Yang Fudong, clad in a Black Sabbath T-shirt and red underwear that creeps out every time he bends over the jimmy rigged playback monitor on the set of the final installment of "Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest", yells out commands to the actors via his diligent AD's (assistant Director) mega phone. First Yang softly then the AD boisterously "Stand a little to the left- get a board under there!" Lulu, one of the actors in heels, skirt and rain coat keeps sinking in the sludge of this improvisational garbage dump along Shanghai's shanty-town outskirts. The red underwear is because it’s year of the pig and Yang’s a pig- those that are born in the year are susceptible to both good and bad luck… the red warns off the bad and welcomes the good. I’m a pig too and have an ample supply of red undies too. One needs a fair bit of luck to keep things in order along these freight train tracks that harbor a small resilient population of this mega-cities’ garbage collectors. Families from neighboring provinces live amongst heaps of garbage and eek out a living sorting the recyclables from the rest of the shit. A single water spout emerges from the rubble, women washing their clothes look up at the actors carefully circling two pool tables set between two diverging train tracks. The smell is unbearable. The crew, along with Yang himself converse in rugged Beijing accents, adding to the out of place-ness of this film set’s presence in this Southern apocalypse.
ohhh Im falling asleep More to come…
More here!
So as this big busy city churns onwards my steps have fallen behind on catching up with Yang and his trusted crew until... the day before installing PastFoward (the show I've been working on forever which I will discuss some other time), walking back from a hot Hunanese lunch with the OV gallery bosses fresh in from HK, in heated discussion with Yan about how these sly Southern mofo's owe us big time for putting on such a mighty exhibition in their otherwise overly designed/under programmed gallery... We run into Yang Fudong sitting on some steps with a green bean popsicle stuck sideways in his mouth. This time a red t shirt. Wearily he gestures behind him towards a slightly weathered neo-Grecian edifice and explains "ice cream break" Yet another weary day on the set. The Cococabana, a club on Ruijin Lu modeled ever so slightly off the NY original is a high scale, lounge bar with glass beaded curtains seperating several burgundy red velvet sitting areas... lots of booze on all the tables... props I am told as they hand us green bean posicles. Everybody looks distracted and tired as they line up the next dolly shot across a few cubicles with the same cast that, knee deep in garbage last time, are here drinking and toasting as if celebrating the fresh change of set locations, albeit half a little heartedly ... this time for picture framing.
Qiu Anxiong steps out of the dark and says 'hey'. Like Lu Chunsheng, Qiu is helping out with Yang's epic. Camaraderie amongst creative types always makes my heart flutter and it is ever so prevalent in China... where a circuitous system of bangmang -helping keeps the art worlds and relationships in general afloat.
Yang locked picture on the 15th after one month of continuous shooting. Hats off to a job well done! Now post production begins urgghh
1 comment:
thats a clssic scene, the pool table in the middle
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