On the afternoon of June 14, the Short Film Section of the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival Golden Goblet Awards held a meeting for shortlisted crews. Emerging directors from all walks of life try to show and discuss various social phenomena and hot topics with eclectic, short and powerful short film expressions. Therefore, the short film unit has always been one of the special projects of the Golden Goblet Awards that the audience pays attention to. This year's Golden Goblet Awards short film competition is also extremely fierce. A total of 19 films including live-action short films and animated short films have been shortlisted, of which 11 are world premieres, 6 are international premieres, and 2 are Asian premieres. At the meeting, the creators centered around their respective works and shared the whimsy and vigorous creativity behind the creation.

Find creative inspiration from real experience

meeting scene

Compared with the rigorous creation of feature films, short films show a more casual and free expression. The inspiration of the story may come from daily necessities, or an inadvertent experience and discovery in life, or the perception of life after crossing the hills.

"I Got It" tells the story of Huihui, a six-year-old girl who is not familiar with the world, and feels the difficulties of life for the first time in a sudden family accident. Director Zhong Hongzhang said that "knowledge" is a symbol of summer, and it also represents "knowledge". "The little girl has experienced growth this summer, but we don't know when and how she grew up. Probably only 'Xiamen' knows." metaphor.

Director Chung Hung Hoon

"Good Girl" examines a "wonderful" relationship between a mother and grandmother living under the same roof from the perspective of a daughter. Director Zeng Huaqian introduced that this is entirely a story that happened around her, and the prototypes of the characters are her mother and grandmother. "They have very different personalities, but they have lived together for more than 50 years. What I am curious about is why they can still live together despite their constant conflicts? Are they in a relationship of controlling and being controlled? It seems not, between them It’s more like a symbiotic relationship.” Therefore, Zeng Huaqian decided to pick up the camera and record this interesting pair of “mother and daughter” in her eyes.

Director Zeng Huaqian

"Cold in the Spring" revolves around a seemingly accidental female suicide. The incredible motivations of the characters and the direction of the plot fill the whole film with a weird and absurd atmosphere. Director Zhang Jinming said that the characters and stories in the work are not fictitious, "They are real, young marginalized people who are not seen by the general public." He emphasized that in order to find the "source" of the story, they did a lot of interviews Investigation, "We saw a lot of hoarse parents, deformed growth environment, and the values these young people did not understand. At first you will feel absurd, even ridiculous, but when all these are connected, We found that groups like this need to be seen, and their voices need to be heard."

Director Zhang Jinming

"Intermission" is a documentary work reflecting the current situation of migrant workers in Japan and China. It is an assignment of director Zhang Yaoyuan when he was studying abroad at Tokyo University of the Arts. He revealed that he has been shooting documentaries about foreign workers in Japan in recent years, and "Intermission" intercepted some of the characters and stories in an attempt to attract more people to pay attention to the Japanese labor and employment system. He said that there is a lot of blank space in the short film. As for the final answer, he still hopes to leave it to the audience to find and judge.

Director Zhang Yaoyuan

"Breaking the Greenhouse" describes the decisions and choices of a pair of father and daughter who have suffered from "gradual frostbite" successively due to heredity. Director Ona Galgosio was a theater director before, and the film also has a lot of dramatic processing, such as the scheduling of the camera when the heroine walks into her father's room step by step, you can feel a suffocating feeling across the screen uneasiness. She said that although the story of "gradual frostbite" is fictitious, the emotional expression between her daughter and her father is based on her personal real experience.

Director Oona Galgosio

Malika Muhamedjan, the director of "Swallows", is from Kazakhstan. She hopes to use the migratory bird attributes of "swallows" to express her thoughts on the phenomenon of "people in the city want to go out, and people outside the city want to come in". She said that in recent years, many young Kazakhs want to see the outside world, but many Europeans are attracted by the beautiful prairie of Kazakhstan. The film explains the director's observation from this perspective.

Malika Muhammajan

The story of "The Fish That Dreamed of a Beautiful Ocean, The Fish Trapped in the Bathtub" came from an accidental experience of director Anthony Cazette. Ten years ago, when he was making a travel plan, he randomly clicked on a coordinate on Google Maps and found that there was a sea. into this ocean-related love story.

Director Anthony Cazette

Break the traditional limits and let your imagination fly

meeting scene

In addition to finding inspiration in one's own experience, daring to break the rules and not taking the usual path has become a common "cheat book" for short film directors. As the first self-directed and self-acted work, Wen Qi said when talking about the creative process of "She Asked", "I live in a contradiction every day." Picking up the guiding tube for the first time, she found that the perspectives of directors and actors are different, and sometimes even contradictory. This time, she partnered with her friend Zheng Ziyi, and she learned how to look at a work from an overall perspective. Not sticking to a certain scene at the moment.

