"My work has basically focused on the field of pure fiction, and from what I've seen, Wang has focused on documentary." "I'm very curious about" "Wang's new film, which is fiction." "He is an extraordinary filmmaker." "His work in this short film is just as exceptional as all his other work." "Yesterday we watched a very different film by Wang, which was also very accidental." "Accident is a very important element in film, in documentaries too." "In a sense, my film is a documentary, and it's experimental, because it's about image and sound, about how images and sounds can be separated." "Initially, I wanted to film something else." "It was a similar film, but in its essence it was quite different." "It was based on two posters at Madrid airport about domestic violence." "Aposter that said:" ""If you mistreat a woman you're not a man", which was very strong graphically, the photo and also the words." "I thought about how to make this film, using the mechanism of a camera with a zoom lens to distance myself from the subject, and once we were ready, that same day, we found out..." "I'd travelled a lot in that period, and that poster was always there." "I often ended up at Gate 51, and the poster was always there." "Aweek before the shoot the DOP and I checked the location:" "the poster was still there, no problem." "But they changed it, the day before the shoot." "It was really amazing." "Forsix months or even longer, the poster was there, and suddenly it's gone." "So I had to improvise because we already had a filming permit, which you pay by the hour." "It's very expensive to film at the airport." "And I'd hired a 35mm camera with a team, sound recordist, etc." "So I had to film." "I had to find anothersolution... with the same basic idea, which was that the camera would be filming, searching, portraying or describing." "And the sound recordist..." "The images were a single shot, a long take, and I wanted to do the same thing with sound in mono, so the sound recordist would freely wonder around the airport, continuously recording sound, which we wouldn't edit either," "and occasionally the image and sound would match, as happens in the film." "And the sound recordist could, and did, occasionally appear." "I think it was great to make these two films together because they reflect our interests quite well." "We have similar interests, and different styles." "One thing that I think" "Wang also considers important is the idea of... capturing some of what happens at a certain time in his society." "He makes the kind of films that are often described as... in French they use the word engagé, here we often say "militant", it's basically socially committed cinema, cinema which is committed to its time" "and to portraying a situation and trying to leave that society's mark." "I think it's fascinating to see how two filmmakers," "probably only a few days apart, in the same period, filmed something from ourown lives" " not a paradigmatic reality, because I don't expect Terminal 4 at Madrid airport to express the whole of Spanish reality and similarly, the small story that Wang films in a Hang village isn't paradigmatic of his country." "But it's interesting to see how, in the world we live in, two filmmakers, who are also friends, who once shared a space in Paris, can make two films that show such radically different universes." "One which is comfortable, opulent, and also superficial, and the other is about pure survival." "It shows the risk..." "In our society we often complain about unemployment, lack of communication, but here we see that the characters in Wang's film face starvation, survival in the strictest sense." "One thing that stands out in his films, is an attitude that I share:" "he doesn't just take a convention, a paradigm of filmmaking, and simply apply it because it's been proven to work." "Instead, each film is a reflection on its specific content, in order to find the form and the expressive tools that are appropriate to it." "I think that the two films by Wang that we saw yesterday and today, are exemplary in their use of resources and rejection of any that don't add expressivity in terms of what he wants to say." "In my opinion, a film gives you something very important, because it makes you more aware of other people." "What we experience when we watch a film helps us to understand others or other films, and to be able to tell if somebody isn't truly dedicated to filmmaking." "Obviously, a film allows us to understand a person's inner world." "To me, this is one of the most important aspects when it comes to filming, especially because I get so much out of film." "I can be in a society that is not my own, in surroundings and a context I don't understand, but just by being there, precisely because of the way I approach film, my way of observing reality" "and approaching and understanding others," "I can understand those details from within." "I think the main problem for China is that things have been the same for an eternity." "and it's difficult to change." "It forms part of our being and our existence." "What choice do we have in this situation?" "Should we question this reality, and even question ourselves?" "This is the problem, of all these years of impotence and bewilderment." "Now it's impossible to attain a better life, or to casually question ourfriends, or our surroundings." "Sometimes we can't even question ourselves or talk about ourfeelings with ourfriends." "These subjects often remain up in the air and the only reason is the impotence we are immersed in." "However, I think that this feeling is also a great source of creativity when we film." "I don't make films just for the sake of it, or to follow a model." "I'm only a director, but when I direct a film" "I don't expect people to weigh up how well I did it." "That doesn't matter to me in the slightest." "What really matters to me is to make films that manage to affect society." "I can understand what others think and do, and that has nothing to do with the market or the audience that goes to see my films." "I don't care about that at all." "As for Jaime's films," "I think the fact I was in contact with him led me to constantly understand things