Howdy, and welcome to my blog here at Asianfilms.org. My name is Jay, and this is my first installation in a series of blogs. Before I get into all the juicy tid-bits, I should probably introduce myself. I’m an American student originally from Houston, Texas (thus the howdy above, and possibly an occasional y’all here and there) and I’m currently studying cinematography in a year-long program at the Beijing Film Academy (from here on referred to as BFA). I’m funded by a generous US government sponsored FLAS scholarship, which was provided through the University of Hawaii, where I’m currently finishing up my M.A. in Asian Studies. I’ve spent about half of the past decade living, studying, working, traveling, taking pictures, and making films in Asia (primarily East Asia), and I’ve long been a fan of Asian cinema, a major factor in my decision to come study filmmaking here in Asia. That’s enough about me, but if you’d like to learn a little bit more about me or my background, please feel free to browse my personal website at http://www.jhubert.net/ to learn more.

I’ve pretty much been given free rein to do what I want with this blog, but I understand and appreciate the huge responsibility that comes with this kind of undertaking. The main idea behind the blog is to share my experiences as an American studying at BFA, and to intersperse my stories with my insights on film and cinema here in Asia. But I’d like to think this blog is about much more than me and my experiences (I’m hardly vain enough to think that would keep an educated audience coming back regularly!). Through this blog I’d like to tap into a much more important topic, one that has become a buzzword for our generation and a controversial topic in all its diverse interpretations. Yup, you guessed it, I’m gonna talk about globalization in this blog. No, I’m not gonna bore you with trite discussions of the global impact of multinationals or equally enthralling topics, as you can pay $80,000 and go let professors feed you that stuff for four long years. My intention is to look at how film as a cultural and economic commodity - as well as an important form of cultural expression - plays a role in the globalization process, and use my experiences as an American studying filmmaking in China to express and reinforce my assertions. But certainly I’ll keep all this serious stuff to a superficial minimum, because after all blogs are supposed to be fun and only mildly informative, or at least that’s my impression from my web browsing as of late!

The reason globalization, or internationalization, or however you want to refer to this phenomena of the cultural and economic fusion of nations and people around the world is important to this blog about me and my experiences is because my ‘unique experience’ of being the rare American student studying film at BFA isn’t actually so unique in our day and age. When you consider the rapidly increasing number of expat workers, foreign exchange students, and travelers who pour into China every year, or any other country in the world for that matter, I’m hardly an exception to the increasing trend of spreading out past the limitations of ones own borders. I just happened to choose a slightly less common field to do it in, but I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last. And within the film industry as a whole, crossing borders is hardly a new phenomenon, as demonstrated by the increasing cross-pollination of actors between East Asian countries and the influx of top Asian directors to Hollywood. Again, the truly unique aspect of my situation is merely the fact that I chose to go in the opposite direction. But I’m still just doing what more and more people are doing these days, whether through traveling to more foreign countries, learning a new language, browsing an Internet site in or about another country, watching more foreign films, or actually packing up the bags and moving abroad. I’m globalizing. And so are the world’s cinemas and film industries. China is certainly no exception, and I feel very fortunate, if not a bit overwhelmed on occasion, to be involved in such a dynamic place and industry.

But I could go on forever about that. This being my first blog, and first impressions being of the utmost importance, I’ll save my ramblings for future blogs. I’ve got a lot to cover in this first installment, as my first semester at BFA has already concluded and there are so many things to tell you about. I’ll try to keep my recollections of this past semester as brief as possible, giving you a general overview of BFA and my take on the school, as well as some of my more notable experiences here thus far.

Ever since I began to avidly consume Asian cinema about seven years ago, I’ve heard mention of Beijing Film Academy, often in the same sentence with ‘best film school in Asia’. It definitely could hold its own in that competition, although I’m no expert on the matter and this is the first film school I’ve attended in Asia. After one semester as a student in a one-year ‘jin xiu’ (similar to continuing education in the US system) program in the cinematography department here, I have mixed feelings about the school. Overall, I feel that the school is packed with excellent resources for film students, from the renowned faculty to the extensive library collection to the wealth of equipment. There are also ample film screenings and events, and I can’t count on two hands and two feet the number of famous filmmakers from around the world that came to campus last semester. At the same time, I felt that a lot of my classes were not terribly useful, some of the facilities are rather dilapidated (although the newly built sections of the school and the central quad are beautiful and very well maintained), and few opportunities were provided for us to get our anxious little hands on equipment and shoot. A lot of these negative things can be attributed to the fact that we are an extension class and not offered the same quality of education that is reserved for the full undergrad and grad students who had to bust their butts off to test into the school. Regardless of the drawbacks I’ve encountered, I’d say that there are enough assets available here to get a first-class film education no matter what program you are in, as long as you take full advantage of the environment.

My one-year ‘jin xiu’ class in the cinematography department appears to a relatively new program, opened several years ago in all of the major departments (that I know of at least), possibly as a way to bring in more revenue (the tuition fee is the same for these classes as for the undergraduate and graduate programs), and possibly as a way to console the many applicants failing to test into the degree programs. I’ve not talked to anyone about ‘jin xiu’ classes in other departments, so in terms of specifics I can only comment on my own experiences in the cinematography department. The tuition is paid up front for the year of study, and at 35,000 RMB (about US $4,600) for Chinese students and 46,000 RMB (about US $6,000) for foreign students, it’s significantly cheaper than most film schools in the US, but fairly expensive compared to most other university tuition fees in China.

Classes in our program are taught in approximately 4 hour blocks, with one class in the morning and one class in the afternoon (our Monday class this past semester took up morning and afternoon), and different classes each day of the week. The semester is then broken in half, with each class lasting for nine weeks and then most classes being replaced by new classes. Evidently throughout China Wednesday afternoon is a study/meeting period for teachers, so Wednesdays we only have class in the morning. In total we had well over twelve different classes this past semester, ranging from B&W Still Photography to Photographic Materials to Lighting to Basics of Cinematography to Editing to Scriptwriting to the History of Western Cinema. And then there was the old guy with the heavy accent who mumbled incoherently all the time. I don’t think any of us in the class ever figured out what subject he was teaching. Besides this guy, most of the teachers talked fairly coherently and stayed on topic, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they were saying anything useful or remotely interesting. There were several excellent teachers, most notably our Photographic Materials teacher (an older woman with a great sense of humor who would occasionally use slang that would have us on the floor laughing), our Screenwriting teacher (a much younger female with a more serious approach to teaching, but very interesting nonetheless), and the guy who taught a large combined class (with degree students from directing and cinematography) about the audio and visual language of film. There were a few fairly famous professors (nobody I knew but my classmates assured me they were hot stuff in their day) who graced us with their presence, usually presenting fairly decent lectures. There were several professors who just didn’t have their hearts in it, or perhaps were just too overwhelmed by the inherent boringness of the subject matter they were teaching. And then there was Xie Zheng Yu, the brilliant but crazy young cinematographer who in turns I liked and hated. But I’ll get to him later. He’s quite a character.

By far the best thing about my program so far has been my fellow students. With about 60 registered students, our class is filled far past capacity, yet another sign that the department is using this program to bring in a little more cashflow. Of the 60 registered students, four of us are foreigners: two Koreans, myself, and a German. The Koreans, like so many of their fellow countrymen I’ve met studying here in China, stopped bothering coming to class after the first few weeks. Chris, the ‘German guy’ who speaks perfect English and excellent Chinese, is a much more motivated student, but like me finds some of the classes unbearably boring and often skips off to the library or campus café to do some self studying. He’s been a good pal so far, and helped me with several of our rather simple assignments. More importantly, he’s got a crazy creative streak in him similar to mine, and between the two of us we’ve come up with some really offbeat ideas that our classmates (and occasionally even our teachers) have found quite amusing. As for the 50-plus Chinese classmates, almost across the board they are one heck of a swell bunch, and even the few of them that I probably wouldn’t introduce my sister to are at least reasonably amiable. There are some real characters in the class too, from the short, fat guy who amazingly knows every beautiful girl on campus (oh yeah, given that we’ve got one of the best acting departments in the country, there are quite a few lovely ladies about campus… I should have mentioned that up above in the pluses of the school), to the dreadlocked grunge punk who asked me the first week of class how large my death metal MP3 collection is, to the uber-fashionable Jackie Goldfish, one of my closest friends in the class (and also my new fashion advisor) and the only guy I’ve ever seen wear an all-white suit to school, complete with shiny white shoes. Pimpin.

The background of the students is as mixed as their personalities and fashion. Very few of them come to the class with extensive work experience in film or TV cinematography, and the ones that do typically have only had superficial contact with it. I’d say over half the students have some experience with media and design related fields, many of them (like Jackie Goldfish) coming from advertising backgrounds. And then there are quite a few students with little or absolutely no experience or knowledge of the field, like the poor guy who always asks stupid questions and has half the class laughing at him or telling him to shut up (playfully, of course… we do have a fair bit of camaraderie going in the class). The students come from all over China, and there are a handful of minorities in the class (besides us foreigners, of course). Much to my dismay, the ratio of guys to girls is rather skewed, with a whopping three girls in the entire class, two of which come to class not too much more than the Korean guys. Maybe there is a connection there, but I’m not one to spread gossip. Even in a blog. I suppose the dearth of women in our class didn’t really surprise me though, as even in the US there are few female cinematographers, and it seems to be even less common over here for women to pursue this field.

We had several assignments throughout the semester, but to be honest not nearly as many as I’d hoped for, and not nearly as professional either. The first few assignments were all part of our still photography class, and they were the same kinds of projects that most traditional intro photography classes around the world involve. Despite being rather simplistic, I was grateful to have this class and these projects because in my six-plus years of pursuing photography as a hobby and passion, I was never able to take a class. Also, as so many traditional photographers in the age before the digital revolution ‘robbed us of our souls’ have professed, going to the darkroom for the first time is a very magical experience, even for someone like me who was an early adopter of digital photography and only abused film heavily for the first year of my addiction to this art. But in all I think I only shot and developed about four rolls of B&W film during the semester, and consistently got poor contrast in my prints despite adjusting developing, fixing, and exposure times to compensate. Maybe it was the fact that the B&W film the department supplied us with a few rolls of was the cheap local brand ‘Lucky’ (yes, I’m serious, that’s the name of the film) that costs about $0.50 a roll, rather than spending a little more of our tuition dollars on a few good rolls of Ilford Delta or Kodak. Or maybe it was a sign that I should just stick to my digital camera!

