Dreamless Continent

In Depth with the Director - Shirley Yang

How did Dreamless Continent first come together as a project?

The beginning of the film was related to do with a dream and some of my personal childhood experiences. When the idea was born, shooting this film became my college graduation work. The original historical background of the film was in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, but because of the great problems with the shooting site at that time, I had to change the site three days before the shooting, so I chose a demolished building related to the original background. The script was still being revised until the day before shooting.

The performance of Zhou Zhou is incredibly powerful in the film, despite her being a mostly silent character. How did you direct the performance to bring out such powerful emotions?

Zhou Zhou has a shadow in a sense. Of course, all the characteristics of the characters in my film have some relevance to me. The actor is my college dormitory classmate, but also my good friend, and not a professional actor. She can feel the psychological entanglement in the gradual collapse of her beliefs in my script. I think to guide the actor to understand the role, to understand what she experienced before the script, what she will choose outside the script, when you know enough about a character, you can naturally empathize with it and understand all her actions. Although Zhou Zhou always seems like a bystander in the film, and even has lost her subjectivity, when she is bound forward by her family and the times, she is bound to make her own choice. When she makes this choice, it is also the moment to rebuild her subjectivity under the ruins.

For us, the setting and scenery seemed almost like a fantasy, half way between reality and somewhere else. Why did you choose this location to set your story?

Although I changed the site because of force majeure, I was generally satisfied with the location. I personally experienced the Wenchuan earthquake, but I live a certain distance from Wenchuan. I wanted to pay more attention to the psychological changes of the characters after the disaster, not the strong pain of people when the disaster comes. I think the psychological changes after the disaster are more continuous, the impact and even a lifetime. So the original setting is after the earthquake, after the parents divorce storm, original residents will leave, the earthquake center people move there, a calm community is gradually beset by wandering teenagers’ violence, and she will leave the story of the place. We can see that the core of the story is not changed, but when the scene changes to the place that is being demolished, this sense of ruin becomes more complete. I can also tell you a a bit of trivia, in the morning after our shooting of the indoor drama, the demolition team dismantled the downstairs of our shooting room, so it still felt quite magical but because of the budget reasons, it couldn’t be documented.

The family and social dynamics are fascinating in the film. For those of us living in Australia or overseas, how much of your film reflects modern Chinese society?

I think the family situation in this film reflects the families of most Chinese children born after 1995, especially those whose childhood is not pleasant. The particularly dramatic parental argument in the film is not exaggerated, and the reality is more brutal than in the film, including the act of holding a knife. Some girls in the crew said they had the same experience. Among the elements I used to reflect the changing times is that people find abandoned shared bikes from the ruins, and plan to remove the parts of a car to sell for money. In a deleted scene, the original residents secretly go back there, scratch some valuable items and take them away.

What was the biggest challenge in making this film?

The biggest challenge was it was the first time I shot a movie in a team with nearly 20 people. I used to make films in school, all of about three or four people. Therefore, I was not particularly clear about the standard crew process at that time. I was not clear enough about some communication and had to shoot in 4 days, so my pressure mainly came from these aspects. And the problem of the shooting site just mentioned, and our stills, almost pushed down from upstairs and so on. Also in the early stage of shooting, the senior student and the teacher felt different about the script. Finally, I changed it to the story that I wanted to shoot, that is, Dreamless Continent. Another senior took my script and changed it to the story that he and the teacher wanted to shoot. During the shooting I had been in constant distrust of myself, I was afraid to let everyone down, afraid to eventually disappoint myself. I am not a confident enough person, but the obsession with the story and the overwhelming love of the film supported me to complete it. In post-editing, I wanted to reshoot, and I felt like I was not satisfied with everything. I went back to the location and found that the end of the grand theater of the film had been completely in ruins, but the weather was still sunny. It took a long time before I finally reconciled with myself and strengthened my motivation to start again.

What projects are coming for you in the future?

I will be invited to the festival venture capital conference this year, but I decided to wait until next year. I wanted to write the script first, then think more clearly, and do more fieldwork. There was also a short film shoot planned during this time. I hope I can do better by then.

Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?

Thank you for watching this immature short film. In the film, a naked model, a wild cat walking in another space. Ruins of the scorching sun, melting ice cream attracted by the ants, casually discarded OFO shared bikes (Now the company is also going bankrupt), wet hair close to the skin. In the windows, corridors, balconies, dream exits, what you see, all this is the answer. Hope you can enjoy it.