Director Zheng Ziyi

Director Wen Qi

Different from the realistic absurdity in "Falling Spring", "The Gift of the Sun" starts from the perspective of "human nature is good", and completes a character transformation from a robber to a hero. Director Jiang Xiaotong believes that we must believe in the power of beauty and ideals at all times. Although the "Utopia" in the film is fictional, "as long as you believe in its existence in your heart, you will plant a seed of goodness in your heart." .”

Director Jiang Xiaotong

Jose Pudades Martinez, the director of the short film "Wireless", and his other two artist partners tried to show their unique creativity by combining puppets and live performances. He said that they had always wanted to shoot a work based on puppet culture, but they couldn't find a suitable way of expression. One day they suddenly saw a story about a puppeteer, which instantly made them find the "soul character" of the film .

Director Jose Pudades Martinez

"Homeland" has a unique style in the presentation of the picture, the square composition makes the characters and scenery in the picture very cramped. Director Andrei Krechetov explained that what stands out in this work is the word "small", small cities, small houses and small people. '." Andre said that there are many similar techniques in the film, and he also hopes that the audience will find these ingenuities.

Director Andrei Krechetov

"Animal Skin" is also a work with strong metaphors. The main character is a six-year-old girl, but she has to deal with a depressed mother and an alcoholic and irritable father every day, all of which make her want to escape the family. Director Leah Johnston explained that the "animal skin" here is a metaphor for men's desire to control, but she still tried her best to maintain "restraint" in the film, "Although this work has some irony, but I still want it to look more realistic."

Director Leah Johnston

"I'm From the Ocean" brings a romantic adventure to the audience, telling the wonderful experience of three children who play truant in a strange city. Director Firuz Sehar first "set aside" the relationship between this work and herself, "I was very serious when I was in school, and I never skipped class." Then she pointed out that the children in the story faced All kinds of problems are actually encountered by everyone when they grow up, but she just presented them in a romantic and adventurous way.

Director Firuz Sehar

Represent the fantasy world with a minimalist approach

meeting scene

If the live-action short film allows the audience to meet different characters and stories in the real world, then the animated short film creates another colorful two-dimensional universe for the audience. "The Last Language" uses the story of a lonely woman looking for someone who can speak the same language in the city, expressing the creator's concern about the disappearance of the language, and calling on people to save and protect the diversity of languages. The sound director of the film, Matt Mary Sneeman, said that the language gave her a lot of imagination, "I've been listening to your language on the streets of Shanghai these days. I especially like the Shanghainese dialect, which feels as beautiful as music." , she hopes that more people can appreciate the charm of language art.

Sound Director Matt Marie Snyman

"Stolen Melody" is also a work full of whimsy. This animation shows all the known methods of "stealing" melody. Director Georgi Boguslavski said that in the past three years, people's way of life has undergone tremendous changes, and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for everyone to enjoy music together. Those beautiful melodies that should appear in life seem to have been abandoned "Stole", "This animation is exactly the observation and record of this phenomenon."

Director Georgy Boguslavski

"The Passenger" tells the story of a man who takes a train from the remote countryside to the bustling city, forming brief relationships with fellow passengers along the way. Facing the social norms they represent, he reflected deeply, trying to integrate his own values with them. Director Juan Pablo Salamelia believes that people can present their truest side only in a completely open public place, because he can not worry about any social relationship and play in it. role, so "passenger" is the most natural attribute of people.

Director Juan Pablo Salamelia

Su Xia, the director of "The Bee and the Fly", is a frequent visitor to the Shanghai Film Festival, and was shortlisted for the short film unit of the Golden Goblet Award with "Gold Eats People". This "Bee and Fly" is the second part of his "Human Nature Tetralogy", which mainly satirizes various social eccentricities brought about by human greed. Su Xia insists on using traditional Chinese cultural elements and techniques to create animations, such as ink painting and shadow puppetry. And this time, he borrowed the blue of blue and white porcelain and the cinnabar of Chinese painting, and presented it in a thread-bound book, giving people a strong Chinese flavor.

Director Su Xia

"Chasing the Bird" depicts a group of people from parallel universes, a strange scene in which different worlds are gradually merged together through a series of events. Director Oona Lorensen said that this is a work that subverts cognition, "We need to always break through the dimension of our own space to think about problems, and we must also balance the boundaries between animation and the real world. This is a very difficult part. thing."

Director Oona Lorenson