Seeing as how we are cinematography students, you’d think we would have been spending more time on video and film cameras. About two-thirds of the way through the semester, we got to see a 35mm camera in the flesh for the first time, and as a class actually shot some test footage around campus and in the studio. Again, since there are 60 of us in the class, and since this was the one activity that EVERYONE felt like showing up for (I saw my two Korean classmates for the first time in two months), each person got to have one or two goes on the camera, and even that was pretty much just pressing the start and stop button and panning or tilting the camera to follow the actors. Either that or you were the focus puller. As soon as you nailed the shot, the next two guys would come have a go. I think in the four times we shot, I got to molest that big bad camera for a total of about 3 minutes. Not exactly the kind of experience that’s going to land me a DP or even assistant camera position on a feature film straight out of school, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. The other problem is that when we were setting up for these shoots, they wouldn’t let us students do the lighting. They brought in the lighting crews from school that did all the work. But since many students in the class have little experience with cinematography or lighting, it’s probably best that we watch first anyway and take notes, as I’m sure the school wouldn’t be too happy losing an entire class to a mass electrocution (although then again we are only a continuing education class). At any rate, there is plenty to learn just from watching, and like I said above in the intro to the school, it’s all about what you put into your time here, as there are plenty of resources to learn from. But I do hope that next semester we can put a bit more of our classroom learning into action.

We finally got to shoot our own projects the last three weekends of classes. Unfortunately, the department only issued us DV cameras to shoot on, which was a step down for me after shooting my last short film in Hawaii on an HD camera. Fortunately half the cameras they were issuing were Panasonic DVX100s (the model number here in China is the DVX180, the only place in the world I’ve heard of that Panasonic changed the model number for their top-selling prosumer DV camera), a camera I’d shot with numerous times before and was quite enamored with. The other half of the cameras being issued were Canon XL-1s (no, not even the XL-1S), a camera I’d also shot on and was less than enthusiastic about. So I encouraged my classmates ahead of me in line at the equipment checkout place to borrow the Canon XL-1s, which most of them wanted to do anyway because the XL-1 looks cooler and has a bigger lens (but doesn’t even come close to producing the film look that the DVX100’s 24P feature does). We checked the cameras out in groups of three, but I only ended up borrowing the camera for two of the three weekends and my group members, whoever they were, didn’t even show up for checkout, so I had it all to myself. We were supposed to shoot one short film, 2-5 minutes in length, for our Friday production class. There was no set theme, but the teacher required that the story have a clear plot, and that we incorporate as many of the cinematographic techniques that we’d learned that semester as possible.

Although this was a rather bland, straightforward assignment that gave us lots of creative freedom but very little guidance, we had another optional assignment given to us by our Thursday morning Cinematographic Techniques teacher, Xie Zheng Yu. Yes, this is the young guy I mentioned above. I had no idea who he was when I walked into his first class that started in the second half of the semester. Even if I had looked at the syllabus, I wouldn’t have recognized his name. But I soon discovered that the one movie he had shot was one I had randomly watched while traveling in China in 2002 and quite enjoyed, especially the quirky cinematography. The film, ‘Missing Gun’, was the debut feature of BFA graduate Lu Chuan, who went on to shoot the hit ‘Kekexili: Mountain Patrol’. However, Xie Zheng Yu is best known in the commercial industry, where he’s shot a vast array of work, all of an extremely professional level. He took up half the first class to show us his reel, and we were all quite impressed, although this should have been our first indication of how he planned to teach - using himself as the defining mark of excellence, and bouncing everything else off of his own skewed standards and biased perspectives.

From the get-go, Xie Zheng Yu had our attention. He was young, brash, and had a penchant for using ‘colorful’ language in class. It felt like in class he was talking about film (and everything else) the same way he’d be chatting about it with his old buddy over beers on a slow Saturday night. And he most likely was. He also still had a strong Guizhou accent when he spoke Mandarin despite having lived in Beijing for more than a decade, which took a little time to adjust to but perhaps added an extra layer to his already colorful discussions. But perhaps the most distinguishing feature of his teaching style, if you could really call what he did teaching, was that he had no qualms about cursing anyone and their work that he pleased, and throughout the semester he did that on a regular basis. His classes had little structure, and I sometimes wondered if he spent any time preparing lesson plans, as the first half of his classes mainly consisted of him going off on random diatribes about this director and that movie, often to the point that I’d have to pull out my syllabus and remind myself that we were sitting through a Cinematographic Techniques class. But nobody seemed to mind. He was entertaining, and he was like no other teacher we had that semester, or probably had ever had in any subject in the past. To me personally, and a few of my closer friends in the class that I talked to, however, he was not cut out to be a teacher. Rarely were his attacks on people (sometimes whole cultures… in the first class he made a rather inflammatory remark about Korean cinema and the Korean people as a whole… fortunately by that point our Korean classmates had stopped coming to class, or there might have been a brawl) or films backed by any substantial analysis. He merely didn’t like them, and he would very colorfully tell you how bad they sucked, but rarely back up his arguments with any sound reasoning. On a slow Saturday night in a bar chatting over beers, that’s fine. But in a classroom at a renowned academic institution, he was out of his element.

One of his comments in the first class that got the most laughs was his comment about how the best film genre in which to test your skills as a filmmaker was porno. Yes, I’m serious. And unfortunately, so was he. In fact, he brought up porno films quite often in class, and that should have also been an early indication of what was to come later in the semester when he gave us our sole assignment. One day towards the end of the semester when he was off on one of his tirades, he gave us an optional assignment (from the spontaneity of the moment, it seemed he hadn’t even planned it ahead of time) to make a short film that involved a porno-related or porno-style joke. Yes, at the most renowned film institute in a country famous for its strict film censorship, I was being asked to shoot a pseudo-porno for a class assignment. Dear Chairman Mao must be rolling in his grave.

Since we were soon to begin our other assignments for the Friday class, many of us just planned to make one film that satisfied both assignments. But how could you make a porno with a solid plot (requirement number one for the other assignment) and incorporate numerous cinematographic techniques (requirement number two). Maybe this nutty professor of ours was on to something. He certainly had us thinking. Chris ‘the German guy’ (who was quite enthusiastic about this idea of shooting a porn) got his act together right away and shot his assignment that weekend, but since we didn’t have access to the video cameras yet, he shot his with still pictures and made a slide show. It was a simple but clever story about two guys playing video games while their girlfriends watch from the couch behind them. The girls get bored and begin to touch their respective boyfriends, at which point the boys drop their controllers and turn around to attend to their girlfriends. One guy turns and checks out the other guy’s girlfriend, then reaches over to join for a little touch. A fight ensues, and as the guys inflict each other with vicious blows straight out their video game, the girls lose interest and slip out the door. Bruised and bloody, the guys sadly stand in the doorway pining for their ladies, but when it’s obvious they won’t come back, they return to their video games. Innocent enough, and about as soft as porno can get, if you can even call it that. But all in all, a job fairly well done given the circumstances.

Despite the fact that the class thoroughly enjoyed the film, and the fact that Chris was brave enough to be the first to show his film, Xie Zheng Yu immediately began to rip it apart. “You think this is hot shit, don’t you? What kind of story is this? I don’t even understand it. This is crap! And you call this porn? The only skin I saw were those girl’s hairy arms!” Of course he didn’t bother explaining why the project was crap. No analysis of the film itself. And more importantly, he didn’t bother going through and analyzing the photography, which was the whole point of his class anyway. Chris is not one to be intimidated by anyone, and at 6’4” and a solid build, he towers over everyone in the class, even sitting down. He spoke up from the back of the classroom and exclaimed that all the prostitutes he’d tried to hire to act in the film weren’t willing, and the only girls he could find to act wouldn’t take off their clothes. We all laughed at this (although it turns out Chris was telling the truth), which threw off Xie Zheng Yu for a moment, especially since I think he realized for the first time at this point that it was a foreigner who’d made the film. He must have had a little respect for the fact that Chris had actually been brave enough to speak up (most of our Chinese classmates rarely did), and engaged him in discussion for a little while. But again, he just kept saying that the story (which was amazingly easy to follow) didn’t make sense and he couldn’t follow it. Chris asked him to put the slides up on the screen again, and then walked up to the front of the class to explain.

Xie Zheng Yu told him to sit back down and started going off about how filmmakers aren’t supposed to have to explain their films after the screening, at which point I’d had enough and barked back that film teachers were supposed to back up their assertions and accusations and that if he was too thick to understand a simple story that the rest of the class had so easily grasped, he should let Chris explain it to him. Oh boy did he fly off the handle! I know I should have kept my mouth shut, and should have showed more respect for my teacher, but I’d had enough of his lack of respect for others and his failure to provide us with a valuable learning experience. That and I had to stick up for my fellow foreigner! But surprisingly, my technique worked, as once Xie Zheng Yu calmed down a bit and stopped cursing me and Chris and the rest of the class, he did a frame by frame analysis of the film and told us what was wrong with each shot and the story (according to him). It was the first time he’d analyzed anything that thoroughly in class, and Chris was very happy to have the in-depth feedback, however negative it might have been. Our efforts were short-lived, however, as the next week a short film by Jackie Goldfish (that I acted in… no, I didn’t take off my clothes… it merely involved a sexual innuendo while eating dumplings in a restaurant) shot in video and another classmate’s project shot with still pictures were both torn to pieces by our beloved teacher. He began with his favorite line to any student brave enough to show their work in class (“You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?!”), and continued with a short barrage of insults about how it was complete trash, and then accentuated this by dragging the file on the screen to the Recycle Bin. “There, I’m doing you a favor.” This time I didn’t even bother protesting. It was a lost cause. Not that I was going to give up. I’d already shot my first film two weekends before (but had no time to edit it), and was shooting another, even more ‘yellow’ (the Chinese word for things pornographic) film the upcoming weekend, so the next week I would have not just one, but two films to present to dear Teacher Xie.

My films were both quite simple, and both based on ideas I’d mainly thought up while sitting through some of our more boring classes over the previous weeks. Unlike most of my previous short films shot in Hawaii, which were long and a bit on the dark side, these films were short, funny and totally spontaneous. Neither had dialogue, and since they were both just one-day (actually, one-afternoon) projects, I didn’t even bother writing up a script. For each one I just asked two of my classmates to be actors, I bought one ‘yellow’ (actually it was pink, but that’s all I’m going to tell you) prop that ended up being used in both films, and I just went out and shot. It was a lot of fun, and the final result came out surprisingly good considering what little time we invested. The night before Xie Zheng Yu’s last class, I stayed up late editing the films. Knowing full well the first thing Xie Zheng Yu would say after watching the films, at the end of the credits I added one last line – “No, this film is not shit hot.” And after all that hard work and almost no sleep, I dragged myself into class early the next morning only to find out that our dear teacher decided not to bother showing up for the last day of class. He hadn’t notified the department, and he didn’t answer his phone when they called him. Needless to say, I was falling more and more in love with this dear man every day. What a guy.

