Liao Jiekai's short film 'The Mist' won the
the Best Director Award in the Southeast Asian Short Film category at the
recently concluded 27th Singapore International Film Festival. The film,
labelled a dance film, hardly has any dance in it. Instead it features two
young women in a hazy concoction of silhouettes, voices and memories.
We try to uncover the thinking and concept
behind 'The Mist' with director Liao.
What
inspired you to develop 'The Mist'?
The
Mist was made in Hanoi during a dance film lab organized by Cinemovement, a
collective of filmmakers and dancemakers founded by Jeremy Chua and Elysa
Wendi. We were in Hanoi to spend an intensive five days together to incubate
ideas for dance films, and The Mist was made during the lab,
my first foray into the world of dance.
There
is no actual dance movement in the film but perhaps more interesting pacing and
the use of repetition as a proxy for dance. Could you explain what you were
trying to achieve or experiment with in this film?
I
collaborated with dancemakers Bobbi Chen and Sudhee Liao who interpreted my
instructions of navigating the line between what can be perceived as dance and
what we all understand as an ordinary movement of the body that is not
choreographed. This film is also about other boundaries such as that which is
visible to us and that which we can only see in our mind. Hence the title The
Mist, which I was trying to evoke an image of navigating in unchartered
territories.
What
were the memories of the girls based on? (e.g. the long tables mentioned in the
film)
I
gave both Bobbi and Sudhee a specific instruction during one of the shots where
one girl was lying on the bed and the other were sitting on the adjacent bed –
for the one lying on the bed to recount a memory of a place that only she knew
and it can be fictional. The voice over was left at the exact position in
synchrony with the image as it was told (although the girl’s face is
back-facing the camera and we cannot see her speak, so the dialogue floats onto
the image like a layered voice-over); for me the storytelling is part of their
performance and I wanted to respect its relationship with the movements the
girl are doing with their fingers/hands.
Where
was this shot? The house seems interesting.
This
was shot on the second floor of a hotel right above the Hanoi Cinematheque
where we were based for most of the film lab. It was a very quaint hotel, lots
of nice sunlight through these twirling green canopies. I spent some time by
myself in the morning before the shoot walking around the hotel and blocking
the shots in my mind. The location is certainly a big part of the film, since
the characters have to navigate through these corridors and room.
How
do you feel about winning the Best Director award for the Southeast Asian Short
Film segment at SGIFF?
It
is a bit ironic, because I actually did not credit myself as a director in the
film (in the credits I wrote “conceived by”), and I feel the same way with many
of the more spontaneous/experimental projects I did in the last two years.
Maybe I have a problem with categories, I do find it problematic to tell people
that this is a dance film too, because words are too narrow and too limiting. I
don’t think the work I do is necessarily “directing” in the conventional sense
of the word in filmmaking; maybe it feels more like I set up a certain
situation and context, and then sat back to become the silent documentarian;
which is why I almost always shot these films myself, because it is important
that I operate the camera. It is more like painting, after I prepare all the
ingredients, I let them pull me along on a ride. Still, I am glad that the jury
members decided to honour the film with this award because perhaps the idea of
directing always relates to a unique voice; this is important to me and I truly
think this is an achievement to be shared with all my collaborators in this
project (including my sound post team).
What
were some of the most interesting responses you received about the film?
Well,
I actually don’t consciously seek out audience responses because I get very
self-conscious. Some people mentioned the term ‘poetic’, not a very interesting
response I guess. I am more interested if people see dance in this film or not,
because I think that is one of the things I hope to do - to provoke people to
think about what is dance, what is moving-image, what is choreography, and our
relationship with these ideas. About ten years ago when I was in college at the
Art Institute of Chicago, I took a module on “performance and moving-image”. A
Butoh master visited our class one day to gave us a crash course on Butoh
dance; in that class, I learned to be very aware of the way I walk, the way my
feet very unconsciously perform the act of “walking” every day. For about an
hour, we repeatedly walked from one end of the room to the other at a speed ten
times slower than usually. It is not walking slowly, but walking in slow
motion. And then we watched each other walk in slow motion. I thought, it was
very interesting to think about this in terms of film, how can I also play
around with these kind of sensations and experience through the moving-image,
and understand the boundaries between choreography and daily movements; I hope
people can respond to my work from these point of views.