Film from the underground

Films from China are not usually popular at the Golden Horse Film Festival, but this year is an exception. Blind Shaft (盲井), a film with no big stars and no big-name director, has received a warm welcome from young moviegoers in Taipei -- a pleasant surprise for its director Li Yang (李楊).

Li's film has been nominated for three categories, including best picture, best adapted screenplay and best new performer, at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards this Saturday.

The movie is a drama about workers in the hazardous coal mines of China and was shot without government permission. The film was banned in China but won a Silver Bear in Berlin for artistic contribution, as well as a best new director award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It's a familiar story. Whenever a film or book is banned from China, the art work becomes popular and honored elsewhere in the world. It happened to overseas Chinese artists such as author Gao Xin-jian (高行健), filmmaker Dai Sijie (戴思杰) and Zhang Yi-mou (張藝謀).

"Being unable to show the film in China is still a great pity for me, even though I have won many awards at overseas festivals. So, here in Taiwan or Hong Kong, I'm always happy to show the film to Chinese-speaking audiences. You get very different feelings from a Western audience," said the 43 year-old filmmaker at a press conference in Taipei last Saturday.

Based on the short novel Shen Mu (神木) by renowned author Lao She (老舍), Blind Shaft is a tale of greed and compassion, set against the grim conditions of the mines. Two miners murder a fellow worker and extort compensation from the mine's owner. They start work at a new mine and target this time a 16-year-old from the countryside. But their plans come unstuck in an unexpected way.

In China, there are thousands of illegal mines in remote areas and because of poor safety measures there are reportedly 7,000 miners killed in accidents each year. "In many cases, miners' bodies are cremated and buried without the victim's families ever being notified," Li said. "What you see in the movie is no deliberate melodrama. It is still happening in China."

Shooting in the illegal mines was an unforgettable experience for Li Yang. He said there were two mine collapses during shooting. "One time we [the crew] had just finished one shot and had gone back up when the collapse happened and two men were buried. We were immediately sent away by angry mine owners because they thought we had brought them bad luck," Li said.

"There was another time when I was taking shots at a new mine with my hand camera, the miner thought I was a reporter and pointed a shotgun to me. And the local people surrounded the crew and didn't let us to leave."

Li said his favorite Taiwanese director was, "no doubt," Ang Lee (李安) and his journey as a filmmaker has some similarities with the maker of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Hulk.

Brought up in Xian, Shaanxi province, Li followed his parents' careers, as actors in Beijing. He went to Germany to study literature and film directing in 1988, but said the true reason he went was to chase a girl who was also studying there. In Germany, Li made a few documentaries and picked up a few stereotypical Asian roles on German television.

"For a period of time I was very confused and thought I should give up my dream [to make movies] and just try to make a living in Germany. But Ang Lee's success encouraged me. He was my role model at that time," Li said.