Do you ever wonder how other people see Shanghai? Sometimes I feel like the language barrier cling-films me from what the Shanghaiese are really like. I saw a man and a woman screaming at each other last night on the street: she had dropped her bike and was clutching her mobile phone, completely distressed. They were both yelling at each other so loudly that I heard them before I saw them. What were they arguing about? Did they even know each other? When you don't speak the language, all you get are impressions, fleeting glimpses into other people's lives that are (mis)interpreted through your own cultural kaleidoscope.
So I was excited to read about the Shanghai Portraits Project this morning - it's a series of short films about Shanghai, by international directors living in Shanghai. Rules of the game are that it must come within 4 minutes and under 3000RMB. The first short film is by Gianpaolo Lupori, who definitely has that intense artist thing going on:
Gianpaolo's film takes a look at Shanghai from a taxi-driver's perspective. The driver plays to the stereotype of Mr Philosophical in the film, so I thought it was pretty funny to read this about him:
"We did a first interview and I was very, very unhappy with it. When we first met the guy he told us some crazy stories - women offering themselves to him in exchange for payment because they had no money, people making out in the back of his car and asking him to wait outside, all sorts of crazy stuff, and I thought this is going to be fun. But then when we started interviewing him he became like cardboard, very materialistic and optimistic. When we asked him about why he felt people came to Shanghai, he replied for the Expo ... we don't want to talk about the Expo!"
I really liked the soundtrack. And the subtitles! Check it out here.
Miss G