in his films and even know what he was thinking." "In fact, culture, and more specifically films, are great in one respect:" "they can leap over any cultural barrier such as language." "This is one of the most important aspects of film, the fact that you see and understand, through your own experience, what each film is trying to say." "It's nothing like a novel, because you can understand a film even if you don't translate it." "That's very important, because you don't need to learn a language in order to see a film, you just have to see it and draw on your experience in order to grasp what it's telling you." "I don't speak English or French, only Chinese, but I can see any film from any corner of the world and I understand it perfectly." "From the time I started university, until today, this has never been an obstacle to me, which is one of the reasons why I adore film." "Anybody can make a film and I'd happily watch it because I'll be thinking about what the person wants to say." "I don't make films in order to show people's poverty or anything like that." "Rather, for me it's like making a retrospective of a person's life." "When I shoot my films, when I film those kids, for example," "I see myself as a child in the place I grew up." "My siblings, my family, were just like that." "This means there's nothing unfamiliar about these families." "When I saw those kids I felt a certain unease but only because I saw that time has passed and I was no longerone of them." "I can't go back to the time when my parents, my siblings and I were together, it is irrecoverable." "My life and my feelings are moving away from all those people, and there's no going back, it's impossible to be with them again." "I don't really know why, and it's something I often think about, because I film in these remote places, in these small villages with people without money, but in reality" "I want to express what these people feel, their lives, because it was my life." "But I no longer have any of that, my situation has changed, and I guess I'm interested in it because it was a very happy period of my life." "Time gradually stripped all of this away from me," "until it is all gone." "I particularly like to return to that environment" "because it's like suddenly being back there, remembering that life, and the joy of my childhood." "I wanted to add some comments to what Wang said." "You're probably starting to realise, afterseeing his films, and the energy he transmits and his way of talking, that Wang is an extraordinary person, a genius of cinema and of our time." "When I watch Wang's films, after the initial distance arising from the exoticism of a different culture," "I find emotions, and they trigger very strong attachments." "For example in the film we saw today just merely thinking that the eldest girl is the one who has to bear that enormous responsibility, an unnatural burden for a girl of that age." "She shouldn't have to bear that responsibility, but the circumstances that lead her to that situation are terrible." "I identify will all the characters at the human level" "from every point of view." "The girl, for having to bear that burden, the understandable mistakes she makes... and also the sorrow the other siblings feel because they have no parents or parental figure who can teach them as they should." "Nevertheless, life is so strong - and this is another extraordinary thing in Wang's films:" "they transmit a strong sense of transcendence, because in spite of the terrible circumstances" " and the story tells us that there have been harshersituations than those shown in this film -, life goes on." "Life is an extraordinary force." "Although the film shows us living conditions that are very harsh, unimaginably harsh," "It also transmits, in my opinion, a great optimism about the human condition, people who manage to move forwards, and even show mutual affection even in the most adverse circumstances." "Above all, I think he manages to connect with the human element in a very natural way, and this gives it something which is very simple, but which a different filmmaker filming the same people in the same place," "would not have managed to extract, which is the emotional power of his films," "It's not simply... it's not a film that describes how these people live... it's a film that, at least for me, allows a very personal reading, and addresses me very directly" "and tells me things that are about me, not about them, even though they obviously can't portray those emotions." "This is another of the characteristics that make cinema extraordinary." "At some point, something takes place between the screen... and the society orculture portrayed on the screen, a kind of emotional tension..." "It's as though the screen gives off an energy that reaches viewers and allows them to understand - in a secret, mysterious way - the human aspect, through emotion, beyond words." "As I was having lunch with Wang today, it occurred to me" "that our worlds are really very different." "His country is very different, the political and economic conditions of modern China are very different to ours, very singular, a very strong pressure is exerted on the individual by the state apparatus." "But personally I think that our society is also totalitarian." "The thing is that totalitarianism works differently in oursociety." "It seems as if oursociety is like the story... about the frog and the cooking pot." "If you put a frog in a pot full of cold water and heat it slowly, you can end up boiling the frog, and the frog won't react." "But if the water is boiling when you put the frog in, it will immediately jump out." "I think that we also live in a society of control." "A highly controlled society, which also lays down certain guidelines or game rules, and as long as you respect those rules you can have a sense of freedom, but it is very strict about making it impossible to overstep those rules." "It's similar in China where, for example," "Wang's films are possible." "Wang actually makes films in China, films that end up being banned, meeting obstacles, being distributed on the underground scene." "But the system allows them to exist." "Wang travels," "Wang shows