Shanghai Portraits Project: Dalton Lai

CreativeHunt has once again teamed up with Lazy Susan Productions on the second installment of their Shanghai Portraits Project and over the course of three weeks will profile each of the 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. To see them all, head down to Lola on Thursday night for the screening - more details here

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How did you come to be making films in Shanghai?

Well, I'm originally from Ohio and I've been here two years. I studied film, focusing on documentary film-making and after graduating spent two years freelancing in New York, working on a couple of films there. I sent an application to Fly Films in Shanghai and luckily enough they needed an editor for TV so I came here to do that. I hadn't done TV before but in my first year I worked on three television shows! Now we're doing lots of corporate things, lots of viral films for the web, internal videos... It's a balance between doing that and doing the creative stuff – everyone has to pay the bills, but I manage to do a little bit of my own projects too.



What made you choose Shanghai Circus for the focus of your film?

When I arrived here two years ago I went to see the Shanghai Circus, and around the same time I saw this great documentary called Circus School. It's kind of lo-fi and about these children training to be gymnasts and acrobats. The goal of most of them was to be in the Olympics – some of them, the top minority would succeed, but the rest of them join circuses. Shanghai has three, the one that I filmed is the highest level, it's like the Cirque de Soleil of China!

Tell me about the film – what was it like to meet the performers?

The best part of the project was getting to know the subjects. I got to meet them and see how they live – I couldn't film it all, but I got to see where they live, how much they train and what they can do. It's different when you're in a seat and far away and you see them with all the bright lights and music, but when you see them performing close up it's hard not to be in awe.

I ended up following three characters. One was Sun Guimin the stunt motorcyclist – he rides with 7 other motorcyclists in a 'deathcage' at 40mph – and another was Shen Sisi, an acrobat. They were fine to interview – they're in their 20s so approaching them and working with them was quite straightforward. But I also wanted to include someone who's young and I chose Cui Huayou, a 12 year old contortionist. She was the most protected and always had her supervisors there, of course. She's been doing it since she was 5 years old – that was her school, circus school. The really young ones are home schooled (academic) there, but I don't know how much focus there is on that... circus really is their life, every single day.



Was were the challenges involved in the making of your film?

The hardest thing was getting permission from the Circus to do it in the first place! There was a lot of bureaucratic red tape. It took a while to convince them that it was a noncommercial project, but they finally said I could go ahead. There were a lot of restrictions. The film I had in my head didn't turn out to be the film I have now, I guess that's the nature of the beast. I wanted more days with the subjects – the first rule of documentary filming is to film as much as you can and with them, I only got three days – one for interviews, one for rehearsal and one for performance.

I wasn't allowed to film their living quarters of those that have apartments on site – they were very sensitive about what message they would allow me to film. That was the challenge – having my own motives versus what they were allowing me.



How does the final film differ from what you'd originally envisaged?

With documentary film-making you always go in with a story in mind and the likelihood is that never happens, which was the case here. There's almost a melancholy to these performers. I thought they'd be really passionate about what they're doing, but they'd become desensitized, it was all normal to them, an every day thing. It's magical for the audience, but for the people behind it, it's kind of old.

I first came at it from the angle of 'Wow, they're death-defying, they do really cool things' What I got though was a little different – I'd ask how it felt to be a circus performer, was it really cool? They'd just say 'Meh, I've been doing it for years, everyday, it's a task – a means to an end', I'd ask if they were afraid and they'd say 'No, of course not', but of course by that point I guess you wouldn't be.

I only had one day for interviews and a ton of questions. They were all supervised, but here and there I could hear their emotion coming through. I took it as what it was – a day in the life, how these people are, not reveal all the facts, but offer it up interpretation. I'd like to make it in a longer form, make a fuller story, this is just a small window but I want to see more.



It's interesting in itself that the performers get to that point of normality with regard to what they do.

Yeah, I guess something I'm drawn to is that irony of spectacle. I recently saw a film about a theme park in China, entirely run by little people. At first you think it's terrible, exploitative and humiliating to have these people in costumes, living in mini palaces with visitors taking pictures of them. But actually some of the little people who live there are really happy, they have a community where everything is to their scale and they feel less insecure than in their home towns. It's a juxtaposition of two very conflicting ideas.

From what you saw, are the acrobats in your film – I'm thinking of the very young ones in particular – exploited?

I think perhaps there's a degree of exploitation – they're paid very little and they work really long hours for their unique skill set. The living quarters aren't exactly top of the line, but I don't think the performers are looking at it that way – they see it as they've been blessed with a gift. On the one hand it does seem to have become mundane to them but then whenever they perform you can see a spark, and I think they do feel they're lucky to be in that class of performers where your job is to do a skill, entertain crowds and get applauded – I think that's what they love.

I guess it's the same in film – we turn out hundreds of videos all the time and maybe sometimes you get that same feeling – of being just a cog in the machine churning out entertainment, maybe that's why I'm attracted to it... in my business, the footage is real and the rest is meticulously crafted. That's what I like about Circus World: to go behind the lens and see what it's like, what's behind the performance.



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To see all three Shanghai Portraits Projects, head down to Lola on Thursday 23 June for the screening - more details here