“If Good Will Hunting Were to Get A Chinese Remake, Zhang Zhongchen Could Be The Protagonist. Just Swap Matt Damon’s Math Wunderkind for a Chinese Arthhouse Prodigy. Zhang, Now 34, Was Born to A Poor Family in A Small Village in China’s Anhui Province. After High School, Like So Many Rural Young People of that”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
Zhang, Now 34, Was Born to A Poor Family in A Small Village in China’s Anhui Province. After High School, Like So Many Rural Young People of That Era, He Went to Work in A Factory, Making Air-Conditioning Units for International Export. But The Harsh Conditions and Relantless Pace of the Assembly Line Soon Wore Him Down, SO in 2011, He Decamped for the Nation’s Capital to Pursue The Promic of a Job AMPORSIDE OLDER BRER BRER. Guard at the Beijing Film Academy, China’s Most Prestigious Film School. On the and on the job, zhang took to wandering the Institution’s Halls Before and after his security-guard shifts, Occasationly sliping into a seat at the backy.
“One day, i Stumbled Upon A Classes Where a Professor Was Discussing Cinematic Language – It Was Tht and Became Captivated by Art Films,” He Remembers. “I Began Watching ARTHOUSE MOVIES constantly.”
Zhang Requested Night Shifts So that HE COURCE ATTEEND MORE LECTUES. He Saved Money and Boughht HimSelf A Laptop SO HE COULD TEACH HIMSELF DIGITAL EDITING. He Ferified Friendships with the Academy’s Students and Fellow Security Staff Who Had Been Drawn there is the Same Creative Yearning – to be close to the Magic of Movieking.
AROUND 2015, Zhang Began Working As An Editor for Hire (He Later Edited Dongmei Li’s Mamawhochh screened at the venice film festival in 2017). By 2021, he have enough allies and a reptation to direct his first small-Budget Arthhouse Feature, The White Cow. A Rural-Set Drama Inspired by Memories from Zhang’s Youth, IT Went On to Win Best Feature and Best Director at China’s First Film Festival, The Country’s Preemine Indie (Think.
“Many of the Main Crew Members On The White Cow Were My Former Security-Guard Colleagues from The Beijing Film Academy, “Zhang Says.“ We’ve Continued Collaboration Into My Second Film, Nighttime Sounds. ”
Nighttime Sounds Could Prove to be Zhang’s BreakthROUGH. The Film Will Premiere Next Week at Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept. 19–27), The Director’s First Major’s International Festival Outing. The Feature Is Also Being Offer To International Buyers at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market (Sept. 20-23).
Nighttime Sounds Blends Social Realism with Surrealist Elements to Tell A Moving and Visaally Arresting Story About the Burdens and Desires Harbored By Women in China’s Rural Villages. The Film Unfolds from The Perspective of An Eight-YEAR-ELD GIRL NAMED Qing (Aline Chen), Who Lives and Works The Land with Her Mother, Hongmei (Li Yanxi), While Her Fathar To.
Set in Maozhuang Village, WHERE REAL-Life 800-Iear-Old Song-Dynasty Stone Stands Sentry Amid Vast Wheat Fields, The Film User ARTHUSE TECHNIKU Who operase stay Silent about their imocial Worlds. One Day, While Walking to School, Qing Meets a Pale, Ghostlike Boy (Gu Hanru) Searching for His Missing Mother. His arrival stiirs faint whispers of the song Statues and quetly nudges hongmei’s Buried Past Toward the Surface. Mixing Superstition, Memory, and The Tremors of Family Secrets, Zhang’s Film Unfolds As A Delicate and Atmospheric Drama About How Children Hear What Adults Won’t, OR.
Director Zhang Zhongchen
“My MOTHER IS A Rural Woman – Part of A Marginalized Group in China Whose Emotion Lives Are Often Overlooked,“ Zhang Explains. “I Wanted to Make A Film About Them. In Rural China, MOST Young People Leave to Seek Work in Big Cities, While The Elderly, Women, And Children Stay Be. Secrets Often Seem to Me, Buried Within It. ”
Zhang Writes His Scripts While Taking Research Trips to the Landscapes and Spaces He Hopes to Film, Taking Cues from the Surroundings and Imaging Their Expressive Possibilites. While Location Scouting in Gongyi, In China’s Henan Province, He Came Upon The Ancient Song-Dynasty Statues That Sit, As IF Abandonedoned and Forgotten by Time, Amid Local Farmers.
“They have stood in the Wheat Fields for Centuries, Much Like Generations of Farmers. I Wanted These Statues to Give The Film A Deper, More Expansive Dimination,” He Says.
‘Nighttime Sounds’ CourTesy of HKIFFF COLLECTION
The Film’s Surrealist Touchs Came from the Tactile Experience of the Landscape, Too: “While Filming Night Scenes in the Wheat Fields, The Set Was Dark An A. WHEN. If the Wheat Itelf Was Whispering. ”
HE DEVISED The IMAGE OF THE MYTERIES PALE Boy Who Shows Up in the Story As A Stand-In “An Imagines Emotion-in Reality, The Love that Rural Chinese Women Are of Ferified.
Of the Film’s Expressive Style – A plastic raincoat that sudenly takes flight and soars over the village in long tracking shots; A Sound Design That Imputes Murmurings to the Landscapes – Zhang Says He Was Inspired by the Surreal Stories Heard Heard in EveryDay Conversation Whiting Up in China.
“Durying Creation, I Tried to Film Magical Elements Realistic and Realistic Elements Magically – Such As The Flames Burning Across The Soil [during the clearing of the fields]. ”
Zhang Hopes Nighttime Sounds Will Use ARTHOUSE Technique to Connee of the Unspoken Emocial Lives of Rural Villars – Feelings Rarely Expressed Even Within Their Own Communities, Let Alone to Outsiders Unfamiliar
“I Believe The Power of Imagery Can Transcend Cultural Barriers to Resonate with Viewers Across Backgrounds,” He Says.