Fortunately I was able to show my films the next morning in our final class of the semester, but for a different teacher who might actually give some useful criticism. What fun would that be? Walking into class a little late, I was distraught to find that only a handful of my classmates had bothered showing up. I wasn’t keen on screening my films if none of my classmates were there to appreciate them. But slowly over the next hour or two as we worked our way through several different student films and listened to the teacher’s insightful feedback, more and more students filed in. I suspect most of them had also been up most of the night editing and had still been putting the finishing touches on. Actually, a good number of students didn’t even submit projects, most of them because they hadn’t finished editing, but I think some students also just didn’t bother shooting anything. But there were enough finished projects to take up the three hours of class, and I strategically put off showing my film until enough students had filed in. My first film was a riot, and my classmates were laughing so loud that students from the next room ran over to our classroom to see what was going on. So by the time I started my second film, there were well over 100 people packed into our classroom, most of them standing at the back. My second film did not disappoint either, but I think the poor kids from across the hall that had no idea about our ‘yellow film’ assignment were rather shocked by the content. Not that it kept them from laughing and then cheering loudly when the credits rolled.

My films were definitely the biggest success of that morning’s screening, but I don’t say that to brag about myself. I say that because I was actually disappointed with the quality of most of my classmates’ films. After a whole semester together, this was our first chance to actually get a taste of what our fellow classmates could do, and for me the taste was a bit bitter. There were exceptions of course, and several films I quite liked, but on the whole, I had hoped for much more. Had there at least been some decent cinematography, I would have been more than pleased, seeing as how we weren’t in a directing or screenwriting course. But I’d say over half the projects looked like something a middle schooler who’d never touched a video camera before would go out and shoot (then again young kids these days are so much more tech savvy than us old people). But I guess for many of my classmates this was the first time to shoot a film, and even many of those who’d shot things before had never edited. So perhaps I’m being too critical, and perhaps I’m basing my judgments on what I’d grown accustomed to back in Hawaii, where many of my classmates had the money to go buy their own equipment and experiment on their own all the time. Few of my classmates have that luxury, and for many of them this was the first and one of the few chances they’ll have to go out and shoot something. Also I think that had I been in one of the degree courses at BFA, where the caliber of the students is much higher, the quality of the work would have been much better.

Besides the great response I got to my films my last day of classes, another one of the highlights of my time here so far at BFA would have to be interviewing director and professor Xie Fei for my first podcast on this website. Ever since I first started watching Chinese films and researching Chinese cinema, Xie Fei’s name was popping up all over the place. Perhaps the most famous of the 4^th Generation of Chinese directors, his works have been feted both at home and abroad. Unfortunately before coming to China this time, I had only had the fortunate to enjoy his early film ‘A Girl From Hunan’ back in the US, as none of his other films were available where I looked. Even here in China when I first started asking around at DVD stores for his films, everybody knew Xie Fei’s name, but nobody had his films. As art and cultural films, they are not the kind of films that fly off the shelf in a place where everyone is hungry for the newest Hollywood action film or Korean drama, not too different from audiences back in Hawaii (or anywhere else in the world). Which is a real shame considering that there are audiences the world over who are interested in watching this kind of movie, but with such limited distribution those people aren’t always guaranteed they’ll find these films, if they even know to look for them in the first place. This is part of the reason film festivals are so important in helping films like Xie Fei’s getting discovered, but even the ones that are picked up for distribution rarely work their way into local video stores. And that is why I really like the idea behind this website (no, I’m not getting paid to say this!) and have agreed to help out with it, because it realizes the potential of the Internet to help these films find an audience, overcoming the limitations of traditional distribution channels. This is one of many things that Xie Fei discussed in the interview. Despite being a very friendly and warm individual with lots of amusing anecdotes to share, he also has very interesting and informative insights into the future of the film industry. Please check out his podcast (link) and listen for yourself.

By far the biggest highlight of my time here at BFA began with a most fortuitous encounter. Back in November after I had recently returned from a trip to Hawaii to attend the Hawaii International Film Festival, BFA hosted a Japanse film festival at school. This is just one of many themed festivals they hold throughout the year to display important cinematic pieces from around the world for the BFA community and Beijing at large. I was busy trying to catch up with work after missing almost three weeks of classes, and didn’t catch any of the screenings. One day on my way to class though, one of my classmates ran by and asked if I was going to the press conference. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he said that Tian Zhuangzhuang (one of China’s top 5^th Generation film directors) and a famous Japanese actress were giving a press conference in the first floor of our main building. I decided to stop by and have a peak, and up on stage saw Director Tian, his cinematographer (I assumed that’s who it was), and Japanese actress Matsuzaka Keiko, who had acted in Tian’s most recent film about a famous Chinese Go player that mastered the game and became grand champion in Japan. I stayed around and soon the floor opened to questions. Of the first four questions, three were asked by Japanese exchange students in the crowd directly to the Matsuzaka-san. While listening, I browsed through the festival brochure and read her bio and self-introduction, and was interested in her statement that she would like to improve relations between Japan and China through films, as it closely relates to my own personal goals. So as Director Tian finished answering the only question so far that had been addressed to him, I bravely hollered from the back in Chinese “Can one of us Laowai (foreigners) ask a question?” Director Tian chuckled and said of course, and when someone brought a microphone over to me I immediately began asking Matsuzaka-san what kind of films she thought could help improve relations between the two countries. The only thing is that I was asking in Japanese, which threw off the crowd and probably the actress as well, and I guess it probably didn’t help that I was the only white guy in the whole room.

After the conference one of the Japanese students (not a BFA student) who’d asked a question came over with his girlfriend and introduced himself in Chinese and told me that he is a filmmaker based in Beijing and his girlfriend is a student at BFA. As we were enjoying a rather pleasant exchange, a Chinese man came up and politely interrupted. I didn’t recognize him at first, and when he straight out asked me for my phone number, I was a bit taken aback. Since there aren’t too many of us foreigners around campus, I’ve had some students come up and randomly ask for my phone number before, but usually only after first exchanging introductions and some pleasantries, and usually because they either wanted to call me later about practicing their English, keep me on file in case they needed a foreign actor for a project, or get help with translations. This guy was too old to be a student though, and he didn’t even bother introducing himself before asking for my phone number, so I was a bit taken aback. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind introducing himself first, but just as I did that I realized who he was. He was Tian Zhuangzhuang’s cinematographer who’d been sitting up on stage with him during the conference. He’d put on a hat and I hadn’t recognized him, and the only reason he didn’t take the time to introduce himself is because the rest of his entourage was already streaming out the door. I apologized and blurted out my phone number immediately, and he punched it into his phone as he ran off and hollered back that he would give me a call that night.

It turns out this cinematographer, Wang Yu, has shot twelve or thirteen major 35mm productions for China’s and Hong Kong’s biggest directors over the last nine years, including several of my all-time favorites. When he called me that night and listed off the first two films he shot – Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly, both directed by Lou Ye – I told him he could stop there because I was already in love with him. It turns out Wang Yu had recently had a few opportunities to work with foreign directors, and because he often had to go overseas to do color timing on his films, he wanted to improve his English. With his busy schedule and the special vocabulary required for his field though, he didn’t want to just hire a regular English teacher to sit down with and study. A few days before we met he said an idea popped in his head to see if there were any cinematography students at BFA, his alma mater, who were from English-speaking countries and might be willing to teach him English in exchange for learning cinematography from him. Of course he figured there was little chance of finding a foreign student studying cinematography here, especially a native English speaker, and then just a few days later, Viola! There I was. And I couldn’t be happier with such a setup, as I’d been thinking long before I came to China this time that I needed to find a way to get on board for some actual Chinese film shoots, and that’s exactly what Wang Yu was offering. In Chinese this kind of encounter between two people who are destined to meet is called ‘yuan fen’. And boy oh boy did Wang Yu and I have some serious ‘yuan fen’ going for us!

What’s even funnier is that Wang Yu also lives in my apartment complex behind BFA, a small community that is connected to the Beijing Film Studio and used to be home to many Chinese directors and stars (and still is, but to a lesser extent). Still, it’s a big complex, and that first night when he asked me over to his apartment, neither one of us realized he lived in the building right next door to mine; it’s a two-minute walk from my door to his! Like me, his Chinese zodiac is a horse, which means that even though he is a full twelve years older than me, we are supposed to have a lot in common. That first night I went to his place and met his lovely wife and adorable newborn baby daughter, and staying up until 2 AM chatting and getting to know each other, it was obvious we were both very happy to have found each other. And we’ve had ample opportunity to bond over these last few months, as he often invites me to his house, and he’s already taken me along to be his assistant on three big commercial shoots. But he’s not only been a great mentor to me, he’s also become a very close friend. He’s definitely one of the most laid-back, humorous, and sincere people I’ve met so far here in China, and I’m so glad that I went and opened my big, fat mouth at that conference.

Wow, as I was writing this last paragraph Wang Yu just called and told me that we are heading off to Shandong province this coming weekend to shoot another commercial. YIPPEE! It’s amazing the opportunities I’ve already had so far in my short time here in Beijing, and I’m so glad I made the move to come over here to attend film school. Conditions certainly aren’t ideal, and some of my classes leave much to be desired, but at the same time this place has come a long way in the past three decades, and as a foreigner with a unique perspective on things here, I think the chances to succeed in my endeavors are very high!

It’s amazing how many people have contacted me with questions about studying at Beijing Film Academy (BFA) since I started this blog here at iFilm Connections. Part of the reason is that this blog and my name seems to pop up pretty high in Google searches for Beijing Film Academy in English. The other part of the reason seems to be the fact that BFA took down their very limited English-language website, so now foreigners who either don’t read Chinese or are too lazy to wade through the jumbled BFA Chinese-only website have no idea who to contact at the school with their questions and end up contacting me instead. I’ve done my best to answer these questions, but usually don’t have the exact answer they are looking for and have noticed I’m often answering the same questions over and over again, and so I’ve decided to start a FAQ here where I can put up the most common questions I get with the most common answers I give (of course I do this at the risk of becoming the unofficial BFA contact for foreigners and actually getting even MORE e-mails from people asking about the school).

