Film defines Chinese life and aspirations

Director Lu Chuan's movie in the China Pavilion gets rave reviews, Shi Yingying reports.

Filmmaker Lu Chuan is once again dazzling audiences with his short film, The Road to Our Beautiful Life, being shown at the China Pavilion's multi-screened theater during the Expo 2010 Shanghai.

In this 8-minute film, he features four generations of Chinese and uses special effects to utilize the theater's advanced audiovisual equipment.

"As a story teller, I'm always curious about how to use special effects to enhance my ideas," said Lu.

Surrounded by three 20-meter-long, 7-meter-high screens and a round screen on the ceiling, visitors' first impressions of the theater are grand and spectacular.

As the first stop at the China Pavilion, the short movie tells the story of China's progress in the last 30 years from the perspective of four generations of Chinese.

Without narration, the movie footage represent interpretations by average people of their homeland's big events, such as China's opening up, the return of Hong Kong and athlete Liu Xiang's world record. From country to city, poor to affluent, these selected Chinese represent the country and define its people.

"I felt emotionally attached to the Chinese, as if it was myself that witnessed the country's history in the past 30 years," said Mauricio Gonzalez Gordon, a visitor from Spain.

The conversation between three individual but connected screens helps to deliver the director's message. "Different from the normal cinema screen, the multi-screen equipment allows more space for story telling," said Lu.

Another highlight of the movie is the representation of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. "It is the first time that a disaster is presented in our national propaganda films. People showed how tough they could be by enduring this catastrophe," he said.

Lu made a short public service advertisement called An Encounter soon after the Wenchuan earthquake. "During that period of time when the whole society was immersed in the deep sorrow, I wanted to cheer up people with my type of humor in An Encounter, while The Road to Our Beautiful Life is more serious."

Born in 1971, Lu regards himself as a seventh generation director. "The sixth generation directors such as Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke gained fame from foreign film festivals, while the seventh generation filmmakers are made famous by their audiences," said Lu.

Lu's latest film City of Life and Death, also known as Nanjing! Nanjing!, grossed 150 million yuan ($22 million) nationwide soon after it was released in the summer of 2009, which made him the fourth director to achieve this record in China.

"I respect the courage of the sixth generation directors when they try to reveal the dark side of the society in their films, but you can't force children born in the 1980s and 1990s to discuss the same issues," said Lu.

(China Daily 06/04/2010 page36)