"The Tower", which was shortlisted for the Asian Newcomer section of this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, is a film that focuses on the plight of women in marriage and their pursuit of self-worth. In the film, facing the mystery of their husbands' disappearance, three women with different backgrounds and personalities are drawn to their struggles and awakenings in marriage.

On June 19, "The Tower" premiered at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

A group photo of the main creators of "The Tower"

The film tells the story of a music teacher Liang Yan (played by Wang Yuxin) who became a beautiful widow in the eyes of everyone after a fire, but she intuitively felt that her husband was not dead. Who was burned to death in the fire? After her husband disappeared, Liang Yan developed a dual personality. Her best friend Hong Fang (played by Chen Yuqi) was the other side of Liang Yan's repression. She was passionate and dared to love and hate, and finally died for love. Neighbor Liu Yongming (played by Yang Houyao), a typical greasy middle-aged man, loved Hong Fang and eventually died at the hands of evil. Human nature, friendship, and love were tortured in various ways. With Liang Yan's persistence, the confusing case was solved layer by layer, and in the end, Liang Yan also found her own place to live.

Stills from "Tower of Heath"

Director Zhang Luoping is a photographer by profession, and the strong impact of the images demonstrates the creator's desire to express himself. "The Tower" is his second film. In 2018, his first feature film "Sunny Days" was also shortlisted for the Asian Newcomer Unit of the Shanghai International Film Festival, and won him the honor of Best Cinematography.

The "Shelter Tower" in the movie symbolizes a place where the soul can rest. After releasing this work 6 years later, Zhang Luoping has also had many new thoughts on life and movies.

Director Zhang Luoping

The sparrow with a phoenix tail and her tree

At the meeting of the shortlisted crews of the Asian New Film Unit of this year's Shanghai Film Festival, Zhang Luoping introduced her new work like this, "This movie tells the story of a woman looking for her man." In the end, she didn't find him, but her heart was at peace. Zhang Luoping said: "This is also about the dilemma of everyone in today's society. Everyone has dilemmas, and in the final analysis, the dilemma comes from one's own uneasy heart."

After filming his first movie, Zhang Luoping went on a trip to relax. On the way, he talked to his friends about some women who were trapped in marriages that existed in name only. In addition, there were similar cases around him. Zhang Luoping felt that many older women were always tied up in shackles in their marriages. Sometimes those shackles did not come from reality, but from inner cognition. "The home guarded by women is actually the place where the soul rests, but it is not necessarily marriage or family that constitutes the firm core of the self."

In the film, Zhang Luoping created three women, some of whom are "worldly" in appearance but warriors who long for true love in their hearts; some of whom stick to the cage of marriage, while their hearts are full of contradictions and delusions; and some of whom lose themselves in marriage and embark on a road of no return...

Stills from "Tower of Heath"

Zhang Luoping likes birds. He has been digging bird nests, raising birds, and observing birds since he was a child. He once saw a strange sparrow, whose body was in the shape of a sparrow, but whose tail was particularly long and had a bit of color like a "phoenix". "A sparrow with a phoenix tail may not be able to determine whether it is a sparrow or a phoenix." This obsession and delusion in self-cognition became an important image for him to construct the female in the film. In addition, the poems in the film are interspersed with various bird-related images, sometimes poetically perching, sometimes flying away without a trace.

"I think anyone who is a little bit romantic has wished to be a bird, able to fly very high and see very far, but the bird stops just for a tree." Sometimes Zhang Luoping feels that the relationship between birds and trees is very similar to the relationship between men and women.

Stills from "Tower of Heath"

The story begins with a fire. The suspense of exploring the truth of her husband's death has not been magnified into a more suspenseful narrative. "At the beginning, I wrote the script about some trivial things in her relationship with her husband. After repeated revisions, it finally became a pure expression of a woman's situation and state, letting the incident sink to the bottom and forming a world behind the appearance." "The Tower of Life" is a stream of consciousness expression. Zhang Luoping said, "What is filmed is the appearance, and what is hidden inside is another story that happened before."

Stills from "Tower of Heath"

From capturing moments to recording time

Zhang Luoping was born in the 1980s, and is considered an "old man" in the "Yaxin" team.

He studied oil painting, and after graduation, he became interested in photography and started working as a fashion photographer. He traveled to various studios and fashion weeks to shoot all year round, reaching the top level in the industry. He has shot almost all the covers of fashion magazines on the market and has worked with countless big-name stars. In 2014, Zhang Luoping returned to school and studied in the Beijing Film Academy's director training class for a year, starting his own directorial career. He directed his debut film "Sunny Days" himself, and his outstanding visual narrative ability won the Asia New Best Photography Award.

Photography is Zhang Luoping's forte, and the images in "The Tower of Dwelling" are equally impressive. Strong colors, excellent space creation, long lenses with a sense of design, and surreal lighting. Zhang Luoping said, "We tried to find a suitable balance between beauty and reality."

He realized that overly sophisticated and strong images might affect the audience's immersion into the world of the movie characters and even affect the sense of reality, but at the same time, he also hoped that the audience could leave a certain "feeling" of the film through the images. "For many movies, after watching them, you may not remember the story, but you will definitely remember the feeling of the film."

From photographer to film director, Zhang Luoping found that the biggest difference lies in the completely different ways of capturing the state of a person. A photographer only needs to capture the state of the subject at a certain moment to make a successful photo, while a movie needs to record the performance state over a complete period of time. The director must be able to mobilize all means to stimulate and maintain this state, and record it. The same is true for his own creative state. "In the past, I might have been able to create a work with an instant idea, but when I make a movie, I have to stick to an idea for 6 years to complete the work."

Stills from "Tower of Heath"

“Retreat is never a good path”

Zhang Luoping frankly said that his background as a photographer gave him a unique sensitivity in processing images, but film creation requires more systematic and in-depth thinking. After the filming of "Sunny Days", the film had the opportunity to be released in theaters, allowing Zhang Luoping to face a wider audience, and the reviews were not all positive. This hit Zhang Luoping, who had high expectations for himself, very hard. "I felt a little empty inside, very lacking, and felt that my ability to handle scripts was too poor." So he turned around and entered the Beijing Film Academy and took a refresher course in the Department of Literature.

Comparing the different states of creation of the two times, Zhang Luoping said, "The first time was a bit vague, thinking this way is good, that way is also good, in fact, I was just testing, but the second time I was very clear, from the script to the shooting to the post-editing, even to the color and music, everything was very firm and clear."

As an "older newcomer", Zhang Luoping's path to directing requires him to leave his previous comfort zone and start over. "Although it seems that there is some overlap in the industries, they are worlds apart." Although it was difficult, from the moment he decided to change his career, he never thought of looking back.

"Retreating is never a good path," he said. "I've seen too many people who shoot graphic photography who once had some small success and could live their whole lives relying on this small success. This is a bit sad for me."

Over the years, although he sometimes shoots some flat pictures as a "trade" in order to exchange some resources for his own creation, Zhang Luoping said that he has not taken any more "jobs". What makes him happy is that in the tenth year of his career change, he finally "got paid" for his third feature film! Zhang Luoping said that the filming of "The Tower" was very difficult and he had to pay for it out of his own pocket, but "with the pay, I am a professional director."

Stills from "Tower of Heath"