I will make this very clear here at the beginning of the post. I am NOT in any way affiliated with BFA, I am merely a former student who studied in their one-year cinematography program. I take NO RESPONSIBILITY for the accuracy of this information, as I am basing most of this on my own experiences there, information I have gathered through classmates and friends there, and outdated information from when I looked up information about the school before and during my studies there during the 2006-2007 school year. I am posting this information in hopes that it helps the increasing number of foreigners out there interested in coming to study at BFA find the info they are looking for, since BFA seems to have very little interest in going out of its way to assist foreign students. If you don’t see your questions answered here in this FAQ, your best bet is to contact Mr. Ren at BFA’s International Training Center with your questions. See the question below on contacts for BFA.

So here goes:

1) Hey, I hear BFA is one of the best film schools in Asia. So where the heck is their English-language website?

Now this is one of those great unsolved mysteries. In the not-so-distant past BFA did maintain (well, maintain might be too strong a word) an English-language site, although it contained a very minimal amount of information on just the very basics of what foreigners could study there. In all I think there were only about three or four pages total to the entire site. But it was better than nothing, and had contact information in English for those that wanted to ask more questions. At some point in either late 2006 or early 2007 they took those pages down, and they took down the “English” link on the top of their main website that used to link to those pages. Perhaps they were embarrassed by the pedestrian design of the site and the lack of useful information. Or perhaps they felt it generated more questions than it answered. Or perhaps they just didn’t have anyone to keep the information up to date. I’m pretty certain they DIDN’T do it in an effort to reduce the number of foreigners coming into the school, as they seem to appreciate the revenue we produce (they even boast about this in the introduction of the International Training Center on the BFA website, noting that since 1994 it has brought in over 15,000,000 RMB – over US$2,000,000 – for BFA). But that’s a completely different discussion that will not be touched on here in the FAQ. =0)

2) So I’m completely lost. I don’t read enough Chinese to navigate the 2,863 links on the main BFA site and I have a TON of questions I need answered. Who do I contact?

All foreigners wanting to study at BFA must register through the International Training Center. There are several different contact phone numbers listed on their webpage that I’ve included below. The guy in charge of dealing with foreigners there when I registered for classes in 2006 was Mr. Ren, so that may be who you want to try and get in touch with first if you have a lot of questions. I will warn you that he was extremely rude and unhelpful with me when I dealt with him over the phone several times back in 2006, and I’ve talked to other international students at BFA who had similar experiences with him, but he may have gotten better over the past two years. I believe his number is 8204-3748 (which is listed below under Film Studies Office). Professor Ma seemed to be the person in charge of administering the Chinese language classes at BFA when I called back in 2006, but I never actually talked to her. I believe the number they gave me for her was 8204-1954, but that is also listed on the website as being under the Film Studies Office, so you might try the number listed for Chinese Language Studies Office as well.

For all numbers listed below you will need to add +8610 before the number if you are calling from outside China or add 010 before the number if calling from within China but outside of Beijing.

International Student Office: 8204-5433
International Student Dorm Switchboard: 8204-7722
International Student Dorm Front Desk (24 hours): 8204-3795
Director’s Office: 8204-3876
Film Studies Office: 8204-3748, or 8204-1954
Chinese Language Studies Office: 8204-5455
Fax: 8204-5747 or 8204-2132

E-mail: ao.is@bfa.edu.cn or guopeiyb@bfa.edu.cn

I think they rarely if ever reply to their e-mail, at least they never replied to mine and I’ve talked to other foreign students here who were similarly unsuccessful, but you can give it a try.

3) So I’m completely lost. I DO know enough Chinese to read the BFA website (or am clever enough to use Google’s translate feature) but can’t find the link to information for foreign students amongst the 2,863 links on the main BFA site. Are there some useful URLs for us foreign students who do read Chinese?

Well, I don’t know if these links would be considered useful to you or not, but I’ll list them anyway in hopes that they help you navigate the site:

Main BFA website:
http://www.bfa.edu.cn/

List of contact phone numbers for various BFA departments:
http://www.bfa.edu.cn/xygk/2006-05/03/content_612.htm

International Training Center:
http://www.bfa.edu.cn/yx/gjjl/gjjl.htm

International Training Center contact info:
http://www.bfa.edu.cn/yx/2006-05/09/content_2350.htm

4) So I’m a foreigner and want to study filmmaking at BFA. What are my options?

It really depends on what you are interested in studying and at what level you want to study. Like film schools in many countries, BFA offers undergraduate and graduate level degrees, and then they also have their revenue-generating one-year intensive courses offered in most departments (which is what I took in the cinematography department). There is also a Continuing Education department that offers a number of extension courses in various subjects, but I’m really not familiar with how that department works, what they offer, or if foreigners can take classes there or not. And it doesn’t help that the link to the Continuing Education webpage from the main BFA site has never worked.

The undergraduate program in most departments is four years, and the graduate program in most departments is three years. Foreigners wanting to enroll in either of these must have scored at least a Level 6 on the HSK (汉语水平考试 － Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, China’s version of TOEFL for the Chinese Language). For both levels of study all departments will require you to take the entrance exam for that department (I’m still not sure if it’s a separate test for foreigners, but I’m pretty sure foreigners are expected to test alongside Chinese students for admission to the specific program). I believe the entrance exams for most departments are either in December/January before Chinese New Year holiday or in March after the Chinese New Year holiday. But even if your Chinese is incredible, you are an amazingly talented student, and you can actually show up in China for the entrance exam, you might not be able to get into the department you want anyway. Every year each department comes up with their annual student recruitment guidelines, which includes the number of foreigners they will accept for the next year. Unfortunately many departments don’t accept any foreigners in either their undergraduate or graduate programs (or both), and this varies by year. Before coming to BFA I had considered testing for the MFA program in the cinematography department while studying in the one-year intensive program, but found out that the cinematography department’s student recruitment guidelines for the 2007-2008 school year did not allow for any foreigners in the MFA program (and I’m pretty sure it didn’t allow for any in the undergrad program either). Upon further investigation I found out they had not made an allowance in their annual guidelines for foreigners for the last several years, and I’m not sure if they EVER allowed any foreigners to even attempt to test into the MFA program. So be aware of this if you have your heart set on testing into an undergraduate or graduate program. You would probably be wise to contact the department directly (and very early on) and ask them if they plan to allow foreigners to compete for a place in the upcoming school year, and if they say yes, ask them when the entrance exam will take place and the registration deadline.

For those unable to test into the various departments or not wanting to spend three or four years studying at BFA, there is always the one-year intensive courses, known as jinxiuban (进修班) and offered in most departments (in some departments the length of study may be shorter or longer than one year). These courses also require that you score at least a Level 6 on the HSK. These courses are targeted at Chinese students who can’t test into the degree programs or who just want to get specialized training for one-year, but usually don’t place a restriction on the number of foreign students who can participate in the program, and I’ve noticed that many departments seem to have at least one or two foreigners in these programs every year. While students in these courses are not degree students, for the most part they are extended most of the benefits and access to school resources that degree students enjoy, but again this varies by department. There doesn’t seem to be one set of guidelines that governs all the jinxiuban courses. Some departments require students to take tests or interviews to gain entrance and limit the overall number of students (like the directing department), while some departments take just about anyone who has enough money to pay the steep tuition fee (like the cinematography department). The quality of instruction tends to vary by department also. In the 2006-2007 cinematography jinxiuban course in which I enrolled, there was no interview or examination process and everyone who applied seemed to have been accepted, resulting in about 60 students in a class that really was only designed to handle about 30 students maximum (I met a Chinese camera assistant on a shoot who told me he had done the cinematography jinxiuban course over five years ago and at that time they only had about 25 students and were given ample resources to work with). I’ve talked to students in the 2007-2008 cinematography jinxiuban course and the situation has obviously gotten even worse for them, as the number of students in their course soared to over 90 this year. To accommodate them, the department merely found a larger classroom to hold all of the classes. The directing department seems to have their jinxiuban course organized a bit better, and even though they receive more applications than the cinematography department, they hold a competitive interview and examination process every June and only offer admission to the best 30 to 40 students (not exactly sure if that number is right), who they announce in early July. From the students I talked to in this course, they seemed much more satisfied with their course offerings, teachers, and resources than most of my cinematography classmates (and myself) were. But every department is different, and every year things seem to change, so your best bet is to talk to the department directly as early as possible.

As for the course schedule, classes in all programs at BFA run on pretty much the same schedule, usually beginning in early September and running until the following July, with a one or two-month break in January/February/March for Chinese New Year. As far as I know all degree and jinxiuban courses begin during the fall semester (usually in September) and cannot be started mid-year at the beginning of the spring semester (usually late February or early March).

5) So I’m a foreigner and I want to study Chinese at BFA. What are my options?

This is a little easier than the last question. BFA offers three different levels of Chinese classes: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Every year they might have a different number of classes at each level depending on the students’ needs, and this current school year I believe there is only one beginner’s class, two intermediate classes (lower intermediate and upper intermediate), and two advanced classes (lower advanced and upper advanced). I’m pretty sure most Chinese classes are only in the morning, meeting Monday through Friday from 8am -12pm for a total of 20 hours a week. To the best of my knowledge this is a pretty common schedule with many Chinese language programs in China. From talking to friends who have taken the Chinese classes at BFA, it sounds like the classes are kept pretty small, usually with only 6-12 students in any one class (I’ve heard of MUCH larger classes at other universities). In all I think every year there are less than 30 foreigners total studying Chinese at BFA, so it’s a very small program. As to the quality of the program, I have not taken Chinese classes at BFA, so I cannot vouch for how good they are, but the students I’ve talked to taking classes there seem to be fairly content. I’ve not heard any complaints about the program.

I think the big question for many people in regards to taking Chinese classes at BFA is whether or not it would be better to go to one of the more well-known Chinese language programs in Beijing. Again, I’ve not studied Chinese in Beijing and can’t vouch for any of the programs, but I am fairly familiar with most of the more popular programs here. I’ve also studied four different Asian languages in a number of different schools and language programs over the past decade and have a lot of experience with choosing language programs. In my experience the actual program and classes are not nearly as important as what you put into them, and to be honest I think it’s more important what you do OUTSIDE of the classroom while studying a language in country than what you do inside the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first person to recommend to anyone planning to live here for a while to invest the time and money in taking at least a year of language classes to get the most out of their stay. It’s essential to have that foundation and well-rounded approach to the language that a structured class can provide. But as far as which language program provides the best approach to the language, I think it’s hard to say and I think it’s much more important to look at the environment you will be living in and surrounded by than the actual differences in the classes themselves.

