It was hard to get a ticket for the film festival ＂Northeast Tiger＂, but we ＂caught＂ its director.

In the second half of this year’s Shanghai Film Festival, a "Northeast Tiger" emerged as a dark horse and was eager to try.

Director Geng Jun, whose films have appeared in major film festivals in Asia and Europe, has won important awards in Taipei Golden Horse, Sundance and other film festivals. This time, Geng Jun returned with "Northeast Tiger" and was selected as the main competition unit of the International Class A Film Festival for the first time. It is still the chilly and moving Geng Jun. Compared with his previous works, "Northeast Tiger" is somewhat crude and more skillful. I think this is the best Chinese film I have seen so far this year! There is an amazing coldness between the lines in his image, which reveals the poetry under the snow in the northeast, and makes the film’s unique narrative style and image style. The performances of starring Zhang Yu and Mary are even more remarkable and very dedicated.

The film was shown twice in Shanghai Film Festival, and sold out quickly after invoicing, which shows the expectations of fans. We interviewed Geng Jun, the director of the film, for the first time to hear what he said.

Geng Jun, director of the film "Northeast Tiger"

Q (hereinafter referred to as reporter): Why do you want to shoot such a story? A little sad.

A (hereinafter referred to as director Geng Jun):I don’t feel sad, but that kind of cold and moving. The original intention of this story is that Xu Gang, one of the actors in my film, met him at our Hegang station on the third day of the Lunar New Year in 2010. He was waiting for a short-distance CMB. When I saw that there were few people waiting for the bus during the Spring Festival, I asked Brother Gang what are you doing here? He said he was going to Xinhua Town, and his dog was killed. He wanted to find that boy to get him. The situation was the same as in the movie, because he was going to have a baby at home, and the big dog was inconvenient in the house and didn’t want to sell it, so he was fostered to his friend’s house, and the buddy ate the dog.

Q: It’s quite a magical thing.

A：So it’s not a funeral in itself, and this thing gave me a particularly strong impact at that time. You can imagine a scene in which a man is wearing a leather jacket, his fur collar is covered with snow, his black fur collar is dyed white, and he is burning with revenge. Of course, the story behind is based on the life material as a fulcrum. I want to present a lonely person. Imagine that he is in such a family relationship and what kind of state his revenge is. You can understand him as a loner’s resistance, and his own heart is churning.

Q: When you were interviewed in 2014, you once raised the issue of "order". I have also seen your previous works. Then I found that your film seems to present a world completely out of the whole order. Without rules and moral boundaries, people seem to be in a state of disorder. Why is this?

A：In fact, the front part of my movie shows the internal order of personal grievances, which is the order of rivers and lakes. And our other hero, Ma Qianli, is a businessman, who lives in the swamp of business every day. This is the realistic order. There is a possibility that the two orders seem to be opposite, but in fact they are integrated. Society has social laws. This is a big rule. When it falls on individuals, each individual has different solutions, which is a bit like driving a rear-end collision. We can directly call the police or solve it privately.

Q: The characters in your movies all seem to be in a weak state. He is very tired under the pressure of life.

A：Yes, in fact, this feeling is exactly the same as mine. The sense of responsibility will make people a little tired. At the same time, they have to overcome their sense of powerlessness and generate a sense of motivation in the movie, so he is a wavy line, and the psychological action of the character is greater than the external action.

Q: This is very difficult for actors.

A：My own former actors, they are actually in life. But for foreign actors, it is difficult. When Zhang Yu came, he said that he had to talk about the performance. I said that you played yourself as a mushroom. Mushrooms are the treasures of Heilongjiang, and the most beautiful among them are mushrooms. When they are picked in autumn, the sun shines into the Woods, and you can see a wet one, which looks exactly the same, but each one is different. After the filming, Zhang Yu asked me, did he play a mushroom? I said that you have all become mushrooms.

Mary’s previous performance styles were very successful, forming a way of presenting classic comedies. But in our play, she showed another side. When our poster came out, many people couldn’t tell it was Mary. She is actually a very capable and multi-level actress, very powerful. As soon as we talked, she knew how this character should be presented, and she was very knowledgeable.

Q: Do you like Cauris Markey?

A：I like it very much. I am not picky about food when I watch movies. At the earliest time, my favorite was Khiesz Lovsky’s Trilogy of Red, White and Blue. I think it’s great that he filmed moral anxiety. Sometimes I like something lively, and sometimes I like something calm. The aesthetic level of the film is too rich.

Q: In your films, including Cauris Markey, and then your films, there is always a little bit of "agnosticism" color, especially bizarre, with a little bit of absurdity, unpredictable, especially interesting and very magical.

A：Yes, my self-awareness of life is the same. In fact, the unknowable is interesting. Everyone is in a constant cycle of life style, having lunch at work, working, watching TV and sleeping at home after work. It is such a fixed order that there are many agnosticism, and agnosticism is daily. Agnosticism is life itself. I think art is actually idealistic.