a society in which he sees great injustices, and he experiences great distress." "But at the same time this society" " this is the perversion -, all societies organised around power ultimately have a certain escape valve that make them tolerable to citizens in general, and this happens in his and in ours too." "Making this film was a way of paying tribute to those people, because some were fortunate and some weren't." "Some really lived it up, while others went through hell." "With this film I wanted audiences to see who had an easy life and who suffered." "We often go back to the past and remember all that, those lives, and we wonder why we degenerated like that." "I have also reflected on this, on my surroundings, and my past was like that too." "Now we act as though we all get on great, we're always friendly with the others.." "But what if one day, one of the others is the one who is going to kill you?" "It's a bit like in Jaime's work:" "Do you think it is written on the man's face, that he will kill you?" "No, right?" "It's difficult to put into words, but I think that a film can express this idea." "In my case," "I look at the reaction of the audience in order to understand it." "Human beings have their beauty and their despicable side." "Somebody once asked me:" ""Hey, how can you all be so corrupt and spend your whole life wasting money?" "Nobody would have dared to do that in the past"." "And I answered:" ""Sure, you weren't corrupt before, but when it came to killing somebody, the whole village was prepared to do it." "Think about it."" "All through history, we've done the same thing:" "look after ourselves, oursurroundings and the people close to us, right?" "Anyway, it's just a thought." "Once, I saw a man appear among piles of rubble, he looked awful, he was like a ghost." "I nearly died of fright that day." "Imagine, you get to a place where there's nothing but rubble, and a man like that suddenly appears." "He stood, talking to himself, and didn't take any notice of me." "So then I stared at him and watched what he did, until I finally realised that he was gathering bricks and rubble." "There was no sign of life in the vicinity, and the villages where quite far away because this place was on a high plateau, in a wild landscape." "Later, I saw that the man grew vegetables and used the bricks he found to make a house, with very thick walls, like in the Middle Ages." "From then on, I started watching what he did, what he ate, wore and owned." "He was like an animal, he wasn't a civilized being, there was no trace of civilisation in him." "To me, this animal is still a person, who lives in that environment." "I realised that he couldn't communicate simply because he lived in total isolation." "He seemed to have lost the capacity, because he didn't and couldn't speak." "He was reduced to spending his days, working in the field and living alone in a kind of cave." "That was his house, dug into the ground, where he slept and prepared his food." "He was basically an animal, it showed in his reactions." "He didn't use cutlery or plates when he ate." "We Chinese, use chopsticks, but he ate any old way, straight off the ground." "I was quite perturbed by this encounter, specially considering that civilised people have been making progress for thousands of years." "We boast about it, particularly when comparing ourselves to othercivilisations." "But in the end:" "what's the use?" "I really don't know, and it perturbs me, because I had never thought about the relationship between people or animals and civilisation." "What kind of life is this?" "What if we have to reject the age that this animal lives in?" "Shall we go back to what we said the past?" "Will we accept this?" "This is why I think that a film can lead you to reflect on this, the fact that you suddenly encounter a man who is like an animal and you think that he isn't a civilized being." "We met in 2004 because we were writing a script together." "Six of us directors lived together in a huge flat, where there was a chaotic mood, and we spent our days writing and working." "Sometimes we didn't write, and we spent hours chatting." "I have to thank him for being able to form part of that group of six." "I had never lived in Europe before." "I had made brief visits, only a few days, passing through." "But one day, Jaime, me and anotherfourfilmmakers began to live in the same space with the pretext of working on some scripts." "In the end, we all spent more time talking and discussing our things." "Languages are not my strong point, so we'd discuss and draw the concepts at the same time, but even so I want to thank him for the atmosphere of respect." "I was writing my script!" "That was when I saw his first film and I started to gain a better understanding of Western culture and lifestyle." "Jaime was one of the people who influenced me in Spain." "Back then, there were a lot of things I didn't know about Spain, and I missed thousands of things." "That's how I gradually understood who he was and the team he had worked with, and I gradually understood how that character suddenly kills another person so violently." "But at that time" "I wasn't really familiar with his work, because I was quite emotionally unstable" "and I was incapable of analysing the works of otherfilmmakers, interpreting what they wanted to say." "That's the feeling I have." "Then, in 2007," "I ran into him again at the Cannes festival because ourfilms were being screened there." "One of the things I find interesting about the way in which Wang makes films is the impression that he disappears" "so that the only voice is that of the person he is filming." "He can do this because, as he has shown, he has a great deal of respect for the people he films, he knows them," "he spends a long time preparing his films" "and I think that we European filmmakers" " and I'm privileged to call him my friend -, can learn a lot from his films and from him as a person." "Our films are often more narcissistic, sure, we film the realities around us, but we also have the desire to leave our own stamp, so we can be recognised." "This also comes from a particular cultural tradition of ours which you can see in