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Compared with other colleagues, Zhang Lu is not an "ambitious" director.

Zhang Lu on the set of "Light of the White Pagoda"

While his peers are obsessed with using big data to monitor audience preferences and adhering to the genre film creation rule of making a few jokes every minute in order to maximize the return on investment, Zhang Lu is just traveling alone to several cities in Northeast Asia that are either familiar or unfamiliar.

Together with his friends who are also more or less "easy-going", he uses images to record the stories of ordinary people in the city.

Stills from Fukuoka

Except for several early works, Zhang Lu is accustomed to naming his films after places.

"Fukuoka" Phoenix TV Movie Channel

It will be broadcasted at 21:15 on October 1st

Whenever someone asked him the reason, he always laughed and said that he didn't know how to name the movie, so he simply named it after the place where the story took place.

But behind this lies his "originality". There are countless tutorials on how to write a play on the market that warn newcomers to the industry - writing a script should start with the characters.

Zhang Lu, who has taught film at the university for many years, refuses to follow these dogmas.His films all start from space.

Stills from Fukuoka

Zhang Lu was born in Yanbian, Jilin Province in 1962. After spending his primary school years in a Han village called Donghua, he moved to Yanji, where he entered the Department of Literature at Yanbian University and then stayed on to teach.

Yanbian University

For a period of time, he went to Beijing to write novels.

Those "idle" days later became fragments of the life of Gu Wentong, a food columnist in "The Light of the White Pagoda". The film was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 73rd Berlin Film Festival and won five awards at the 13th Beijing International Film Festival.

Xin Baiqing plays Gu Wentong in "Light of the White Pagoda"

These are just a few of Zhang Lu's brilliant resume of awards at film festivals at home and abroad. But such an accomplished director lived a life that had little to do with movies before he was 40.

Literature is his first love. He likes Cao Xueqin and Kafka.

When he was young, he pursued his literary dream in Beijing, but his novel writing did not make much progress until after 1989, when Zhang Lu, after reading Borges, felt that he "had nothing to write" and stopped writing.

Borges

In 2001, Zhang Lu, who was still a professor in the Department of Literature at Yanbian University, completed his first short film "11 Years Old" after arguing with his friends in the film industry about "anyone can make a movie."

This work, which only has sound and music but no dialogue, was unexpectedly selected for the short film competition unit of the 58th Venice Film Festival. Zhang Lu thus "divorced literature and married film" and became a professional filmmaker.

Stills from "11 Years Old"

Then he started making feature films.

"Mang Zhong" and "Duman River" are stories about his familiar Korean hometown, while "Desert Dream", "Li Li" and "Chongqing" direct his attention and thoughts to small villages on the Sino-Mongolian border, the industrial city of Yizhou in South Korea, and the mountain cities in southwestern China.

Since 2012, Zhang Lu has been invited by Yonsei University, a prestigious Korean university, to give lectures in Korea. Since then, his footsteps have gone further, and more space has been included in his works.

Ode to the Goose Phoenix TV Movie Channel

It will be broadcasted at 21:15 on September 17

Compared with the well-known Seoul and Busan, Gyeongju is not the most famous tourist city in South Korea, although it has a long history. In 1995, Zhang Lu went to several places in South Korea for the first time, including Gyeongju, and this small city left a deep impression on him.

Gyeongju Scenic Spots: Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond

The official Gyeongju Tourism Bureau introduces the city like this:"This is a city that embraces the brilliant heritage of Silla."Silla was one of the countries in the history of the Korean Peninsula, and once had Gyeongju (historically known as Geumseong) as its capital.

The 2009 MBC TV series "Queen Seondeok" tells the story of the first queen in the history of the Korean Peninsula - Queen Seondeok of Silla.

In the Daereungwon area of ​​present-day Gyeongju, there are ancient tombs of Silla kings, queens, nobles, etc.

In Silla, the tombs of kings or rulers were called "tombs", such as the Tomb of Queen Seondeok; the tombs of ordinary people were called "graves", such as the Tomb of General Kim Yu-sin; the tombs of those whose identities were unknown were called "graves"; and the tombs of those that had been excavated but whose identities were unknown were called "mounds", such as the Cheonma Tomb.

Daereungwon is located in Hwangnam-dong, Gyeongju City.

Among these mausoleums, tombs, graves and tombs, the people of Gyeongju drank, chatted and talked about love, and did not seem to regard death as a taboo. This had a great impact on Zhang Lu, who was visiting Gyeongju for the first time, because "in China, people avoid cemeteries and cannot mix them with daily life."

Zhang Lu thought,“People living in spaces like Gyeongju think about death differently than we do,”So he filmed "Gyeongju".

"Gyeongju" Phoenix TV Movie Channel

To be broadcasted at 21:15 on August 27

The story of "Gyeongju" revolves around a trip to Gyeongju by the protagonist Choi Hyun, played by Park Hae-il. Choi Hyun is Korean, but teaches Northeast Asian politics at Peking University. This time he returns to Gyeongju to attend the funeral of his predecessor.

At the funeral of his senior, Choi Hyun learned that his senior had died suddenly, and also heard about his passionate love with his deceased relative and the tragic ending of his affair. But all of this was just "heard", and it was hard to tell whether it was true or false.

After leaving the funeral, Choi Hyun wanders around Gyeongju, picking up memories of the past.

Stills from Gyeongju

He came across a pair of student lovers kissing next to a tomb from the Silla era, and immediately thought of his first love. He called her, and she rushed over from Seoul and left in a hurry, leaving behind not tenderness but anger.

When the two broke up, the junior was already pregnant. Cui Xian, unaware of the situation, refused to break up with her, leaving the junior to face everything alone.

Stills from Gyeongju

Afterwards, the lonely Cui Xian went to look for the teahouse he and his predecessor had visited. Cui Xian found the teahouse, but the owner had already changed, and Cui Xian was regarded as a "pervert" by the female boss Yunxi played by Shin Min-a...

Stills from Gyeongju

After the two communicated, the misunderstanding was slowly resolved. Yunxi's detached appearance also hid a secret - her husband committed suicide, and she had a lot to say to him but hadn't yet confided in him. Cui Xian had a pair of ears similar to her husband's. A man and a woman were alone in the same room, and they did not cross the line. She just reached out and touched the similar ears.

Stills from Gyeongju

During his few days in Gyeongju, Choi Hyun experienced many other encounters, including a fortune-teller who had long passed away, a mother and daughter who were about to commit suicide, a scholar who was obsessed with the unification of the Korean Peninsula, and a jealous policeman who was caught between him and Yoon Hee...

Stills from Gyeongju

Their lives have never intersected, but they do intersect in this journey, between fantasy and reality, between the past and the future.

Stills from Gyeongju

"Gyeongju" is not a so-called complete movie with a good beginning, development, climax and conclusion.

There is often love in Zhang Lu's films, because he believes that "without love, human beings may find it more unbearable to live in this world", but he will not shoot the kind of "complete" love.

Jang Yool and Park Hae-il on the set of "Gyeongju"

In this era of globalization and drifting, everyone is drifting around, with no fixed place to live."Our lives are fragmented, so how can our emotions be complete?"

Stills from Gyeongju

The love, friendship, family, and even the casual acquaintance with strangers in the film all start suddenly and end without a trace. All we can grasp is the moment when our life trajectories intersect.

Zhang Lu’s films are not dreamlike dream factories, but we can always get closer to the truth of life through them.

Source: Movie Channel

Editor: Fuermoge, Remi