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When Niu Xiaoyu was in her early 20s,
because she could not accept the reality of her grandfather's death,
decided to make a movie to create a parallel world.
turns grandpa into a monster in the park next door,
let grandma play the heroine,
always knit sweaters, always miss grandpa.
As for herself, she was eager to return to her childhood.
hates growing up and fights against the adult world.
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granddaughter wore a sweater from childhood and missed her grandfather in an empty room
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Dream-like paradise in the movie, the fairies sang and danced
This movie is also an ordinary Chinese family,
credentials for three generations of women to support each other.
In order to make a movie for Niu Xiaoyu,
Mother secretly sold her house,
That was the dowry left for her daughter,
Grandma held up her bad body to act,
Wait until the day of release in one breath.
At the moment when the theater went bankrupt and transformed into a lunch break,
"Don't see you again, Fish Pond"
has been released on November 25.
has been shortlisted for Locarno International Film Festival ,
Nara International Film Festival,
is hard to find tickets at FIRST and Beijing Film Festivals,
Some people say that this movie realizes
"two-way comfort inside and outside the screen",
"like dreams that I would have when I was a child,
wake up ten years later."
self-reported." : Niu Xiaoyu
Editor: Hong Bingchan
Editor: Ni Chujiao
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Grandma knitted a sweater by the window, and the shadow of grandfather was vaguely exposed on the curtains
The story I want to tell is that Ye Zi lost her grandfather, Ye Zi's grandmother also lost her husband, and the grandparents and grandchildren lived together in a house where grandfather lived. They gradually discovered that there was something strange in life. Grandpa turned into light, wind, shadow, and accompanied them in a different way.
In 2017, my grandfather, my mother's father, passed away. I was still studying at Nortel and was confused about death. A man was still talking to me yesterday, and then I would never see him again, so I made the short film "Teen Restraint".
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Grown up leaves, dreaming that my grandfather was comforting himself when he was a child
Two years later, my grandmother was in a bad state due to kidney failure. I decided to shoot the first feature film "Don't Goodbye, Fish Flower Pond", which discusses what perspective to look at and what has to be lost.
My answer is to refuse to accept it.
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Every night, the fish pond becomes strange and dreamy
There is a place in the movie called the fish pond. I have created it into an imaginary paradise. All the people in memory and those who have left us can be together forever in the space.
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Grandpa becomes werewolf
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Monsters gather together to play cards and chat
My grandfather is an important figure in this paradise. He is in any form, some kind of cosmic life that can be transformed freely. Later, grandpa turned into a werewolf, wearing very old sweaters, torn jeans, and dirty travel shoes. He came back to see Ye Zi and Grandma.
He and other deceased people are human during the day and go to monsters at night, play cards, chat, and sing karaoke, just like we usually do.
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Grandpa rode his bicycle to take the little leaves home
Because I was raised by another generation, my grandparents brought me up, and my mother was working hard for her career outside. When I was a child, I was a big fat man, and it was 150 kilograms high by 1.5 meters. My grandfather picked me up and dropped me off to school every day. My fat man sat on the back seat of his bicycle. On the way home, he would always hear two "clicks" sounds, and he would always have to break a few steel bars on the bicycle. When I arrived at a huge uphill, my grandfather had to ride until he couldn't ride it before he could let me down and walk.
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In a trance, Ye Zi had dinner with his grandparents
When he returned home, the first thing he did was to eat a whole fish. The fish belly was covered with the pork stuffing chopped by grandma, and the soup had to be completely drunk. This is just afternoon tea, and I will continue to eat it after dinner. When I was a child, I felt like I was a person living in the kitchen and would keep getting things from the kitchen for me to eat.
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Day to night, wonderful light flashes at home
After my grandfather passed away, I lived at home for a long time and observed the subtle changes in light from morning to night at home. There will be strange shadows hitting the wall, light spots surrounding my feet, and wind blowing in from nowhere. Because I miss my grandfather, I regard them all as grandfathers who have turned into everything, and he is still wandering in this room.
