Film puts impact of disease in focus
With the help of ‘filmmakers’ from all around the country, director Qin Xiaoyu is compiling a unique film to document the impact of the novel coronavirus on the lives of Chinese people, Wang Kaihao reports.
The shooting of an unusual documentary was completed in a single day on Feb 9, thanks to contributions from over 5,000 “filmmakers”. Qin Xiaoyu, director of the production, knows he will achieve something unprecedented in Chinese cinematic history.
Feeling overwhelmed by the news of the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, this 46-year-old Beijing-based director decided to record people’s shared memory of the situation from a new perspective.
“The focus of media is on hospitals, the government, quarantine facilities and those on the front line of the fight against this epidemic,” Qin says.
“Nevertheless, every time a similar event happens, the biggest impact is actually on people’s private life, and in their private space is where many dramatic stories occur, but remain absent from most news reports.”
The spread of the virus made it unsafe and the quarantine measures nationwide made it almost impossible for his film crew to travel.
Therefore, on Feb 5, he released an announcement on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo, asking users to send him clips recording their own lives on Feb 9, a randomly picked day. Qin deliberately avoided Feb 8, the Lantern Festival, to make it “ordinary” enough.
“As the virus is rampant, I believe that where the lens is, there is a precious page about life,” he wrote in the announcement, which was read over 10 million times.
Approximately 3,000 clips, of various lengths, had been sent to Qin by the time the deadline rolled around on Feb 12. He named the upcoming film One More Day.
Qin is also a poet, which might explain his romantic way of observing the world.
In 2015, his documentary The
Verse of Us, which follows a group of poetry fanatics among migration workers, brought him a best documentary award at the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival.
“If poets just live in their own spiritual world and stay away from reality, their foundation will be shattered because concern for country and humanity continuously offer inspiration,” Qin says.
For One More Day, Qin borrowed the idea from Life in a Day (2011), a widely-acclaimed US documentary in which people filmed their daily trivialities to create a mosaic of life around the world on the same day.
He says: “Since it has become common in China for the public to use smartphones to record their lives, why not have a go at doing something similar? We can also have a kaleidoscopic visual log of this extraordinary period from people’s own perspective.”
Qin says the collected clips have a wide range of themes but family life accounts for the majority.
“Most people don’t usually have such a long time to spend with their families at home, particularly those who come from smaller cities but working in a metropolis like Beijing or Shanghai,” he says. “They have to look for a way to redefine their relationships with their parents.”
Some people who once had tense relationships with their families have chosen to make peace, he recalls from some of the clips.
“We’ve been used to seeing fabricated, and even exaggerated, expression of emotions in films,” Qin says. “However, the true emotions among families are sometimes only reflected in simple greetings and chores, which were often neglected, but they have much stronger power.”
Sentimental moments keep popping up when he edits the clips, especially from those by residents in Wuhan, Hubei’s provincial capital and the epicenter of the epidemic which is on lockdown.
“We tend to check the updated number of new cases and deaths every day,” a young woman surnamed Ding says in her clip. “But it is heartbreaking when I suddenly realize there is a life behind each number, and some of them are my family friends or friends’ families.”
Someone also left a message on Ding’s Instagram account to blame her as somebody from Wuhan, which makes her feel stigmatized, and deeply sad. However, many encouraging messages from strangers also cheered her up.
In another clip, a Wuhan-based vlogger abruptly stops talking after a simple greeting, though she seemed ready to launch into a monologue.
“Forget it,” she says to the camera, “let’s just have a look at what Wuhan is like at 2 am.”
Then, without another word, she sets her camera to face out of the window at the quiet city with its scattered lights.
Other videos show how experts and supplies arrive in Wuhan, bringing greater hope, while footage offered by police officers, medical workers, and even patients in makeshift hospitals, reveal their strength and optimism.
A doctor from the Ningxia Hui autonomous region arrived in Wuhan to support the effort. He is a rock’n’roll fanatic and looks tough. In a sharp contrast to his image, though, he confesses his fear for being infected. Yet, despite the fear, he chooses to stick to his duty.
In Qin’s eyes, these real emotions can touch people on a deeper level.
“Through the documentary, we want to show that people are strong: they stick to their positions and keep working,” Qin says. “But it’s also a production to remember the lost. Some damage will never have a chance to be fixed after the epidemic passes.”
Overseas Chinese living in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, among others, also provided footage for Qin’s project, as well as foreigners living in China.
When a scene shows the area around the Sydney Opera House almost empty, perhaps it is easy to understand the significance of the global effort to contain the virus.
Chinese streaming website Youku plans to release One More Day on the platform in late March.
Consequently, Qin is running against the clock to select material from the thousands of clips, but one of the biggest challenges he has to overcome is that some members of his team have to stay at home and adhere to the rigid quarantine requirement in Beijing. The director has had to defer some of their responsibilities to a handful of volunteers to plug the gaps. Seven editors now are fully geared up to finish the project on time.
“When we meet in my studio, we all wear masks,” Qin says. “It’s a unique kind of working experience.”
Qin does not aim to put a stop to this trial of mass-produced documentary. He has a WeChat group including many of the participants of One More Day. Many of these filmmaking amateurs asked Qin how to shoot professional-looking footage on Feb 9.
Since that day, some of the people in the chat asked whether they should leave the group. He said no. “I’ll probably make a sequel of
One More Day in a few years,” Qin says. “Let’s meet again on a future Feb 9, and see how their lives have changed.”
Qin wrote a letter of thanks on his Sina Weibo account to express his appreciation for people’s support with the project.
He parodies of the opening of One
Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in the letter: “Many years later, as I face the last day of my life, I will remember the distant day when I made One More Day.”