Interview: film director Anthony Chen on his influences and passions
Anthony Chen knew he wanted to direct films when he was 15 years old. After the success of his movie ilo ilo, he is working on projects in Chinese and English.
I knew I wanted to be a director when I was 15. Subconsciously, I think it was planted in me when I was a child. The first film that I saw on the big screen was Bernardo Bertolucci's three-hour epic The Last Emperor, which I'm not sure I actually understood. I've no idea why any parent would take a four-year-old child to it but I guess as the story is about a child emperor, they probably thought it was good for kids. It was many years later that I found out how young I was when I watched it. But it was very grand and a lot of visuals stuck in my head.
Like many children in Asia, I watched a lot of Hong Kong and Singapore dramas and stuff from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stephen Chow. But I was [also] drawn to a different kind of films; they were usually played on the television at very odd hours. I was very much captured by the early films of Zhang Yimou such as Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern and those of Ang Lee such as The Wedding Banquet and Pushing Hands. I felt that apart from watching all the mainstream stuff, there was another side of me where my sensibility steered me towards those films.
I really admire Edward Yang, the late Taiwanese master, who made Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day. The latter still remains my all-time favourite. It's a four-hour masterpiece. If I could one day make a film like A Brighter Summer Day I could really rest in peace when I die. It's the best piece of Chinese filmmaking I've seen. Ever.
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