Sci-fi comedy creators share thoughts with film school students

The Shanghai Vancouver Film School invited the crew of the well-received sci-fi comedy “Journey to the West” to give a talk to young wannabe filmmakers in the city on Monday.

The film’s director Kong Dashan and lead actor Wang Yitong shared with students interesting photographs about the filming process and discussed diverse film topics such as narrative exploration and poetic expression of youth images in movies.

“Journey to the West,” a small-budget award-winning film, was shown to wide acclaim at the Pingyao International Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Osaka Asian Film Festival.

It follows several sci-fi magazine editors’ trip from Beijing to a remote Chinese village to investigate the locals' sighting of an unidentified flying object.

On China’s film review platform Douban, the movie received rave reviews from enthusiastic cinema fans and an 8 out of 10 rating.

When it came to the film’s style, director and screenwriter Kong said that he tried to present a genre-mixing mockumentary that romanticizes and poetically portrays suffering. And on this basis, they established an aesthetic that expresses absurdity in the film.

“At the beginning of production, there were certainly no restrictions on the type of film,” Kong pointed out. “I relied on my own aesthetic experience and exploration to complete the story.”

The two main creators of the film exchanged with students their expertise in directing, acting and scriptwriting. They also had professional interactions with teachers of the film school’s 3D Department about new cutting-edge special effects technologies.

During the talk, Kong and Wang were also invited to become the film school’s industry mentors.

Since its establishment in 2014, the school has cultivated more than 800 professionals in film production, visual effects, animation, acting and scriptwriting. Famous Chinese director Jia Zhangke now serves as the school's president.

In the new digital age, the school will continue to develop versatile and creative film talent for Shanghai.