Q: Sometimes when a bunch of people’s lives come together, there will be wonderful chemical reactions, and their lives will change because of interweaving. Just like the role played by Zhang Yu in the movie, he was trapped in that life, because of the interweaving of interpersonal relationships, everything went to the unknown consequences.

A：Yes! Unknown dangers and bad luck will come at any time, which will make inertia dislocation and disorder, and people will walk into the unknown maze.

Q: Yes, and it is unpredictable. There are joys in sorrow and sorrows in joy. Nietzsche believes that although the world is finished, I still have to shine.

A：I am my own master.

Q: Sartre once said that "the world is absurd and life is painful".

　

A：I agree with part of this sentence, the world is absurd, that’s for sure, and life is painful and not necessarily. I think I am actually in an intermediate state. Reality and absurdity are not so far away. Sometimes even a word, a sentence and a wrong look will make things irreversible. Therefore, the world is not only two sides, but actually it is a three-dimensional, with gray scales in the middle, and the middle part is particularly vast, which contains more possibilities of life. I think as a person, in fact, these things, these nouns, these important ideological things have been summarized, we can understand it, we can know it, and there is no need to take it as a guide.

I appreciate literature, movies and music in a particularly comfortable way, not in a way of seeking knowledge.

So I know those things when I know them. If I don’t know them, I will let them go. Maybe I will know them later, but I don’t know them at this time. I’m fine.

Q: What are your usual interests?

A：I am most interested in literature, and literature is human studies. Because even if our life is rich, it is narrow. How can we broaden our knowledge? Literature can be, good movies can be, and so can music. I don’t choose, for example, I will buy literary magazines, such as Harvest. I may read from beginning to end, and I will skip some articles I don’t like in the middle. I also read all the writers in Northeast China. They write really well and are particularly enjoyable to read.

Q: Besides this Cauris Markey, which directors have influenced you in this way?

A：The earliest one was Yang Jie, the 86 version of The Journey to the West. I felt that the grotesque, monsters and ghosts made my world three-dimensional, with fairies and immortals, which opened my eyes. Later, The Lord of the Rings appeared and created another three-dimensional world. He opened my imagination.

After VCD and DVD appeared, I came into contact with movie master in Europe. I also took classes at the Film Academy, where Mr. Zhang Ming, Mr. Xu Haofeng and Mr. Zhang Xianmin took classes. At that time, I learned that Pulp Fiction was very amazing, and then I followed the lead and watched Reservoir Dogs. In fact, I gradually learned about movies outside the mainstream from a point of interest. At that time, everyone scoured for discs, and there were thousands of discs at home. I bought several suits for "Underground" in Kusturica, some with Ost on the back, and some with a tidbit. The packaging is different.

Q: Why do you like Custurica?

A：Cauris Markey’s movies are that you can feel the changes of his time and space-time minute by minute, and then you can bring it into it to feel life. Cuturi card is nothing else to worry about. My brother took you to fly for two or three hours or three or four hours. After flying, I felt that my brother took me to fly very comfortably. Cauris Markey invited you to sit down and have coffee. He was also a kind of comfort and made people enjoy it.

Is there anything you don’t understand when you are watching Northeast Tiger?

Q: That’s not true. I think people with reading habits should understand your expression to some extent, but they may understand it to different degrees.

A：In fact, I especially hope that it can be a text that has been read repeatedly. After everyone watched it in 2021, he watched it again after a while. What I actually want to do is that every time I watch it, I feel different. I also like this kind of movies, that is, I can think about it after I see the cinema, not forget it after I leave the cinema.

Q: The Northeast Tiger doesn’t give me this feeling. Some interesting lines in your movie are still hovering in my mind today. It’s a lingering movie, and I never think it’s a fast food.

You once mentioned the problem of black humor, and then some people said that you look like the Cohen brothers. I don’t really think so, but there are similarities in temperament.

A：As we talked just now, Ma Qianli (played by Zhang Zhiyong) here is social order, and Xu Dong here is Jianghu order. Inside the movie story, it presents our life, that is, the real life order and the rivers and lakes coexist. The order of rivers and lakes is close to the black part, which is unconventional and unexpected, which makes it absurd.

Absurdity is everywhere, sometimes it seems to be an accident on the surface, and it will become a story when it is created. We have seen how much self-control is particularly good. At a key point, his emotions and manners have been stripped off, revealing the background color of people. I think that thing is a person. Just like developing a photo, we usually get a middle film first, and the person on it is both you and not you, which is different from what I recognized with my naked eyes, but it presents a side of you, which I think is what art should do.

Q: I saw that there are some young directors now, and then he tried to explore the boundaries of the film by some image means such as inversion. What do you think of these explorations?

A: I think it’s quite talented. As a director, he should actually constantly explore the boundaries of image expression. This is the artist. In fact, the most important job of an artist is to broaden the film, break the boundary and get out of the comfort zone, so as to make the possibility of the film more interesting.

