Nezha 少女哪吒

The UCLA International Institute presents the film, "Nezha," as part of their 2014 China Onscreen Biennial: Spectrum.

Spectrum
North American Premiere   2014

Director: Li Xiaofeng
Executive Producer: Shen Yang
Producer: Feng Rui
Co-Producer: Li Xiaofeng, Shen Yi
Screenwriter: Li Xiaofeng, Wang Mu, Pan Yu
Adaptation: From a novel by Lv Yao
Cinematographer: Joewi Verhoeven
Production Designer: Zhong Cheng
Editor: Liu Yueyue
Sound: Lu Ke
Composer: Drew Hanratty
Cast: Li Jiaqi, Li Haofei, Chen Jin, Xin Peng, Li Huan, Zhang Zheng
HDCAM, color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 100 min.

In Daoist mythology, Nezha was a boy hero who slayed the son of the Dragon King and then committed suicide to avoid retaliation against his family. Li Xiaofeng’s first film reworks this beloved tale to ponder what it means to be a female warrior in a country wavering between tradition and modernity. Two teenage girls growing up in the 1990s, Li Xiaolu (Li Haofei) and Wang Xiaobing (Li Jiaqi) meet in high school, and discover themselves (rebellious) soulmates. Together they devour the books of the Taiwanese female writer San Mao (a bestselling author, with a huge following among young Chinese women, who committed suicide in 1991). They explore the hidden corners of their provincial town, its orchards and riverbanks; they meet a young boy obsessed with martial arts stories. Their friendship deepens; yet time takes its toll and gradually pushes them onto different paths. Xiaobing must face the “hypocrisy” of her parents’ marriage – her father takes up with a younger woman, her mother (Chen Jin) seeks refuge in romantic Huangmei opera arias. Later as a medical student in a distant town, Xiaobing starts a tentative relationship with a young officer, Li Danyang, who is soon relocated to a different post. Do men pass by like fragments of a dream?

To face the challenge of accurately representing female psychology, Li took his cues from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue (1993). On the other hand, his visual inspiration comes from the way Edward Hopper’s paintings express the transition from classicism to modernity, and contrast warm, bright tones with harsh lines. The use of widescreen anamorphic lenses, especially for the interior scenes, allowed him more fluidity in depicting the spatial relationships between the protagonists. Executive produced by Shen Yang (also a co-producer for Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice, showing in the COB as well), Nezha marks the arrival of a major directorial talent. – Bérénice Reynaud

Born in 1978 in Hefei, Anhui Province, Li Xiaofeng enrolled in Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussel (Belgium) to study filmmaking, then moved to Beijing in 2002. From 1999 to 2004, he wrote film critiques under the pen name “Liar,” and published a book of essays, The Dawn Says Goodnight. In 2002, he entered director Lu Chuan’s workshop as a creative consultant. He collaborated on the screenplay of Zhang Yuan’s Dada’s Dance (2008) in which he also played the male lead. In 2011 he published a collection of short stories, The Song of Losers. In 2013 Nezha won Most Creative Project pitched for financing at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival. In 2014 his second film project Devil and Dust was selected by the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) in Hong Kong.

Preceded by:
Divergence

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