Looking China 2019 - A Experiência

Em Abril Joana, Igor, João, Margarida e Rodrigo, acompanhados por Tobias Frühmorgen, estiveram na China no âmbito do programa Looking China, este é o relato do docente Tobias Frühmorgen sobre a experiência:

Looking China 2019

Tobias Frühmorgen

How do you face the unknown?

That was the first question I asked my students when we began preparing for the Looking China 2019 edition. We were invited by AICCC for this 5th edition and about to make 10 short documentaries about China. 5 students were selected from Lusófona University Lisbon, they were joined by 3 more students from Budapest, 1 from Seoul and 1 from St. Petersburg. Together we would travel for 3 weeks to China, unknown to all of us. We would film in the town of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province, a former fishing village in the South, but now a city of millions, ever growing right in front of our eyes.

After a short stay in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the edition, we flew to the South and starting our journey, seeing things and places off the beaten track. Each of the incoming student had one Chinese student-producer by his/her side, supporting with organization, the translation, and the subtitling. This exchange is also part of the concept, to learn from each other and show our artistic and filmic approach.

Our 10 films were mainly about the ancient Chinese culture – about an old pottery,  traditional orange spice, independent women who tried to live on their own, old and new bridges, traditional schools and old villages trying to be preserved but in the middle of a huge transformation process. ‘Seasons, Moments, Time’ was this year’s topic, and we created snapshots in time of all we saw, recording and editing it, putting our perspective on it and creating connections from the past to the present. We had 5 days of preparation, 5 days of shootings, and 5 days of editing, - within this little time frame decisions go really fast. 

Our headline for this journey was: We need to talk with each other, not about each other. And this is what we accomplished. We talked to so many different people, in so many different languages – Mandarin, English, Cantonese, Portuguese, Hungarian, German, Russian and some Southern Chinese dialects – we interviewed several people, and even more people that did not make it to the final film. We all exchanged thoughts and ideas and views. We learnt even more how important it is to accept diversity. 

It was a deep experience for the young filmmakers to be part in this exceptional program. 

So how did we face the unknown? By staying curious. Because the unknown is so much more interesting than the known, especially in China.

28-05-2019