be told. He returned to his native country to find his parents and to document life after the devastation. The resulting film, On the Way to the Sea, immediately began to make the rounds on the international film festival circuit.
On the Way to the Sea, which became Gu’s thesis project, was chosen as one of the top ten shorts at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Canadian filmmaker John Greyson described it as “an extraordinary visual poem…lush fragments of black-and-white Super 8 and 16 mm … interwoven with scraps of testimony from survivors (including Gu’s parents) to compose a mournful dreamscape of devastation.”
Gu explains how the project was a collaborative effort from start to finish. “Pan was the 16mm DP (director of photography) and the driver; Fish was the Super 8 DP and sound recorder, and Aonan (Green Ground Productions) was my producer,” he says. “I couldn’t have done such a great job without them.”
Nine awards later at film festivals in Italy, France and Brazil, among others, On the Way to the Sea continues to reel in honours.
The group has continued their collaborations, releasing a second documentary in September 2011, The Vanishing Spring Light, directed by Yu and produced by Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm (founded by Concordia cinema professor Daniel Cross). The project, which picks up on China’s West Street where On the Way to the Sea was shot, also features Gu as the editor.
The Vanishing Spring Light has already landed a number of awards: Best New Talent from Quebec/Canada award Montreal International Documentary Festival (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal); a special jury mention at the Whistler Film Festival; a distribution award at the Busan International Film Festival in Korea; and Best First Appearance award at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival; a prestigious award for an emerging filmmaker; and a first for a Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema alumnus. The film will have a theatrical release in Toronto thanks to its win at the Hot Docs Festival.
Ten thousand miles and the story of friendship
This story is about more than awards. It’s about friendship, and it began at 2777 Bourbonnière Ave. in Montreal when three of the four students became roommates.
“That was the best move ever,” says Yang. “It was very convenient. Tao would come by often, and Pan cooked and we talked about films, gossiped about our friends, all hoping that it would never end.”
They called themselves F4 after a Taiwanese pop group that was hot at the turn of the millennium. “I was the person who started this silly name, as a joke,” laughs Yu. “We’re the furthest thing from what the original group is about.”
“We’re more like the characters in Journey to the West,” adds Gu. “It was a popular Chinese TV series back in the 80s about a Chinese Buddhist Master in search of Buddha’s ‘real sutra’ with his three disciples, a monkey, a pig and a savage,” he grins.
The budding friendships helped Yu at the start of his studies. “Since I came from a mainstream film education background and had no sense whatsoever about its artistry, in my first two years I struggled with dropping out,” he says. “I used to draw on subjects like tea or temples, those obvious Chinese spiritual symbols. It was Tao who made the difference for me … with his help I started to appreciate the films in school.”
Yang, a native of Toronto, always thought of himself as more Canadian than Chinese. “Then I started film school and met them,” he continues, referring to Gu, Pan and Yu. “Who would have thought film school would get me back in touch with my roots?”
Yang has also been enjoying recent success with his film, A Winter Song. It won Best Short Film at Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival in November 2011. Pan is back in China, working on a personal documentary about Chinese women cinematographers.
There is an old Chinese proverb that says if you’re meant to meet someone, fate will surpass a thousand miles to make it happen. Fate seems to be at work for these four budding filmmakers whose friendship and working relationships were forged at Concordia.
“We grew up, and are still growing up together,” Yang says with a smile. “It’s a difficult industry, and the friends who you can share your passion and trust with are really hard to find ... it’s destiny that we met.”
Related links:
• Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
• Green Ground Productions
• EyeSteelFilm