Chinese director Yang Heng returns to Rotterdam for the third time, where his second feature Sun Spots is competing for a Tiger award. Not everyone was immediately enthusiastic about this follow-up to his award-winning debut, Betelnut, he tells Mark Baker
Sun Spots (Guang ban) is Chinese director Yang Heng's second film, and his third time in Rotterdam – his debut Betelnut screened here in 2007, and in 2008 he created the video installation Nirvana for IFFR's Exploding Cinema: New Dragon Inns section.
Originally, Yang had wanted to make Sun Spots as his first film, he reveals. “I ended up making Betelnut first,” the director says ahead of tonight's European premiere. “I had the idea for Sun Spots first, but then I wrote the script for Betelnut; it was a stronger story, with more tension – and therefore maybe more accessible to audiences, I thought. Sun Spots is much more about mood and atmosphere, although it does have a story too.”
Shot in Yang's home town of Jishou, in a remote part of China's Hunan Province, Sun Spots – like Betelnut – is shot in long takes with a static camera, and gives a contemplative sense of the languid pace of life in that part of the world.
Winning the New Currents Award in Pusan for Betelnut really helped get Sun Spots off the ground – as did support from IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund – Yang says. “Suddenly producers were coming to me, wanting to produce my second film. This really helped with the finance, and ultimately with making the film I really wanted to make. But it was a still a hard struggle getting everyone to understand the idea,” the director reveals. “Even my some of my friends didn't get it at first.”
“There are connections between the two films, but Sun Spots has a completely different story,” Yang says. “The producers also initially wanted me to make something very similar to Betelnut, and I had to argue very hard to make the film the way I wanted to. Sun Spots is more about the landscapes, the colours and the atmosphere,” Yang says. “There is also a tension between the lovers which is reflected in the tension between the city and the countryside, but this is not something I really stress in the film. If the audience picks up on it, that's great, but if they don't notice it, that's okay too.”
Asked whether the mood and feel of Sun Spots is in any way intended as a comment on contemporary China – at one point we hear television reports of politically charged events taking place in Beijing – Yang stresses that this “is a more personal film, about my world and that of my contemporaries. Of course, China is changing and developing at a great pace, and there is an increasing emphasis on material goods, but I didn't set out to specifically represent this in Sun Spots.”
Yang is currently looking for finance for a new project “about love and family,” but doesn't want to reveal any specifics yet: except that he would consider moving the camera in the next film. “The next one will be a very different film again, different from both Betelnut and from Sun Spots,” the director reveals.
More on Sun Spots here.