morganstuart:

My reading on Jiang Wen’s work continues! This is probably my last post from this particular book, but I have more texts lined up to devour. As I find interesting passages, I’ll continue to use the #Books on Baze tag for my posts.

Here’s Jiang Wen on directing:

I was “tempted” into directing due to another factor. Although I majored in performing arts, I occasionally went up to the fourth floor of the CATA building, staging self-selected or self-directed short plays there. I remember some professors once commented: you are very good at stage directing and mise-en-scene, even more skillful than students of the Directing Department. To tell you the truth, I didn’t quite understand these comments. What I did was all out of instinct: when one is required to climb a tree, I ask him to climb a tree; when one ought to dive into a trench, I ask him to dive into a trench. Why did you make a fuss about it? Because I didn’t see any taboos on stage, I was alleged to have made use of depth and cross walking. I said to myself: where could this guy go if he didn’t climb a tree? From this I began to realize: first, I could one day direct a play of my own; second, I began to question what the students of the Directing Department were being taught. What I did was quite simple, so how could they come up with such complicated theories?

– Jiang Wen

interviewed in Lights! Camera! Kai Shi! In Depth Interviews with China’s New Generation of Movie Directors by Shaoyi Sun & Li Xun

“What? like this is hard?” JW