MOVIE STARDOM: Movie Director Wang Xiaoshuai (second right) and the leading actress and actors in Wang’s In Love We Trust, make their debut at this year’s Berlin Film Festival

WU XIAOLING

In Love We Trust, the movie that won Chinese Director Wang Xiaoshuai a Silver Bear for the best screenplay at this year's Berlin Film Festival, premiered in China on April 1.

The movie was originally slated for March 8, International Women's Festival, but the production company of the movie received an emergency notice from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to cancel the planned premiere. Although Wang has won several awards at international movie festivals, many of his works have never been shown in China.

However, Wang said after the premiere that the version being shown in Chinese cinemas is exactly the same as the version shown at the Berlin Film Festival. "Not one scene less, not one scene more," he said.

The award at the February Berlin Film Festival was Wang's second Silver Bear. Wang won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival for his film, Beijing Bicycle, seven years after his first movie, The Days, was shown at the same movie festival.

Shanghai Dreams, written and directed by Wang, won the Prix du Jury at Cannes in 2005 on his 39th birthday.

Yet Wang said the significance of the Silver Bear for the low-budget In Love We Trust, was that it cost just 4 million yuan ($571,000) to make. "This prize will get mainland cinema lines and distribution companies to realize the value of movies and boost Chinese audience's confidence in local movies," said Wang.

Talking about his new work, Wang said he had created it out of his "trust in love and trust in Chinese movies." He said, "Our trust in Chinese movies has to re-ignite Chinese audience's trust in local movies."

Like all movie directors, Wang had to take both artistic value and the box office into consideration. He said the production of In Love We Trust was longer than he had expected. He spent one year on post-production, watching his movie more than 100 times. "The top priority is not to cater to international film festivals, but to cater to the audience," Wang said.

The failure in the domestic box office of Cannes-crowned Shanghai Dream was a blow to Wang. The experience has taught him to maintain his artistic style while considering the market response. "This time I focused on telling a story, a good story," he said.

In Love We Trust tells of how a middle-aged divorced couple, both remarried and living a peaceful life, try to save their young daughter, who suffers from leukemia, by having another child to act as a bone marrow donor. After in vitro fertilization has failed three times, the desperate parents have to make love. After a painful struggle over whether to tell their spouses the truth, they do so, causing upheavals in their families. But their spouses finally forgive them out of their "trust in love."

While in Berlin, a French journalist questioned Wang about the reaction of Chinese audiences. Wang replied that he had fully considered Chinese audience's thoughts on the issue and had given the couple a sound reason to sleep together so that ordinary people could accept the story.

Marketing

Wang devoted himself to marketing In Love We Trust. He appeared at the premieres for the movie in many cities; publicized his cell phone number to listen to audience complaints on the screening arrangements; and got involved in screening arrangements in some cities.

Huang Bin, producer of the movie, said the distribution budget only covers the cost of making copies of the film and so there is no money to spend on posters and advertising. To get more publicity for the film, Wang used his personal friendship with renowned movie directors John Woo Yu-Sen and Feng Xiaogang and rock superstar Cui Jian who attended the premiere in Beijing.

Wang's efforts paid off as the opening day tickets sales across China reached over 200,000 yuan ($28,571). The movie's opening night success was remarkable given that April 1 was a Tuesday, a day when most cinemas sell tickets at a 50-percent discount.

However, its success was short lived. Following the premiere Hollywood movies The Golden Compass and National Treasure nudged it out of the box office and the film was shelved in just one week.

Narrow screenings has become a major problem for the survival of China's low-budge movies. China does not have a cinema line for art movies so they are forced to compete with commercial productions. "This is really unfair," Huang said.

However, he felt satisfied with the box office result. "It is certain that we will get our investment back," he said. Huang told Beijing Review that the cinema copyright of In Love We Trust had sold better in Europe than Shanghai Dream; and that other parts of the movie's revenue will come from selling video copyrights and TV broadcasting copyrights. These three areas of income, domestic box office income excluded, will be enough to cover all the production costs. However, Huang said he understands why Wang attached so much importance to the domestic box office: expecting more of his country people to watch his work.

"It is silly that art movies have to compete with commercial movies at the box office," Wang said. But he added that he was content with the audience's recognition of In Love We Trust. "This is among the best box office results my movies have ever achieved," he said.

He repeated his consistent request for the establishment of an art movie cinema line in China. "Art movies have their own audience and market, whose demands need to be met," he said.

It has been several years since the commercialized production of movies appeared in China. Zheng Dongtian, renowned director and dean of Beijing Film Academy's acting department, said, "As commercialization is still at its initial stage, movie cinemas regard selling the largest number of tickets as their top priority. They always screen the most lucrative movies, even at the same time in all of their eight or 10 auditoriums."

Zheng said China's cinemas could be divided into several categories. As for the state-owned cinema lines, owners of the majority of cinema screens in China, their managers, appointed by the government, think mainly about how to achieve the largest profits during their term. "This kind of operation model is contradictory to the expectations of movie artists," Zheng said.

Former underground director

Before 2004, Wang, although internationally acclaimed, had never had any of his works shown in Chinese cinemas. After Wang received an invitation from the Berlin Film Festival to show Beijing Bicycle, which eventually won him the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award, he was urged by the film festival to have his movie censored by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. "The production company waited for 45 days and still did not receive a verdict," Wang recalled. They could not wait any longer, as it was the deadline for replying to the Berlin Film Festival about whether they could attend and the film had already entered the competition lineup. Under such circumstances, the producer decided to go to Berlin without the permission of the state film authorities.

As a punishment, Beijing Bicycle was never given a permit to be shown in public in China and forbade Wang from shooting movies for one year. During this year, he was given the nickname "the underground movie director."

Wang first broke the rules of the film authorities by taking his first movie, The Days, abroad to movie festival. The Days was later collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was included in British Broadcasting Corp.'s choice of the top 100 movies of all time.

Starting his career as "an underground movie director," Wang felt proud of shooting movies without a penny of government investment. "I was so eager to become a director immediately after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy," Wang recalled. There was no digital video camera and Wang had to find film video cameras. He had no fame or any money.

"The money had run out," Wang was told time and time again in the early days of his career. He was caught between raising funds and shooting scenes. Today, the anxiety of little money still haunts Wang. "I had the worst phobia during the shooting of Shanghai Dream, but luckily my capacity to borrow money has also progressed 10 times," said Wang.

Shanghai Dream has become a landmark movie in Wang's directing career as he was officially allowed to "walk onto the ground" again. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television organized a workshop at the Beijing Film Academy in November 2003, and invited some "underground movie directors," including Wang and Jia Zhangke. During the conference, the film authorities announced a new policy on issuing movie-shooting permits. In the past, to get a permit required the censor to review the complete screenplay, which could be returned to the producer for revision many times. The new policy requires registration of only a 1,000-character screenplay brief.

Shortly after the workshop, Wang's Beijing Bicycle became China's first "underground movie" to have its ban lifted.