So having said that, I think that if you are interested in filmmaking and have plans to get involved in filmmaking here in China, then you can’t go wrong taking language classes at BFA, regardless of how good the classes actually are. Why? Because you are surrounded by Chinese film students and professors and a whole film community right outside your classroom door. You can set up language exchanges with Chinese film students, attend film-related lectures and events, sit in on elective classes, and get involved in student film shoots if you take the initiative. And I think pretty much all of the students who do take Chinese classes at BFA come here because of their interest in filmmaking. If you have absolutely no interest in filmmaking, then you might be better off looking into classes at one of the larger and better-known programs at BLCU (Beijing Language and Culture University), Qinghua (better known as Tsinghua to foreigners and jokingly as Qingwa – frog – to many Chinese), or Beijing Normal University. Or one of the zillions of other programs around Beijing or any other city in China for that matter. Except Guangzhou. Please don’t go take Chinese language classes in Guangzhou.

As for the schedule of Chinese courses, they run pretty much the same time as the rest of BFA courses, having a fall and spring semester with a one- to two-month break in January/February/March for Chinese New Year. Unlike the degree and jinxiuban courses, I believe students can begin Chinese courses mid-year at the beginning of the spring semester, although you’d probably want to register as early as possible as nobody works during the weeks surrounding Chinese New Year.

6) So I’m sure I want to study filmmaking or Chinese or something/anything/everything at BFA, but I’m a poor student (or I need to have a rough estimate of expenses for the scholarship I’m applying to). How much is tuition gonna cost me?

Good question. I will tell you the amounts I know from my own research in 2006, as I’m unable to find any readily available figures on the current BFA website and I’m not going to call around and ask current tuition figures for every degree program. But these figures should give you a rough estimate of what to expect, even if they’ve changed or weren’t entirely correct in the first place.

Tuition for Chinese classes is probably the cheapest of any of the programs at BFA. As of 2006 they were about 9,000 RMB (about US $1250) for a full school year of classes (which is two full semesters, same as all the other degree and non-degree programs at BFA). Or maybe that was only for one semester. I’m pretty sure it’s for the full year though. There’s a very good chance that now in 2008 this may have risen over 10,000 RMB, but again you’ll have to check with BFA for actual amounts. If you pay a full year’s tuition up front I believe it will also allow you to get a one-year X (student) visa, which is nice because extending and changing visas can be a hassle (especially with a US passport these days… I can’t possibly imagine what the US did to prompt the Chinese authorities to raise visa prices and implement stricter visa restrictions for US passport holders only… I mean it’s so easy for foreigners to get visas to the US these days… yes I’m being sarcastic). In comparison to other Chinese programs around Beijing, I believe this is a fairly competitive price for tuition. BLCU, which probably qualifies as one of the largest and most well-known Chinese language programs in China, charges 11,600 RMB annually for a similar 20-hour per week language course (at least that’s the way it appears from the tuition chart on their website at: http://www.blcu.edu.cn/lzb/lx/english/fees.htm)

Tuition for undergraduate and graduate programs FROM WHAT I’VE HEARD are a little over 10,000 RMB a year for LOCAL STUDENTS in many of the departments (again, this amount may vary by department). If you do manage to test into a department’s undergraduate or graduate program then you can probably expect to pay at least 30% more than that, if not more. Think of it as a foreigner service fee (or the 老外手续费 as I like to refer to it in Chinese). But again, this is something you’ll have to check with the International Training Center and the specific department about for specifics.

For the one-year intensive jinxiuban (进修班) courses like I did, I can tell you what I paid and you can assume it is probably about that same amount for most departments and probably hasn’t gone up too much since 2006. In 2006, my Chinese classmates paid a whopping 35,000 RMB (obviously WAY more than undergraduate and graduate students pay, which is only one of many reasons I believe the jinxiuban’s raison d’etre is to make money for the departments) for the cinematography jinxiuban course, and the three foreigners in our class paid an even heftier 46,000 RMB each for the year. Why the 11,000 RMB difference? Ah yes, the good ol’ foreigner service fee. Alas, they have to write a letter that allows you to get your visa. Evidently it is a very difficult and time-consuming task. But again, we won’t get into that here in the FAQ. Suffice it to say that it’s another one of those great mysteries like the reason BFA took down there English website in the first place. Having said that though, your tuition gets you a full student ID, access to movie screenings and events, elective classes (at least I think we were allowed to sit in on those elective classes… we would have anyway though), a library card, and plenty of other nice little perks. And in the cinematography program, we did get to shoot our final project on 16mm. Of course we were sharing one camera and only got to shoot one film between 12 people, and were only given 200 ft. of film per person, but it was real film. Real Kodak film. And it was a real Arri camera. Real Arri SRII camera. Hehe. That’s ok, my friend at USC film school said they have to shoot on those same old clunkers too. And if you want to look at it this way, you’d be paying US $35,000 or more a year for tuition alone at USC, whereas the hefty 46,000 RMB I was paying (well, my scholarship was paying) only comes out to a bit over US $6,000. I would think that USC probably offers a lot more resources, better courses, and more opportunities (they darn well better at those prices!), but for those of us who can’t afford $35,000/year film school programs and have an interest in China and/or Asia, suddenly BFA becomes a very enticing option financially. That’s really the explanation I should give all these Chinese who ask me the same annoying question about what the hell is wrong with me when I tell them I came from the USA to Beijing to study filmmaking. But I just smile and tell them that it’s because I love their beautiful country so much.

7) So I can scrounge up the money to come (and I couldn’t get into USC anyway), but where am I supposed to live?

Several years back BFA completely rebuilt the international student dorm, and they did a fairly good job of it in my opinion (by local standards). The International Training Center offices, the Chinese language classrooms, three floors of hotel rooms for short-term visitors, and two floors of dorm rooms for students are all squeezed into this reasonably well furnished 6-story building. But all this luxury comes at a cost my dear friends. Rooms are not cheap, although compared to what many foreigners are used to paying for dorms back home you might think they are a real steal. As of 2006, double rooms and single rooms (there are a lot more doubles available than singles) both went for 3,000 RMB a month. In other words, if you are in a double with someone else each person would only be paying 1500 RMB a month, whereas in the single you’d be paying the 3,000 RMB all by your lonesome self. The rooms come with their own bathrooms, and are about the same size and layout as a typical economy hotel room. The rooms also have color TV and air conditioning. Internet is available in the rooms but you have to pay about 120 RMB a month to use it. There is a community kitchen and laundry room on each floor, and a few other communal amenities. I spent my first week in Beijing in 2006 living in this dorm while I looked around outside campus for an apartment, but I really didn’t spend much time in the dorm during that week and really didn’t explore the facilities, so I can’t tell you too much more about the dorm. It is a pretty nice and clean place to live, and it’s super convenient since you are living right on campus. The international students also seem to have a lot of parties there. So it’s probably pretty similar to many co-ed dorms at universities abroad in a lot of ways.

The thing that doesn’t make sense to me about the prices and arrangement of the rooms is that doubles are probably bigger than singles (I never actually saw a single during my one-week stay at the dorm, so I could be wrong), so if you wanted to stay by yourself, why not just pay 3,000 RMB for the double room and have more space. But perhaps they don’t allow students to do that, or perhaps singles are about the same size as doubles. There’s actually a much cheaper way to get a double to yourself at the dorm though, which I found out the hard way living with my Mongolian roommate that first week. He was only 18 and was one of those rich, spoiled, English-speaking Mongolian aristocrat kids who’d probably grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He got most of his education in Moscow, and had been in Beijing already for some time learning Chinese, although he told me he didn’t go to class that often and spent much of his time while I was there that week going to clubs around town. At any rate, when I came into the room my first night, he had his stuff scattered all over the room. He made no effort to move anything until I started to pick up his dirty clothes off my bed and he reached over and grabbed them off for me. I could barely introduce myself because his massive speakers were blaring Mongolian rap at full blast (so my introduction to the fine art form of Mongolian rap was certainly not a pleasant one), and he made no attempt to turn them down. And things basically continued like this the whole week. I crammed my life belongings that I had brought with me into one corner and lived out of my suitcases for the week while desperately searching for somewhere off campus to live. The most effective part of his tactic was when he would come in at 4am from clubbing, pop in a DVD (all he did most of the day was watch pirated DVDs of Hollywood films at full blast on those massive speakers that doubled as his Mongolian rap blasters), turn the volume up really loud, and let the film run as he fell asleep. No, I’m not joking. I would toss and turn in bed at first to make it obvious that he had woken me up and I couldn’t possibly sleep with Miami Vice blaring in surround sound in our small little room. When he was sure that I was completely awake, he would ask me if I liked the movie he had in or if I’d rather watch something else. The funny thing is that to be honest, I don’t know if this little plan of his to have a double room to himself was actually a plan or was just merely the result of him being a spoiled little prick and not knowing any better. From the way he asked me these questions and seemed completely innocent about the whole thing, you might actually believe the whole thing wasn’t even an act. Especially that one time he looked at me with an earnest and curious expression on his face after I told him I was moving out the next day to an apartment and said “you know, you’re the sixth roommate I’ve had this year, and now you’re leaving too. I really don’t understand why all my roommates want to leave.”

So if the prices aren’t enough to scare you into not wanting to live in the dorm, then maybe that little anecdote will help convince you. Actually, lots of students I’ve talked to really like living in the dorm and really like the community of aspiring foreign filmmakers they are surrounded by. And most of them end up with very cool roommates. But you don’t have much space, and not really any private space save for your desk and your bed. But when you’re young, that’s fine. I did it for four years in college. But for those more ‘mature’ (i.e. old) people coming to study at BFA (like me), or just those who want to get more bang for their RMB, the only solution is to find a place to live off-campus. Unfortunately finding apartments in China as a foreigner (or even as a Chinese) is not a simple task, and usually involves a middleman who might very well be crooked, or a lot of walking, asking around, checking bulletin boards, and looking at Internet forums. The problem with most of the apartment complexes right around the film school is that they are older and typically filled with long-time dwellers who don’t move out, at least not until they die. It’s not like the Wudaokou area which has many new apartment buildings and a lot of students and young people living there who are always coming and going.