painting, for example:" "the issue of style." "It often happens that we've watched a lot of films, we are familiar with the style of filmmakers from the past, we place a lot of value on writing style and... and what makes Wang exemplary is that he is radically committed to what he films," "and leaves out almost everything else." "Sometimes, when I see a shot that I find excessively long" "I wonder:" "Why didn't he cut it earlier?"" "And I get the sense that... he doesn't really have" "the same temporal mechanisms that are embedded in me and in most audiences and filmmakers in ourculture." "He just gets carried away by his connection with what he has filmed, regardless of its duration or what it represents, whether it's beautiful, or the angle of the light, and ultimately," "this ingenuousness when it comes to filming is what we also see in the way he expresses himself." "Meanwhile, in our world," "I can apply this to myself, my way of expressing myself and filming," "which may be contrived in its sophistication." "I think that... on one hand I feel very honoured and also very happy," "it has been mainly through Joana, who has been the great organiser behind all this and also thanks to me that Wang can show you his films and share these moments." "It makes me feel proud and happy, because it's true that we live in a world" "in which an artist of a genuinely authentic kind is very unusual and in fact, the media" "don't give enough importance to this type of art and these people, and instead they tend to hype and place more importance on art that is emptier and more narcissistic." "Yesterday, at dinner with José Luis Guerin, we were saying that somebody like Wang who will suddenly make a 9 hour film or a 14 hour installation or the film we saw yesterday which was 3 hours, and not an easy 3 hours," "but 3 hours of a woman simply talking in front of a camera." "This vertical quality in his approach to his work is a very important example for me, and I think for all filmmakers who live in this bewildered society." "He says that his films are very confidential, almost secret." "Does that worry him?" "Other Chinese filmmakers..." "Chinese cinema has many different kinds of filmmakers." "There are also films that seem to be socially committed" "and artistic films, like those of Jia-Zangke through to other very successful directors such as Zhang Yimou and others." "The question is:" "he makes films that are very authentic" "and make no concessions, but he is in a situation that is almost clandestine." "How does he feel in response to that situation?" "Does he want to change it?" "Would he make a different kind of cinema in order to change it?" "I would like him to speak about his view of this situation." "I don't know what to say, but if I encounter a big problem one day" "I don't know how it would change me either." "I guess that human beings know how to adapt in order to keep existing." "If there comes a day when I can't keep living" "I guess I will simply keep doing it, because I don't know what the future holds." "I really don't know." "But I am also asking:" "Does he feel comfortable with that situation?" "On one hand, I think that in his films, and my conversations with him, there's a need to... a desire to change things, he'd like a different world, but nevertheless" "the problem is that his films aren't shown in China." "I think he might even be more famous in France than in his own country." "My question is whether you feel comfortable in that situation, in the current situation." "When I film I can do it in a thousand different ways, and all kinds of people will watch the films." "Some will have no connection to the film world, they will be part of the masses but I'm sure that the film will manage to have some of the effects I seek when I film it." "Also, I'm convinced that my films are capable" "of bringing some of the effects I seek to the surface, even if audience numbers vary greatly." "This approach can have many restrictions, but I don't think that's so important now," "because I'm sure that people will watch the films, particularly because they also have a wider reach." "Also, in terms of society, if we consider the individual, each person worries about himself, about the things he is interested in or wants to do, so if oursociety were to advance, it would do so extremely quickly." "Obviously, we're talking about progress in different spheres," "which is achieved through different methods." "I'm convinced that my films also have an effect on my life, they don't just respond to an emotional need." "I think they have a much greater potential, because I'm part of it too." "Perhaps, through my films" "I will be able to move other people, and lead them to reflect too." "You can't try to quantify this aspect or know whether the desired effect will be achieved," "but from the point of view of art, this is what film is." "You have to let others watch yourfilm, because yourconsciousness is present in it and it's bound to leave a trace in the audience." "For me, it all comes down to this, letting films have their own existence and just be there." "It's impossible to predict when theirfull effect and influence will unfold," "but it will, sometime, it might be now, or in the future, or at the moment you'd least expect." "In my opinion, the main thing that sets this art form apart from the rest is the lack of results." "It's totally different to economics, for example, which achieves results quickly." "One of the things we've discussed here with Wang also, talking about human nature," "because we're both trying to untangle the viscosity of human beings and ask:" ""So, what is this?"" "And we do it with certain tools, a camera, a microphone and then an editing and sound desk." "Earlier, Wang spoke about his periods of anguish, and I have the same kind of anguish..." "He said: 'Why are there people who are cruel?" "And why are there people who are very good?"" "Human nature is enormously slippery and we use a camera to say to viewers:" ""This is what we see and this is what we share."" "That's also the beauty of film, out of what we show, each viewer will take with him" "whatever his subjectivity and his history allow him to see."