Shanghai Portraits Project: Michael Beets

CreativeHunt and SmartShanghai have been working with Lazy Susan Productions on their Shanghai Portraits Project and over the course of four weeks will profile each of the four directors who made short films for the series. The project challenged locally-based independent directors to represent "My Shanghai" in short documentary format, keeping the film length under four minutes and the budget under 3,000rmb.



This week Creative Hunt caught up with South African filmmaker Michael Beets to discuss his film, pei ying and zu wei, part of the wider Shanghai Portraits Project.


Tell me about how a South African director came to be making films in Shanghai.
Shanghai has kind of become my home in a strange way: I lived here when I was a teenager and since then I've come back to Shanghai at various times during my life after having had enough, then coming back, having enough then coming back... I guess I'm drawn to it. The reason I make films is because I love the medium; it's something that drives me to express myself and what I see around me. First and foremost I like stories, I enjoy story-telling, whether I’m acting, directing, editing - any part of that process.



Check out Michael's website here for more short films

What initially attracted you to Lazy Susan Productions’ Shanghai Portraits Project?
Khoby [van den Berg] and her company, Lazy Susan Productions are exciting because what she's done is taken something very simple and managed to find four directors and also, amazingly, find us a budget too. You know, it might be a small budget, a shoestring budget, but at the same time, any budget is fantastic – it's the first time that anyone has ever given me any money for this kind of film and I didn't have to spend a cent! Usually [the money comes] from my own pocket so in that regard there was an immediate draw, plus she gave us complete freedom: this is the topic, this is the theme, go out and do what you want. There were no boundaries in terms of genre or type of film, so yeah, those two reasons alone for any film maker are huge. To have an excuse or a reason to make a film is the best thing any artist could ask for.

I thought the actors in your film were charming. Who were they? How did you find them?
I didn't actually find them. My friend Leonard [Rosen] called his wife's relatives and asked if they would be in it, and those two showed up the very next day and very kindly [agreed to participate]. They were great - what was nice about it was that they were just themselves; they’re married in real life so that helped them interact in a completely natural way.



And the location? It looked like some New York book store or something...
I wanted a specific type of room: something that looked quite old, quite Chinese, somewhere that the older generation might live, somewhere cluttered that doesn't have too much technology, nothing overtly commercial, nothing obviously from IKEA, nothing too fancy. I saw some great pictures of the place with thousands of books everywhere, quite messy and cluttered and that was exactly what I wanted. When I showed up to film, though, the person who lived there had tidied up: all of her books were either neatly piled up or hidden away and I just thought 'No!'. We got to work straight away and made it a bit more cluttered!

Tell me about the story, what made you chose this pair of –in laws for your Shanghai Portrait?
It's meant to be set during Chinese New Year but that's not really important. The important part is that these two are coming together on a special day or a special moment in their lives and they're family – her daughter is married to his son, but they don't live in the city, or maybe they're on vacation. For the two main characters, they don't have anyone left apart from each other and because of their kids' relationship this very interesting relationship has formed between them. They're friends, there's a spark.

[With the TV] I just wanted to show that they don't need this fancy stuff in their lives, which is in complete contradiction to what people think of Shanghai, and that's what's special about the older generation here – they're not representative of the idea of what Shanghai is – that it's very commercial, that people are so much fancier than in any other city in China. [The elderly in Shanghai] are a huge demographic and from what I see, they're just not really like that.



The film was in Shanghainese – how was it working with that language barrier?
I don't understand a word of Shanghainese apart from maybe nong hao but I had a very clear idea of what I wanted them to say. I worked with this girl Sophia who speaks Shanghainese – the couple were actually her relatives. There were a lot of points where I just left the camera rolling and a lot of the film comes from those moments. They were amazing [to work with]; they just acted like they did in normal life. When I first met them and saw what they're like in real life, that completely changed the script. As soon as they walked in I could tell that this lady likes to chat. She showed up really glammed up, she was chatty and very bubbly, whereas he was very quiet. There was a very funny moment half way through the filming – which only took four hours – the old man was sitting there whilst I was adjusting some lights and I turned around and he's just got his head down and he's kind of falling asleep. His wife noticed that I was looking at him and she just started shouting, "Wake up! What are you doing? You need to be professional here!" I wished I'd been filming that.

And keeping it to fewer than four minutes? Was that a constraint?
I think it's nice in so much that you can just touch on the story, a glimpse of their lives. It was very set up and structured without unnecessary action – it should always be like that, every film should only include scenes that progress a story. For this I wanted every scene to reveal a little about these characters, about their relationship, who they are and what they mean to each other. Right now, I know there's not really much of a conclusion to it, but I wanted to leave it like that, I wanted it to be just a portrait, without a clear ending... It's more like an unveiling of their relationship.



I agree. It left me with questions that I genuinely cared about, as I did the couple themselves.
When I came up with this idea I wanted to do something really simple that didn't rely too much on tricks. Before, when I was making short films I was more interested in quick cuts, different angles, but maybe you have to go through that to realize that sometimes simple is enough, just letting the characters unfold in front of the camera. For an audience, perhaps that can be more engaging and rewarding, kind of like theatre – as if the audience are watching a stage, they sit there and they're forced to enjoy these moments. I think that can be very powerful.

I’m reminded of a short film you made a few years ago called In parenthesis that also showed a snapshot of people's lives, but was completely different in terms of style. Which do you feel achieved that better? Have you changed your creative direction to something simpler, or will we still see some of these crazy quick cuts?
They are quite similar in those terms, but also very different. In terms of connecting to a character, and really feeling for a character, pei ying and zu wei does a much more effective job. In parenthesis is quirky, but you don't really connect with any of the characters, or really care about them at all. They're just there, they're just amusing, whereas with pei ying and zu wei, I'd like to think the audience might really want to get to know them a bit more – where they end up, their not so glamorous moments, their hard times. pei ying and zu wei is emotional and character-driven, whereas In parenthesis is much more experimental rather than a classic story-telling format per se.

I enjoy quirky films that are uplifting, not too dark or anything like that – I want to leave people with a happy feeling. I was brought up with that sort of cinema at home by my parents, watching positive films. I'm a sucker for sports films for example! I like upbeat things that have a little bit of a twist to them.

Next week: Victor Bastidas discusses his Shanghai Portrait: "Shanghai Delight"