Q: It’s almost four years since the last film. What have you been doing during these four years?

A：My own work status is to write plays and participate in other people’s creations, and then I will spend a little time reading. I try to have three hours of reading time every day in my life. In fact, I was an eccentric person before, but later I felt that people around me would get hurt when I was with me. I didn’t start to have such a consciousness until I was in my thirties, and reading influenced me subtly.

Q: But I think as a creation, you can do this step, and there is no need to be so integrated.

A：Yes, actually, you can, and you can’t get too involved in that thing. I think if you blend in with that thing, sometimes you will feel overwhelmed. Because there are a lot of fun in life, we haven’t found it. When we find it, we may indulge in the newly discovered fun. It’s not the water depth, but the sea level is quite large, but our energy is so limited that I can’t help it. So I’m still simple. I have a book in my bag and a bunch of books at home. I think it’s ok. I can understand them, but I may not throw myself into the ocean of joy.

You should have finished watching the credits, and the credits are part of my whole movie.

Q: That song is really superb.

A：I won’t give the audience a spoiler. Everyone has different feelings. I hope everyone can walk into the cinema and feel for themselves and listen to the ending song.

Q: What kind of creative state do you think we should maintain in the creative process?

A：Don’t be too narcissistic, don’t be too moved by yourself. When I write my own script, it’s actually completely emotional. I can’t pull out an outline first and then add details. In the process of writing, I am emotional. I don’t know which character will appear next, what to say, and I don’t know the next plot direction. But looking back, after the first draft is finished, I will review the script I created. It may take a long time to modify it, or it may be that the shadow of the first draft is completely gone by the time of final shooting. I will think back to the characters I wrote. Is it interesting to create this character, his emotions and his emotions in some key points in my plays? Is it worth chewing? I am also examining myself, whether I am creative or not, and how is my imagination? Am I trapped in self-emotion? I will change from fanaticism to calmness, and then I will become fanaticism. There is a ripple line. I don’t know if I will waste time in this process. I know some excellent screenwriters. They write scripts in a particularly good way, but I can’t. I can only do it in my stupid way and walk comfortably.

Q: What kind of guiding role does Mr. Zhang Xianmin have in your creation?

A: He always reminds me whether some treatments are appropriate or not, and what possibilities do we have? He will give me great inspiration in some key points, because he is experienced, he teaches students to write scripts, and he knows that I am confused at this time. Sometimes I’m so excited that you may not listen to my opinions, so he just waits a little. When I get a little calm, he will talk to me again. He has a particularly good grasp of the temperature, and the most important thing is Mr. Liu Bing. Mr. Liu Bing and I cooperated to write the script. He is a person who grasps the steering wheel and I am a person who steps on the gas pedal, so the tacit understanding of this cooperation is actually very important. What I write when I am most excited, he will affirm me and he will encourage me. When he calmed down again, he asked if this piece could be like this and that piece could be like that. At last, I wrote five plays and all of them were overturned, which made what I had written before become the basis and created better possibilities.

Q: You won’t worry about regional differences when making this film?

A：There will be no differences in understanding because of regional problems. I think it will produce other interesting things. People in different places solve problems in different ways, and this difference is also part of comedy.

Q: You have also been a judge in many film festivals. What are the creative conditions you have observed for some directors in other industries?

A：Some people are seriously disciplined, but there is no way. It is a terrible thing to engage in creative thinking after it is solidified. Innovation is difficult, but it is precisely because it is difficult that it is worth doing. It’s not that genre films are not good. Sometimes, if you shoot genre films, you have to shoot freshness and imagination, which shows your personal ability. Some students shoot very good homework, even genre films, and they can shoot different feelings. Sometimes routines are easy to use, the key depends on how to use them. It’s interesting that you can make your own things in the routine. I think that routine itself is no problem, it depends on how you create it. In fact, there are not many people who can shine, but I am willing to applaud those who shine.

Q: What should we do in the face of such a lack of creativity?

A：The lack of creativity, I hope that the paper version of the book can sell well, then this situation can be improved. Reading pure literature is the most nutritious thing. The other thing is the technology itself, not the major itself. I have no say in that thing. But I think reading is very important for personal life and personal creation. Reading can let people know that literature is so interesting. It can open my imagination and see different faces of the world. In fact, our life is still quite narrow. Although it is already the Internet age, it is still narrow. We can extend it through reading and movies and make our life experience broader.

There is also a problem of reading ability. My reading ability is actually quite general, but it doesn’t matter. As long as I keep reading, I will gain something.

Q: Finally, do you expect feedback from the audience of Northeast Tiger?

A: I expect them to talk more. They can talk whatever they want, whether it’s criticism or praise. I think criticism can remind me of the film form. I’m not that stubborn. After the film was released, the other half was given to the audience.

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