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Yan: For those of us who have watched your films,
we know that your films have a distinct style and are recognized both in and outside China.
Up until this point, you have made two feature-length films: Oxhide and Oxhide II.
In both of them, you only had your parents and you as the characters,
and they were shot entirely in your home.
Oxhide II was in fact shot in one single room.
What appears to be extremely simple in conception
received unanimous international recognition and accolades.
In a recent survey
conducted with Chinese and overseas film scholars, journalists, and critics,
Oxhide was voted as one of the ten best Chinese-language films of 2009.
It was ranked higher than above Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee.
What inspired you to make a film about your parents' everyday life?
Liu: Can I clarify something first?
It was a very small-scale survey.
and it was very academic in nature too.
To answer your question,
it's true that both my films were shot at home with my parents only.
You can call it home production.
Every family has some interesting aspects to it.
My family was not particularly more interesting than other families.
But they became my topic because of my profession.
And the film turned out to receive recognition.
I thought about what would happen if it didn't receive recognition.
Well, maybe that would be good for my family too
because we would be protected.
Yan: It feels like that you are documenting your parents' life,
but in fact it was carefully planned out.
Could you talk about how you conceived this film,
whether your parents influenced you and how?
I am also extremely interested in the work process.
It's not usual that we direct your parents.
Usually we listen to what they tell us to do.
How do you feel about directing them?
[Liu was concerned that some people in the audience did not speak Chinese.]
Liu: I guess most of you have heard about this:
many documentary-like films are made using fiction film techniques.
This is a contradiction but it makes documentaries fun to watch.
I think ultimately it depends on what your point is.
If your goal is to document family life, you can simply do so.
You can leave your camera on while something is taking place.
But you can also choose to express something more specific
by exercising more control over the whole process.
Maybe because I wanted to try something different,
I preferred the second approach.
It was a very small production.
It was shot using very standard methods for producing fiction films.
It was a very regimented process,
involving complicated stages of planning, script development, rehearsals.
Luckily I was able to eliminate many interruptions in the process.
It was somewhat esay because I only needed to work with myself
despite the fact that it involved much planning.
As for my parents, I think they were . . . I don't know.
Maybe I was traditional.
They were okay with acting in my film.
When we were in the production process,
I was the director and they my actors.
It was an efficient way of filming.
We ran into disagreements too because we weren't familiar with the process.
During the shooting of Oxhide, we stopped in the middle of the production.
For about a month.
It was better the second time because we learned how to work as a team.
It's fun to work with your family because you know each other very well.
You need not spend extra energy on developing ties with them.
The same is true when you work with your relatives, friends, or neighbors.
There are certain skills involved in the process.
You need to make them act while maintaining your ties with them.
The script is the tricky part.
If you don't have inordinate ambitions,
the execution of the script should be fine.
And you won't require them to act beyond their skills.
Same goes for your friends.
Without such ambitions and with very few interruptions,
this kind of production is manageable.
This is all spoken from my own experience.
Relative more room for actions while relatively fewer interruptions.
They were my advantages.
The location was my home,
everything was captured on video,
editing was easy,
and there were only the three of us.
We could get shooting and sound recording done by ourselves.
Again with few interruptions.
If there were a third person there to capture sound,
he or she could feel left out,
and my parents might feel not at ease because of the stranger.
Instead of looking for troubles,
I avoided them by working out something else.
It matters that you find a way that works best for you.
I didn't look for professional actors because it wouldn't be realistic.
It'd be easier with them in some ways but more difficult in other ways.
If you find someone in your life whom you think is photogenic,
if every facial movement the person makes feels perfect for your film,
you gotta think of a way to talk the person into working for you.
It's good if both parties can work out a way.
But if the person is your best friend, it's better to be discreet.
It's because after making the film, your relationship may change.
With family it's difficult. Even if you don't like each other,
you're still family.