Shanghai Portraits Project: Victor Bastidas

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.

Creative Hunt caught up with Ecuadorian film maker, Victor Bastidas to discuss the many benefits of massage, Latin American movies and of course his film, "Shanghai Delights"

Victor's film has had to be temporarily taken down... bear with us though - it'll be back up soon!

Victor, how did you come to be making films in China?
I always liked films and film-making. I used to take pictures all the time and then my friend, Miguel [Bustamante – CH will be meeting him to discuss his contribution to the Portraits project, "Shanghai in Motion" next week] offered me the chance of helping him out in exchange for learning more about the world of making short films and movies. Most of the time we work together it's on corporate stuff. I'm studying my undergraduate in Chinese with Business at Jiao Tong University so I've been doing this by myself on the side.

I came here when I was 18 so it's been three years now. I started learning about film when I was 19, I like it a lot. I'm happy that Khoby [van den Berg of Lazy Susan Productions] gave me the opportunity to do this: I’m the youngest in the group, and at first I thought I'd make a film with Miguel, but she was like, 'No, you should do one too'. I'd never made anything by myself that I'd shown to other people, I've always been dreaming and writing stories but never turning them into something

Sounds like you're pretty happy with the move into film. Is this your chosen medium now? What attracts you to it so much?
What attracts me to film is that I have so many thoughts in my head that I want to show people. I've always been into arts and my family has always pushed us towards arts, especially my parents. I tried painting when I was younger; I tried lots of different types of art, and then finally film. As Gianpaolo [Lupori – another Portraits filmmaker] said in his interview, it's really easy now to make quality films that look great, but for me, what film is really about is the story and how you tell it. I want to make short films in the future, that's why I keep studying – all that I've learnt has been with the help of Miguel and just lots of reading by myself and studying how other people work.

Why did you decide to set your Shanghai Portrait in a massage parlour?
One day I had a stomach ache and I went to a massage parlour because a friend told me that if you get a foot massage, the way they touch the nerves connects to other parts of the body and it's supposed to be good for everything. I just went there, told them I had a stomach ache and afterwards I felt better – I thought 'This is great, I’m going to make my portrait about this!' In the end it turned out being more of an overview about how massages are in Shanghai. It's so common here but there’s nothing like that in Ecuador. Here, there's one on every street corner. No matter what happens, no matter how stressed you get in Shanghai you can just take thirty minutes and go and be completely relaxed. It takes you away from all the noise, all the smoke and all the bad things that exist in this city. That place is great – it only costs 35 kwai for a 60minute body massage. It's really good too.

Wow, that's pretty good
Yeah, the massage place was really nice – it's in Huan He Lu and the people there are great. My friend, Ian, was the main character. I looked for so many places and I just wasn't happy with them, and in the end, he was like 'Let's just go to my local one'. I got there, and saw all of these 'cake colours' everywhere, light blue, light pink t-shirts.... it just looked good.

Tell me about the masseuse in the film.
The girl's name is An Hui and she’s from Jiangxi – they're all from the same province in that place. She was so happy to be part of it because she's been massaging Ian since he arrived in China, so they're good friends which made everything so natural. Whenever we took a break and she stopped doing the massage, she'd get a bit nervous but then when she started massaging again she'd start chatting and be back to her normal self. She was just talking about herself, and that's what I wanted – I wanted people to get to know her a little bit. She gives eight massages a day of one hour each, that's exhausting.



It looked it! How was it filming in that environment?
It was great! I had the best camera man in Shanghai – Miguel - he's excellent with the camera. Right now I want to learn a bit more about camera movement, positioning, how to make shots look better. They're all things that Miguel is really good at; he has a great eye for it. All the other seats were all full, that place is always full. Everyone was getting their massages and watching what was going on... people would suddenly notice that the camera was pointing at them and they'd smile a bit.... it was cool, very nice.

And what about keeping the film to less than four minutes? How was that?
It was a constraint – I wish it could have been a little bit longer. [If it had been 20minutes] there would have been more of a story, more of a documentary, perhaps about traditional Chinese massage... But with a four minute documentary I just decided to make something that's relaxed and nice to watch

I like the way I showed it, it was very happy. When people go for massages, it's nothing but happy – if you get there and there's something bad then you just leave. That's why I used the uplifting music and made it all quite fast-paced – I wanted to show people feel how I feel when I go into one of those places. They’re so uncommon where I’m from, so when I go there I always chat to the people who work there. Ian once said to me that he learns more Chinese when he goes for a massage than he does in two hours of class – it’s so good for your Chinese too!

What's in the pipeline project-wise for you?
Well, I still have two more years at Jiao Tong University before I graduate in international business in Chinese. I find that so many people who come to China don't learn Chinese because it's so hard, but I took that decision and I communicate with them, learn about them and I now I want to learn how to entertain them, so I'll definitely be keeping projects like short films and stuff on the side for now, looking for how to find budgets to make them, and I guess just keep learning.



Tell me a little about the film making scene in Latin America.
The film scene in Latin America is very artistic and strong. For example, Brazil has beautiful cinematography and pictures - City of God, for example, or Carandiru; and of course Argentina just won an Oscar for best foreign film with The Secret in Her Eyes. In Latin America there is so much potential and I think it's because of the beauty that surrounds everyone there. Latin America hasn't been touched so much as other places by huge multinationals that take part of the spirit of the people and their resources and influence things and end up changing people's lives. In Latin America there are still lots of traditions; it's just more exotic and bizarre. Latin America has a lot of potential for film, but not the resources. There's a need for resources to show the rest of the world just how beautiful it is.

Ecuador has this really good film director called Sebastián Cordero – he won a prize in Japan recently for one of his films. The country is pulling out a couple of new movies from the same director and Brazil keeps throwing out movies that are just spectacular, really beautiful stories, Argentina as well has a lot of talent, Chile too... The passion is there, the people are there, there’s just a lack of resources and investment.

What inspires you to make films?
The environment in which I grew up in Ecuador, that’s what drives my interest in making films now. Ecuador is a beautiful place and it's full of nature and things that to me are very artistic. I really like Shanghai, but learning to be alone and be quiet, that’s something I appreciate, being able to listen to my thoughts. When I go back to Ecuador, I go to the countryside and I can be in the middle of a forest and there's no one there. I like that, but when I come back to Shanghai there's people everywhere, and so I guess I try to think up ways to make people feel how I feel there [in Ecuador], here.

I’m studying film so that sooner or later I can make art with it, so that I can tell stories through film and show people what I see. When I see some films I feel genuinely touched, others don’t even reach me at all, but when it does happen, that's wonderful.



Next week: Miguel Bustamante discusses his Shanghai Portrait, "Shanghai in Motion"