Having said that, there are PLENTY of apartments around the film school and there are rooms to be had if you look hard enough. I found a room right next door to the film academy in the apartment complex at the back of the Beijing Film Studio. I remember walking around and asking people running all the little shops on the road behind BFA if they knew of any people in the neighborhood renting out apartments and got a few numbers. The first several I called had already been taken (probably by other new students at BFA, as this was right before classes started), but finally I found an open room right at the back gate of the film school. It was a tiny room in a not very nice apartment that I would be sharing with a Chinese family. I wasn’t so interested in doing the homestay thing this time around in China (I lived with a Chinese family for half a year in Chengdu in 2004, and had a fantastic experience with them, but this one didn’t look quite as promising and I wanted a little more privacy this time anyway), and the fact that their shower didn’t work and they wanted me to take showers up at school was not exactly comforting. I had called another number before this one and the guy had told me he had already rented out the room, but he called me back later that afternoon and told me that it was available again (I found out later that my Chinese-American classmate was the one who went and looked at it and said he would take it earlier that day, but his parents had ended up making him live in the dorm because they were worried about his safety). So I went over and checked it out and was pleased with how much room it had and its close vicinity to school. And I’m still living here almost a year and a half later.

As for apartment prices, they can vary depending on the area, the age of the apartment, the size, and other factors, but I would say that if you are willing to share a two-bedroom apartment with someone else and have your own room (which is what I do) then you could expect to pay anywhere from about 1200 – 2500 RMB a month for a decent place to live. I live in the larger bedroom of my two-bedroom apartment and also have a small adjoining room that I use as my office, as well as a large balcony (which is VERY convenient for drying clothes), and I pay closer to the lower end of those figures above. Then again my building is rather old and a bit dilapidated, and while the inside of the apartment is decent and everything works ok, the bathroom and kitchen are fairly grimy (the kind of grimy that can’t be solved with a bottle of Mr. Clean and a lot of physical exertion… they will just never be a nice bathroom or kitchen and I’ve slowly learned to accept that fact). Of course if you wanted to get a fancier place or have a small apartment to yourself then you’d probably be looking at between 1800 – 4000 RMB in this part of town. Again, these are just estimates. If you are willing to commute a bit you could probably find better deals somewhere a little further away, or if you wanted to live in the lap of luxury with a nice apartment and lots of cool places nearby and don’t mind a longer commute, then there are several areas a bit further away that would certainly be nicer than the one directly around BFA. One of my top recommendations would be Wudaokou (五道口), which I’ve mentioned several times throughout this FAQ.

My advice for housing while living at BFA is to plan on coming to Beijing a week before classes start and live in the international student dorm. You can pay by the day or week (although rates may be a bit more expensive this way than paying monthly). Live there and see what you think. And maybe more importantly see if you like your roommate. If you are happy enough with dorm life, consider staying for the first semester at least and see how it goes. Otherwise, use that first week to look around for an apartment in the area as fast as you can. If you don’t find one before classes start, it will be a bit harder to get out and look, but you can still stay in the dorm as long as you need and can spend your weekends looking around. For me personally I’ve enjoyed the extra space, privacy, and quiet that I get living off campus for basically the same price I would have been paying to share a small hotel-size room with someone else. And the extra little walk to school isn’t so bad. Unless it’s raining. But the dorm is a pretty nice place (I’ve seen MUCH worse international student dorms here in China), and you can’t beat the convenience of being right on campus (in fact I think Chinese classes are still conducted right there in the international student dorm building). It seems to suit a lot of students just fine. The choice is up to you, but having an extra week or two before classes start to live there and check it out would probably help you make the best decision for your personal needs.

8) What are some of the perks of studying at BFA?

What, you still have more questions??? Jeez. Alright, but I’m not writing another novella answer like that last one. The things I do for you people…

Here are some of the things I thought were nice perks about the film academy and factors I think that might help convince a lot of people to make that final decision to come study at BFA. I’ve tried to list them in order of how useful I found them (from most important to least important), but obviously this will vary by individual.

- English-language room in the library
Wow, this place rocked. They have an entire room in the school library devoted to foreign language books, the majority of which are in English. I’ve been to USC’s library and seen their whole wing of the library devoted to film books, so obviously this doesn’t come close, but it’s got to be by far the best resource of English-language books on film and photography you’ll find in China. And they keep the library updated, getting in hundreds of new books every year on a wide variety of topics. I was so impressed by their selection and all the good stuff on offer that I often skipped several of my really boring and pointless classes and went to the library to do some self-guided studying. To me this was easily the single best resource at the school. Foreigners studying Chinese language are not issued library cards, so you might not be able to gain access to this place, but if you ask nicely you might just be able to get access. All degree students and jinxiuban students in most departments should all receive library cards and be able to get in here. The only bad thing about this room is that no books may be removed from the room, so you have to stay in there to read your books and have to live by there limited hours (fortunately they extended their hours the second semester I was studying there).

- Free screenings and lectures by world-renowned filmmakers
I have to admit for all the shortcomings I like to point out about BFA, they sure do manage to get a fair share of big name filmmakers visit campus. And their visits are often accompanied by free screenings of one or more of their films. And even when the filmmakers visiting aren’t quite as internationally renowned, they still have some very good insights to share with the students. The not-so-famous Iranian director (to prove he’s not so famous I can’t even remember his name) who showed his film and spoke in one of our combined classes had even more useful points to make than Luc Besson did several months later when he spoke to a packed house in the school’s main screening auditorium. And it seems like almost every week there is someone else coming to visit. I recently missed a visit by one of my favorite Korean directors Lee Chang-dong that I’m still kicking myself over.

- Free movie screenings on the big screen
During the school year BFA holds regular weekly screenings at least two nights a week (usually Monday and Tuesday), showing two domestic films on Monday night and two foreign films on Tuesday night. These screenings can be very hit and miss, especially with the domestic films, but at the same time they provide students to see films they couldn’t otherwise see even on DVD up on the big screen. And if you are a BFA student you get in free. Unfortunately I didn’t catch a single screening my first semester and only started to go occasionally my second semester, but I did see some very interesting films, and got a chance to see things up on the big screen the way they were meant to be seen, which was an important experience for a frugal aspiring filmmaker like me who never pays the exorbitant prices to go to the movie theatres.

- Elective classes
On top of the regular classes offered specifically within departments specifically for different degree programs, there are a large number of elective classes offered throughout the semester, many of them given in the evening so they don’t interfere with students’ regular classes. From what I understand degree students (at least undergraduates) have to take a certain number of elective classes on top of their regular class load anyway, which is probably the main reason they exist, but I had plenty of classmates who sat in on a number of the elective classes, as they don’t really seem to take attendance. I rarely attended the elective classes, as sitting through my regular classes from 8am to 5pm was already enough to mush my brain up like Silly Putty in the hands of a 5-year-old, but there were a number of interesting ones that in retrospect I wish my mashed up little brain would have tried to endure. I did sit in on a few different ones with some of my classmates just to try them out, including one that showed short films of BFA student works and allowed the other students to critique the work, which I thought was a great idea despite the fact the films they showed that night were quite atrocious. However, be warned that there are a number of these elective classes that I doubt many foreigners would want to sit through, except maybe to gain a better understanding of the Chinese educational system. As I scanned the roster of elective classes posted in the main entrance of the main educational building at the beginning of each semester, I noticed such class titles as “The Five Virtues of Marxist Theory” and “Applying Maoism to Modern Practices” and a number of other courses that had absolutely nothing to do with filmmaking but were probably required by the government to be taught and may very well have been required electives for students. I never asked. I was very tempted to go sit in on some of those classes though just to see what they talked about. And just to see the reaction of the teacher when he walked into class, put down his books on the podium, finished smoking his cigarette, and looked up to see my smiling white face right in front of him. But again, the ‘Silly Putty Brain Syndrome’ kept me from carrying out these ‘missions’. Suffice it to say that there are probably some really good elective classes and some really bad ones, but with over 50 (or maybe closer to 100) different ones to choose from, there’s bound to be some real gems in there.

- Access to equipment
Access to equipment varies greatly by department, and can only be checked out in certain periods when there is an assigned project to work on (which in my course only came at the end of each semester), but there is TONS of professional film equipment at BFA to be harvested and used if you can find a way to get to it. When we worked on our 16mm project we were borrowing huge HMIs, Kino-flos, and tons of grip equipment left and right. Unfortunately that was the ONLY time they let us near any of that, but it does exist and students to get to use it at some point.

- You’re at film school!
You are surrounded by tons of other students studying filmmaking, you have departments stocked with experts in their respective fields, you have films being shot all around you, you have the chance to network and meet people and start your career in filmmaking. It’s all there. It’s just a matter of what you do with it. If you don’t take advantage of it here, who’s to say you’d take advantage of it at USC even if you could afford it (or get accepted).

9) What are some of the drawbacks to studying at BFA (especially as a foreigner)?

You’ve got some nerve asking another question!

I have very mixed feelings about my time at BFA, as you can probably tell from my blog entries. Overall I was not extremely impressed with what BFA had to offer, but a lot of that had to do with my specific course, my specific conditions, and my specific expectations. I’m not going to list all the things I found wrong with the school here, rather I’ll try to objectively list some of the things I think are weak points of the school and some of the things that I think many foreigners studying at BFA might be discouraged or frustrated by. These are NOT in any particular order.

- Studying filmmaking in Chinese
Most foreigners I’ve met who study filmmaking (not Chinese) at BFA do not have an outstanding mastery of Chinese. I’d certainly say on average we definitely have a much weaker command of the language than most foreign students I’ve met studying in the US have of English. And many of these foreigners don’t have a film background and are learning many of the concepts from scratch, though I don’t know if these foreign students are in the majority or minority. Learning new concepts in a foreign language are never easy, especially if you don’t have a firm command of the language. And Chinese is certainly not an easy language to master. I think that a lot of foreign students come here after years of Chinese study back home or even here in China having never actually learned anything IN Chinese, only having learned Chinese itself as a foreign language. And I think they end up getting overwhelmed and frustrated by their courses and have a very hard time absorbing the concepts being taught because they are too busy trying to keep up with the Chinese. The teachers in the classes here don’t slow down for the lone foreigner in the class, just like they wouldn’t slow down for foreigners in classes back in the US (even when they are the majority of the class, which is often the case these days!). So while it may be a good experience for raising the foreign student’s Chinese listening level and picking up a lot of technical vocabulary, is that something they necessarily need to pay all that tuition to do when they could go listen to tapes and read specialized books? That’s a big dilemma I dealt with during my year of study at BFA, as I went into my classes with a fairly strong command of the Chinese language, but at times (and with certain teachers) I would feel overwhelmed by the slew of new technical vocabulary and new concepts being thrown out so fast (and not always using the best teaching methods either, which is another problem I’ll get to below). And while I certainly learned a ton of useful Chinese along the way that has served me well while working in the industry here, I know there are a lot of new concepts that I completely missed because I was too busy keeping up with the Chinese or too exhausted from overexerting my brain from 8am to 5pm everyday. So what I really think would have been more effective and what I would recommend to any other foreigners considering studying filmmaking at BFA is that you have a solid grasp of professional filmmaking concepts and preferably some experience in the industry back home before you come jump into classes at BFA. Not only will it make your experience at BFA more rewarding, but it will also make it much easier for you to find a job over here in the industry after you graduate (or even while you are studying). Because unless your Chinese is at near-native level (and a good portion of the foreigners that come to study here are overseas Chinese who grew up speaking Chinese), you will spend a lot of time and energy just on the language front and not actually absorbing ideas and techniques, and the more you understand the content already the faster you’ll absorb the new vocabulary that goes along with it. At least that’s my two cents on the matter. Your mileage may vary.

