Soul Carriage

Made for around £100,000, British filmmaker Conrad Clark's Soul Carriage is a powerful depiction of working class modern-day rural life. What's most remarkable about it, however, is that it's set in China with a Chinese cast and told entirely in Mandarin. How did a 28-year-old English anthropology student end up spending two years in China on a movie which went on to scoop the New Director's Award at the 2007 San Sebastian Film Festival? Conrad Clark talks here about the making of his debut feature...Tell us how you came to make this film in China?Conrad Clark: I ended up in China partly by chance, partly by interest. I'd just done a Masters in Anthropology in London and a Taiwanese producer friend of mine [Wendy Kuan] also wanted to move to Shanghai to set up a little film company. Another friend of mine, Saleh Karama, had a small script that he was developing, which was the original idea of Soul Carriage. We put these elements together and thought we could make the film happen in China. We went out there to check it out, I started working on the script, we found some finance from Taiwan and we were off.What about the logistics of filming in China? It sounds like a very controlling environment for filmmakers...There's two ways you can make a movie in China: one is the official way, the other is the unofficial way. We tried to do the official way but we didn't get through the bureaucracy in time so we just went, "What the hell, we'll shoot it anyway!" We were applying for all of our licences anyway so we weren't what they call an 'underground' film in China, and we didn't have too many big problems whilst we were shooting. The key is we had a couple of really good guides with us in Shanghai who speak Shanghainese, because the police come and interrupt you nearly every day. These guides just knew how to speak to them, how to handle them, and it was fine. We're still trying to get our licence to show the film in China, and I think we will get it soon.How's your Chinese? Do you speak Cantonese or Mandarin?I speak Mandarin and a little bit of Shanghainese. When I was shooting I spoke very basic Mandarin, but by the time I'd finished editing I spoke pretty good Mandarin. Tell us about your cast and where you found them...I found a few actors in the theatre from going to as many productions as possible. For the main actor, I went and stayed on a building construction site in China for a few days and slept in the dormitories and found this one guy there, Yang Feng Jun. He was one of the bosses of a bunch of young guys and he was quite quiet and I didn't really speak to him that much, but he just had something about him, an interesting style... the way he ate, the way he interacted with the other people. So I invited him to Shanghai and started doing some casting sessions with him and every time he just kept getting it. In the end I went for him and I'm really happy with that choice.What about the production itself. You said you weren't an underground production, but I assume you shot with a small crew and tried to stay low profile?We were pretty low profile. We shot on a Sony HD camera, the F900, and it's still a pretty big camera with big lenses on it, so we were about 20-30 people most of the time. Pretty much the whole crew was Chinese - there were a couple of Taiwanese people as well - and we just came together really well as a team. That crew is still together and working on film productions in Shanghai now.To the western eye, a lot of China - especially the provincial side - is virgin territory...One of my big aims with this film was to do something very modern in the countryside in China. We know Beijing, Shanghai and the modern cities of China a little, but there's still very little idea of what's going on in the Chinese countryside. I wanted to focus on how these 100-year-old houses are going through their first round of development and their second round of development. This became part of the theme of the film and helped me construct my plot as we went through this environment, affecting the psychology of the character.Soul Carriage portrays modern working class Chinese life. Is this a world the Chinese are used to seeing on screen?I think in China this world is pretty well known. I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Wang Xiaoshuai, he's one of the leading Chinese new generation directors and he's been depicting lots of these middle countryside towns and focusing on that kind of life.Tell us about your cast and where you found them...I found a few actors in the theatre from going to as many productions as possible. For the main actor, I went and stayed on a building construction site in China for a few days and slept in the dormitories and found this one guy there, Yang Feng Jun. He was one of the bosses of a bunch of young guys and he was quite quiet and I didn't really speak to him that much, but he just had something about him, an interesting style... the way he ate, the way he interacted with the other people. So I invited him to Shanghai and started doing some casting sessions with him and every time he just kept getting it. In the end I went for him and I'm really happy with that choice.What about the production itself. You said you weren't an underground production, but I assume you shot with a small crew and tried to stay low profile?We were pretty low profile. We shot on a Sony HD camera, the F900, and it's still a pretty big camera with big lenses on it, so we were about 20-30 people most of the time. Pretty much the whole crew was Chinese - there were a couple of Taiwanese people as well - and we just came together really well as a team. That crew is still together and working on film productions in Shanghai now.To the western eye, a lot of China - especially the provincial side - is virgin territory...One of my big aims with this film was to do something very modern in the countryside in China. We know Beijing, Shanghai and the modern cities of China a little, but there's still very little idea of what's going on in the Chinese countryside. I wanted to focus on how these 100-year-old houses are going through their first round of development and their second round of development. This became part of the theme of the film and helped me construct my plot as we went through this environment, affecting the psychology of the character.Soul Carriage portrays modern working class Chinese life. Is this a world the Chinese are used to seeing on screen?I think in China this world is pretty well known. I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Wang Xiaoshuai, he's one of the leading Chinese new generation directors and he's been depicting lots of these middle countryside towns and focusing on that kind of life. You studied anthropolgy, and your interest in people shines through in the film. What about the directing side, though, how did you find that side of things?They're two very different things. It's easy to come to a place, spend a long time there and produce an ethnographic-type film or an intellectual study of it. But I'm a really big believer in the concept of quite pure cinema. I did a year at film school in London, but I think I've learned most about cinema from sitting at the NFT in London going through all the master directors and seeing them on the big screen. For this film directors like Antonioni were big influences - where the relationship between the characters and the environment becomes a sub-plot, if you like.Have you been able to screen the film to anyone in China? If so, what's the response been like?The Chinese people that watch the film haven't really committed to big comments about the film, to be honest. Generally what people tell me when they see the film is that it could easily have been directed by a Chinese guy and they are surprised when they see my face! I've been getting a lot of that. In Europe I guess people are trying to get to the root of the film and get me to commit to what I think about China right now. And what are you saying about China right now?I guess it's some sort of comparison between the new industrialisation versus the old ways, the more natural ways. I'm not trying to commit overtly to a stance, I'm just trying to show one reality - which is the reality I've seen in the Chinese countryside - through the narrative of someone going back to the countryside and looking for some kind of roots, which are slightly disappearing in China. You studied anthropolgy, and your interest in people shines through in the film. What about the directing side, though, how did you find that side of things?They're two very different things. It's easy to come to a place, spend a long time there and produce an ethnographic-type film or an intellectual study of it. But I'm a really big believer in the concept of quite pure cinema. I did a year at film school in London, but I think I've learned most about cinema from sitting at the NFT in London going through all the master directors and seeing them on the big screen. For this film directors like Antonioni were big influences - where the relationship between the characters and the environment becomes a sub-plot, if you like.Have you been able to screen the film to anyone in China? If so, what's the response been like?The Chinese people that watch the film haven't really committed to big comments about the film, to be honest. Generally what people tell me when they see the film is that it could easily have been directed by a Chinese guy and they are surprised when they see my face! I've been getting a lot of that. In Europe I guess people are trying to get to the root of the film and get me to commit to what I think about China right now. And what are you saying about China right now?I guess it's some sort of comparison between the new industrialisation versus the old ways, the more natural ways. I'm not trying to commit overtly to a stance, I'm just trying to show one reality - which is the reality I've seen in the Chinese countryside - through the narrative of someone going back to the countryside and looking for some kind of roots, which are slightly disappearing in China.