Director Linglingling admits to at first to being surprised when she learned her debut feature, Unknown Species, had been chosen for the First Frame competition at this year’s FIRST International Film Festival.
After all, she says, the film — a languid reflection on life as a modern single mother— was shot on a shoe-string budget over three days, with a cast drawn from friends in the artistic hub of Songzhuang, in the north of the capital Beijing.
Speaking from the sidelines of China’s leading annual independent cinema community’s gathering — held in central Xining, in the shadows of the Tibetan plateau — the director said the film grew out of a community that was “passionate about creating.”
“Most of the key contributors were friends who helped for free — some were artists, some were salaried workers and some were students,” she says. “I am not formally trained in filmmaking, but I love storytelling. I spend a lot of time developing my scripts but I leave plenty of room for improvisation in the details. At this stage, I often choose interesting and familiar non-professional actors from everyday life. I may even tailor roles to suit them, and some characters in my stories are essentially playing themselves.”
The truth of the matter is that Unknown Species fits the First Frame profile, given the unique competition was set up in 2021 with the backing of the French luxury house Chanel with the specific purpose of finding, screening and promoting uniquely Chinese stories made by women or about Chinese women.
Linglingling’s measured and mature debut gives voice to the everyday concerns of a 30-something single mother through conversations shared over lunches, dinners or casual drinks in her local bar. In style, it harks back to the beginnings of independent American cinema’s mumblecore movement of the early 2000s. In substance it very much speaks to a contemporary Chinese audience with its focus on the thoughts and feelings of the age it represents.
The First Frame lineup offers a fittingly diverse array of projects, given a mission statement that says the competition “aims to encourage the creative depiction of female characters and themes and gender-related topics” while exploring “the inherent issues of identity, living experience and social perspectives with critical thinking.”
It’s a competition that makes sense in plain terms of deserved representation but also in terms of pure commerce, given Chinese film industry authorities claim that female moviegoers accounted for 58 percent of ticket sales in 2023.
“Women are playing an increasingly important role in the Chinese film industry, with significant progress in both the portrayal of female characters and opportunities for female filmmakers,” says Linglingling. “Despite these advancements, women in the film industry still face challenges such as gender bias, limits in career development and incidents of sexual harassment. Overall, women’s status and opportunities in the Chinese film industry are improving, but there is still a significant gap and room for progress.”
Much of the fanfare surrounding this year’s First Frame section concerned the inclusion of Unstoppable, the latest documentary from Xu Huijing, which provides an intimate look at the life (and grueling training routine) of China’s wildly popular world champion mixed martial-arts star Zhang Weili. It played to packed audiences and was duly took the main First Frame award during a ceremony held on Saturday night.
Given Xu’s track record — he was both a best documentary and audience award winner at FIRST’s 14th edition in 2020 for his student baseball documentary Tough Out — and the sheer drama involved in the fight game, the strength of the film was pretty much expected. It’s a film that’s sure to quickly catch the eye of international distributors given Weili’s popularity and the fact the leading MMA league in the world — the Ultimate Fighting Championship — claims a global audience of around 625 million.
But there was surprising quality found among the lesser lights, too. Apart from Linglingling’s impressive debut, there was a buzz among the festival’s predominantly young audience for Frankenfish by the River, a quirky drama about living life with a broken heart — and turning to friends for support.
Debut director Chen Yusha mixes animation into the drama that, again, knows exactly who its audience is. “I particularly enjoy films that provide me with multiple, intense, and complex emotions,” the director says. “I feel that this is about exploring the boundaries of sensitivity. In my own film, although it is still quite immature, I believe I am making attempts in this area. I hope it can evoke multiple emotions in the audience.”
Chen says selection in the First Frame section is a “great encouragement and an affirmation of women’s professional capabilities.”
“I believe that the roles of women in Chinese cinema are being diversified, with more outstanding female filmmakers gradually being recognized,” Chen adds. “However, there is still a need to enrich the spiritual world, image and personality of different female characters — and this requires industry support.”