- Poor facilities and resources
Ok, this is the best film school in China and very possibly one of the best in Asia. And there is a lot of money that has gone into this school. But at times you simply wouldn’t know that while studying here. At times you will probably scratch your head and wonder “who exactly is it that started this rumor?” And it’s hard to pinpoint what it is that will have you thinking this, but I think foreigners who study here invariably ask themselves this question from time to time. Here’s an example. We paid all that tuition to be stuck in a horribly dilapidated and depressing classroom with very uncomfortable seats and decaying desks. The computer and projector system in the room was very cheap and when we could actually get it to work produced horrible results. Everything around me felt cheap, dirty, and neglected. Granted, there are some nicer classrooms around campus, especially in the new building on campus where we were fortunate enough to have one class a week the second semester. But overall the atmosphere of the main student building is pretty depressing in my opinion. The school does have a nice main screening auditorium, and they did just put in a new sports ground (a rubber-base mini soccer field and basketball courts), but overall I felt like it was not an environment very conducive to learning. Then again I’ve had a blessed life growing up in the US and going to nice schools with nice facilities and not all foreigners coming to BFA will have had such experiences or any such expectations. But I feel that I’m a fairly adaptable person having lived and studied in so many places in Asia over the past decade, and I definitely found BFA to be one of my least favorite campuses and I found student life here to be one of my hardest transitions. And of course this is not solely because I didn’t like the facilities, but I felt that this had a lot to do with it. I was also a bit disappointed with the fact that BFA houses tons of very nice equipment but the typical checkout equipment for a number of different departments and courses were DV cameras (Canon XL-1s and Panasonic DVX100s). Yes, the few projects we shot outside of our graduation 16mm film project were all done on these DV cameras. And we were given cheap plastic tripods on top of that. Come on. One of the best film schools in Asia? I’m scratching my head again.

- Chinese teaching style
It’s a common known fact that Eastern and Western teaching styles are very different, and even within different countries and societies within the East and West there are vast differences. So I’m not going to beat this issue to death. Suffice it to say that no matter where you are from or what system of teaching you are used to, at least half of the teachers I had at BFA would have bored you to tears. The Chinese teaching style involves the teacher standing (actually most of mine sat since they taught for three to four hours at a time) in front of the class and talking nonstop about whatever they want with no regard for whether the students are grasping the concepts or not. And it’s not all that common for Chinese students to ask questions. And it’s not all that UNcommon for Chinese students to fall asleep. And the teachers don’t care. There were a number of my classes where we had a terribly boring teacher who seemed to really care less about whether or not anyone was listening to his boring lectures and I would turn around (yes, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes Foreigner always sat at the front of the classroom) to a sea of hair with an occasional face bobbing up and down. Literally the entire class would be sleeping as the teacher droned on and on. For me personally as a teacher that would be a huge bruise to my ego and I would probably just get up and walk out of the room, but some of these teachers were just so robotic in their approach to teaching that I’m not even sure they noticed. Even when the fat guy who always sat behind me would start snoring loudly on occasion. It’s kind of funny looking back on things like that, but in the end it’s really kind of sad. My impression of teachers here in China is extremely low, and I’m afraid many of them really just don’t give much of a damn about what they are teaching or if the students absorb it as long as they get paid. I might feel bad making such a generalized statement like that had I not been told repeatedly by my Chinese classmates and Chinese friends that teachers in China are simply all like that, and that is exactly how school was for them their entire upbringing. And people wonder why China lags behind the West in terms of creativity.

Those are the main drawbacks that I can think of from my own experiences at BFA. I don’t put these here to try and scare potential students away from studying here, but merely as an idea of what to possibly expect so that your expectations before arriving might be a little more realistically aligned. No two foreigners will have the same experience at BFA, and the things I might have hated about my classes the next guy may love. But that may just be because that next guy is French. They’re weird like that.

10) Where is BFA located?

Well, first of all it’s in Beijing, China, but if you didn’t know that much already, then I think you have bigger problems than finding your way to the campus. More specifically, it’s located just outside the northwest side of Beijing’s Third Ring Road, about 200 meters north of the Jimenqiao（蓟门桥) bridge. This is a fairly convenient location in that it is not too far away from central Beijing, and there is a bus stop with a number of routes covered right next to the front gate of the school, but the nearest subway is several kilometers away and there really isn’t much to do in the near vicinity of the school. There are also not that many restaurants or shopping districts nearby. There is a Wal-mart a few kilometers away, and Wudaokou (五道口 - a popular shopping and entertainment area located near the Beijing Language and Culture University, Qinghua University, and Beijing University) is less than 10 kilometers away and only about US $2 by taxi (or US $0.15 by bus!) from BFA. There is a new subway line being built about half a kilometer north of campus that will have a station at the intersection directly north of campus, which will make transportation a bit more convenient when it opens in mid-2008.

I recently returned from a trip to Korea to shoot (as DP) a short film there for a few weeks. It was my first trip back to Korea since I lived in Seoul for two months in the summer of 2006 to study Korean. And it was fantastic. It definitely rekindled my intangibly strong attraction to Korea: the spicy yet healthy food that my stomach and heart appreciated much more than the oily fair I usually treat them to in China; the warm-hearted, courteous people who donated their time and resources to help out with our project; the clean, lively streets bustling with life (including drunk businessmen pissing off to the side, but even they add color to the spectrum of life that makes Seoul so dynamic to me); and the challenging language that I had largely forgotten since my last trip but had ample opportunity to refresh while working with an all-Korean cast and predominantly Korean crew.

The shoot was challenging, especially in terms of scheduling (we worked some insanely long hours) and crew size, as we were short of help in the camera crew on several days of the shoot. We shot on my Canon XH-A1 and Letus Extreme 35 lens adapter with my Nikon prime lenses (and occasionally one of my Canon primes). In fact, all of the camera and audio equipment we used were mine, which caused me to pay a hefty excess baggage fee at the Beijing airport. I also almost missed my plane because once I finished arguing with the guy about paying the fee for excess baggage, I kindly informed him that I had a fake gun in my check-in bag. Which I did. It’s a prop, and I got it out of Hawaii and into China without any problems, so figured I’d be able to get it out just as easily. Definitely not the case. The problem is that it looks and feels entirely too real (which is why it’s such a great prop, and we needed it for the film). So as I was waiting for security officers and eventually the police to take a look at the gun (several of the airport employees were actually posing with the gun and taking pictures with their cell phones as I stood there embarrassed as practically everyone in the airport looked on at this crazy foreigner who must be up to no good). So my advice is to not try taking prop guns in and out of China. I eventually convinced the police officer on the scene to hold on to the gun for me until I came back, then sprinted across the airport and got on the plane right before they closed the hatch (my baggage unfortunately did not make it onto the plane). I noticed everyone staring at me as I walked down the aisle of the plane and wondered whether I was attracting their attention because I was out of breath and covered in sweat, or because they had seen me at the check-in counter an hour earlier with my head in my hands as the airline employees did their James Bond poses. Or because I was the only white guy on the plane, which is actually the most likely reason. Get plenty of that in China. Not so much in Korea fortunately, which was just one of many reasons I was looking forward to this trip.

But back to the shoot. Since both primary locations for the shoot were indoors and mostly at night, I knew we’d have to rent lighting equipment (as well as a few other things), and wasn’t looking forward to this as I wasn’t familiar with any of the grip houses in Seoul and my Korean was a bit too rusty to be ordering equipment. My German friend Nils (who’d recommend me for the job), a photographer and filmmaker based in Seoul that I’d met while living there in 2006, told me not to worry because he knew the perfect place. And he wasn’t lying. MediACT was just that. The perfect place to borrow equipment. And a lot more.

MediACT was established by the Korean government to help train and prepare the Korean population for the digital media age. Not only do they offer professional equipment rental similar to a very small-scale grip house, but also offer classes, editing facilities, and various other kinds of support for filmmakers. Being government-funded, MediACT is able to offer these services at very reasonable prices to its members. And becoming a member only involves attending a one-time orientation explaining how to use the facilities and equipment and paying the $20 member fee. And up-to-date equipment and facility availability can be viewed on their website, where you can also make reservations. Their Seoul location is located in the heart of the city in a very nice building at the Gwanghwamun intersection looking down at Yi Sun-shin’s imposing statue. And with the success of their Seoul venture, MediACT has opened facilities in other major cities around Korea.

Now of course none of those big blockbuster Korean films you’ve seen were shot with MediACT equipment, and those overly melodramatic Korean soap operas weren’t edited in MediACT facilities (probably), but don’t be surprised if several years down the road the people making those films and dramas are currently cutting their teeth on MediACT equipment and in the MediACT classrooms. Because to me it seems the goal of MediACT is to make filmmaking accessible to EVERYONE, not just those who can afford film school or have already decided to devote their lives to filmmaking (God forbid!). Some brilliant politician (is that an oxymoron?) in Korea probably looked around him one day and realized that ‘Hey, everything around us in this global economy is somehow connected to media, and our society is becoming increasingly dependent on the dissemination of information in visual format’. Well, let’s hope he was a bit more articulate than that in his thought process, but at any rate someone got their act together and saw a need for training people – regardless of their age, background, or career field – in digital media to help Korea’s economy continue to compete well in the 21st century.

In my opinion, it’s far-sighted policies and experiments like these implemented by the Korean government that have helped Korea become one of the world’s leading technology innovators. Similar far-sighted policies on the part of the government helping expedite the penetration of broadband Internet throughout Korea has given Korea one of the most computer and Internet literate populations in the world. Ditto for their telecommunications infrastructure, putting them at the forefront of new cell phone technologies. They were one of the first to adopt the new 3G technology, which the US is still struggling with five years later. And one arena in which Korean government support (or interference, depending on which side of the argument you look at it from) has been in the film industry, where Korea’s controversial quota system has greatly bolstered the industry’s overnight transition into one of the leading cinemas in the world. And I think MediACT is just one more important step in this process.

And this raises an interesting question. Where are the MediACTs in the US? Why has the US government not taken a more active (and far-sighted) interest in the development of future media-makers? Or do they exist and have just not received the recognition they deserve? The best examples I’ve found in the US of multimedia programs being established to train Americans in digital media concepts and production are high school programs like the internationally acclaimed program at Waianae High School in Hawaii, which are typically the product of an individual or a school or school district. And while the number of such programs is on the rise, for the most part they still seem to be under-funded, under-staffed, and under-appreciated (or perhaps misunderstood). And of course the biggest difference between these high school programs and MediACT is that you have to be a high school student to take advantage of what they offer (and that’s only if they offer such a program at the high school you happen to be attending). What about the rest of us who didn’t even have computers in our high schools when we were that age (am I really that old?!), or at least came before the proliferation of the Internet and the rise of digital media. What outlet do we have but to drop our current careers or field of study and go back to film school or technical school… for a whopping $30,000 a year. And what about the professionals in other fields who want to learn to incorporate the new digital media technologies into their current fields but don’t have the time to attend school full time. A number of universities and community colleges offer continuing education classes in these fields, but I’ve seen the limited resources these programs typically offer and while it’s a noble effort, it’s often laughable how basic they are (especially given the prices they charge for these classes).

There are obviously plenty of avenues for Americans to learn these new skills and implement them (and being a nation full of well-paid and well-educated people certainly doesn’t hurt), but to me the issue at hand here is not now, but the future. The very near future. And it’s not just in the field of digital media training for the masses. It seems like in terms of education in the US, there just aren’t many far-sighted policies and programs being implemented. Like so many other things there, America seems to be complacent and satisfied that since we are on top, we will always remain on top. History has proven repeatedly that’s not the case, and I think Korea, with it’s many far-sighted policies targeting the key trends that will drive the world economy in this still fledgling century, offers a number of modern lessons that the US would be wise to learn from.

The 9th Annual Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) was held from May 1-9 in Jeonju, the 12th largest city in South Korea. JIFF is Korea’s second largest film festival behind the massive Pusan International Film Festival. Offering a cozy setting in a city famous for its small town atmosphere and traditional architecture - as well as delicious Jeonju bibimbab - JIFF screened a total of 195 films from 40 countries in several venues centrally located around the city’s aptly named Cinema Street. With a $2.9 million budget and nearly 300 volunteers, JIFF put on a fantastic festival this year.

The main venue for the festival, Megabox Theatre, was a vertically stacked distant cousin of one of those massive US megaplexes that take up an entire corner of a shopping mall or make for the centerpiece of a massive strip center (when the heck are Americans going to learn to build upward?). It housed twelve theaters inside it’s towering 8-story complex which was conveniently located toward the front end of Cinema Street. Many of the street performances during the festival took place directly in front of this cinema, including several performance art events that grabbed the attention of just about everyone walking by, even if they only stopped to scratch their heads and wonder what the heck the performance was supposed to mean. Very interesting nonetheless. One other venue I quite liked was the #4 theater in Primus Theatre, in which the seats were put at ground level and seat rows were given ample room between them so that you could spread your legs out in front of you. Unfortunately the only movie I got to watch in this venue was an Alexander Kluge film, and since his films aren’t exactly the kind that ‘keep you on the edge of your seat’, my arse fell asleep a number of times and it’s wasn’t exactly easy to re-circulate blood to my thirsty butt cells since I had made the mistake of sitting in the front row and everyone behind me was sitting at ground level also. Nonetheless, I think it was a fantastic idea and wish more theatres would adopt similar seating. The other venues were pretty standard theatre fare that can be found in just about any city the world over, but fortunately most of my movies were in the massive and ultra-hip Megabox.

I attended the festival as a NETPAC jury member and was one over 1,800 official guests, 136 of which were foreigners. Our NETPAC jury was an interesting mix: Ngo Phuong Lan, a renowned Vietnamese film critic who used to belong to the state censorship board (and is a good friend of mine); Jung Jae-Hyung, a film professor at Dongguk University and chairman of FIPRESCI in Korea; and me, a young filmmaker based in Beijing. NETPAC has juries at almost 20 different festivals around the world and gives one NETPAC award annually at each of these festivals to Asian films that are either the director’s first or second feature-length work. There were twelve films in competition for the NETPAC award at Jeonju, eight of which were Korean films. The most interesting and exciting thing about the line-up of these Korean films was that they were all shot on HD by young filmmakers, giving me the opportunity to see what my peers working in the same format as I usually work were doing next door in Korea. In the end we were unanimous in our decision to give the NETPAC award to the Korean film ‘Children of God’, a documentary shot in the sacred area of Pashupatinath in Nepal that dealt with the lives of children struggling to survive in harsh conditions along the river where many people come to cremate the dead. There were a number of other films that were quite spectacular in our competition, particularly among the Korean films.

In addition to watching the twelve films in the NETPAC competition, I watched as many other films throughout the festival as I could manage, catching films by Hungarian Bela Tarr and German Alexander Kluge – whose films were highlighted in special sections of the festival – and a number of other films from around the world that I knew I’d have a hard time finding on DVD in China. In between screenings I loaded up on delicious Korean food, watched special street performances and took pictures around the Cinema Street area, previewed some films in the video rooms at the JIFF Service Center (they had fantastic video rooms!!), chatted with some of the many filmmakers attending the festival, attended a few of the multitude of parties and events, and generally just tried to squeeze in as much as I could between my manic movie screening schedule during the nine days of the festival.

Below I’ve given a daily rundown of some of the more interesting things (and notably uninteresting things) I experienced throughout the festival:

Opening Day (May 1):

Well, today was actually opening night, which means during the day I was free to roam around Jeonju and check out the Hanok Village located directly behind the festival hotel. I took a handful of pictures of the traditional Korean ‘Hanok’ houses that pack (more than 800 total) this well preserved quarter of the city. Then I was off to opening night, held at Sori Arts Center of Jeonllabuk-do, an architecturally impressive complex that hosted a full house of over 1500 guests. With the exception of the fact that they made each of us judges stand up one by one in front of the audience, which definitely caught me off guard, everything was great for me up until the opening film, the Japanese psychological-drama ‘The Kiss’. I was not very impressed with this film. Judging from the laughs of the audience (at very dramatic points throughout the film), it seems I was not alone in my disdain for the somewhat farcical nature of a number of key narrative elements and the film’s lack of ability to stir any sort of emotion in the viewer. If the cinematography had at least been interesting I might have enjoyed the film more, but unfortunately it was as uninspired as the rest of the film. But I didn’t fret over this film for long, as a huge reception waited for us back at the hotel and I hadn’t eaten since noon. The food on offer in the massive ballroom seemed to me a perfect reflection of the crowd in attendance, an eclectic mix of primarily Korean food with a number of Western delicacies and a fusion of the two filling several plates. While munching on goodies and snapping off a few pictures, I mixed and mingled with a number of diverse people, from university presidents to Korean directors (including Lee Myung-se… Im Kwon-taek was in attendance but I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him) to foreign press, as well as several of the festival organizers who I hadn’t met yet. So I go to bed tonight with a very full stomach hoping that the festivities and events throughout the week continue to be this impressive and that the films are much more impressive than the one film I’ve seen thus far.

Day 2 (May 2):

We began with a jury meeting at breakfast this morning including the three NETPAC jury members, the two festival programmers, and the jury organizer Sung. There wasn’t too much to talk about in terms of jury duties, and I ended up having a very pleasant chat with the program director Jung Soo-wan about her background and her recommendations for films to watch. In the afternoon we saw our first two jury films, ‘Children of God’ and ‘Ride Away’. Both films were very well done and far exceeded my expectations for HD films (as much as I hate the popular misconception that because a film is shot on HD and not film it automatically must have low production value, I often subconsciously give into this belief myself). While watching ‘Children of God’ I noticed that the visual feel of the film, shot by the director Yi Seung-jun himself, looked very familiar. Afterward I asked him what camera he used to shoot the film, and was not surprised when he told me he shot on a Canon XH-A1 camera, the same model I own and have shot a number of projects on recently. I was ecstatic to see footage from my camera model look so darn good up on the big screen (it was the first time I had an opportunity to see XH-A1 footage on anything larger than a TV) , although much of that credit for that must go to Seung-jun who did a fantastic job of shooting the film. The cinematography in ‘Ride Away’, particularly the lighting, was also quite impressive to me, and in the credits I was surprised to find that it was shot by Hwang Ki-seok, an excellent Korean cinematographer that has shot a number of major films, including the blockbuster ‘Chingu’ back in 2001. Interesting to see him shooting a film in HD for a first-time director. Evidently one of the male actors is an up-and-coming star as well, judging from the number of young screaming girls in the audience when the cast and crew introduced themselves before the film. Actually, there were a number of young screaming guys in the audience as well when that actor was introduced. Now that’s true sex appeal. At any rate it was nice to have the directors for both films present today to answer questions about their films after the screenings. In the evening, I hung out with several of my friends who had come down from Seoul for the weekend. They were as impressed with the festival atmosphere as me as we cruised down Cinema Street in search of food and fun.

Day 3 (May 3):

I only watched one film today, the very personal and experimental documentary film ‘Years When I Was a Child Outside’ by Filipino filmmaker Jeff Torres. The film is a rather unconventional and poetically composed exploration of the director’s feelings about finding out that his father has had three children with another woman. Shot on DV and eclectically cut together, the flow of the film was hard to follow and the director’s statement was never entirely clear to me, but at the same time there were many moments during the film that I was profoundly moved, and the director’s poetic and sometimes haunting voiceover has stuck in my head the rest of the day. It was certainly a very unique style of filmmaking. The rest of the day I spent hanging out with my friends before they had to take off that evening.

Day 4 (May 4):

Oh what a day! This morning I went to watch another HD Korean film not in our jury competition because the head make-up artist for the film who was there with much of the rest of cast and crew is a good friend of mine who helped with two short films I shot in Seoul a few months ago. The English title of the film is ‘Thirsty, Thirsty’, and I’d say the best way to describe the movie would be as a black comedy, even though my friend insisted that it was not intended to be a comedy. And I think that was the main problem with the film is that it didn’t know exactly what genre it wanted to belong in, not that it was a bad film. In fact I quite liked it for the most part. With the exception of the cinematography, and some of the editing, and the fact that the film went through mood swings (the problem I just mentioned), the film was quite funny – even hilarious at points – and entertaining enough for a rather demanding viewer like myself. Of course the makeup in the film was the best part. That’s what I told my friend at any rate. And good thing I did