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Children wearing gymnastics suits and small wings dance in the rain pond
I know that many people have experienced this heavy topic such as the death of relatives, and I want to use warmer and lighter singing and dancing to comfort the characters in the play, myself, and more audiences.
So I filmed several fantasy songs and dance scenes, and the inspiration was from children who grew up in the 1990s. On the Children's Day, the fairies were wearing gymnastics uniforms, their hair was tied tightly, their faces were filled with gold and silver powder, and a red dot was on their eyebrows.
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Monster Essence is the embodiment of Niu Xiaoyu, who loves fantasy, is innocent,
One of the songs is Duan Yingmei's "Music to Self", which sings "I hope everything stays in childhood, why do people always have to grow up and think?"
In reality, grandpa must be dead, I will never see him again. But in the movie, I can chatter and talk nonsense, thinking that if I don’t grow up, my family won’t grow old, just like believing that the little mermaid turns into a bubble, and I believe that my grandfather will come back.
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Niu Xiaoyu's grandmother plays grandmother, and sent Xiao Yezi to play Yezi
. I am the director, my mother is the producer, and my mother's mother is the heroine.
In March 2019, I finished writing the script. Judging from the normal cycle of finding funds, it is unlikely that it will start in 2019. But when we were about to say goodbye to summer, grandma's body could not hold on anymore, and we all felt that she would not live next year. If I don’t shoot, I will not have the chance to let my grandma appear, and I will regret it to death.
Seeing that I was suffering from finding money, my mother told me that she found a boss who was willing to invest and let me take pictures with confidence. Later I found out that she was lying to me. She sold her house, which was originally a dowry left for me. She was going to spend money to make a movie for her daughter, and the main character of the movie was her own mom.
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On the wall is Niu Xiaoyu's childhood paintings, and the illustrations in the movie are also written by her
Before the computer was turned on, I sat on the bed in the room when I was a child, facing the little mulberry tree planted by my grandfather and I. Under the tree are buried all the little animals raised and dead when I was a child. Now this mulberry tree is three stories high.
Acting is cruel to grandma. She had to mention repeatedly that her wife was gone and reopen her scars. Although my grandma never mentioned to me that she didn't want to act, nor that she couldn't speak this sentence, I could feel her emotional fluctuations when acting.
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grandma always dozed off and lost some amnesia, and would remember the wrong time
After filming, my grandma stayed in the hospital and had to dialysis every other day. I went to the hospital to accompany me. One night, my grandmother looked asleep and suddenly said to me, "Xiaoyu, don't shoot grandpa's affairs again in the future." I realized that she really didn't want to mention it again.
Grandma also said that she dreamed that she died and went to heaven. She dressed very well that day, and she was the outfit she was performing when she was young. She said to Queen Mother, "I have a granddaughter, and her movie has not been finished yet. Can you give me some time?" Queen Mother finally let go: "Okay, you go back first, but you have to know that I need yours very much!"
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movies capture many memories of children in the 1990s
rocking car , "Super Change", lace dustproof cloth, animal table lamp
My mother has liked movies since she was young, and "World Movies" collects even more complete than in the library. Because I liked painting before I went to elementary school and watched cartoons, I decided that my future ambition was to make animation. My mother thought it was fun and always wanted to support me. She bought all the DVDs from Hayao Miyazaki and Disney for me. After graduating from junior high school, she sent me to Beijing to learn painting, attend art exam classes, and prepare for the animation major of , Beijing Film Academy, .
actually has nothing to do with the film industry, because she invested in my movies and became the producer. I was keen to take my mom on the red carpet. I knew she must have wanted to leave but was embarrassed. I felt a little fat and a little hesitant, so I advised her to leave.
Many years ago, my short film "Fish Pond" was shortlisted for a Paris film festival. It just happened that the Cannes Film Festival had just ended, so I took my mom to Cannes . Before the red carpet of film festival was removed, my mom walked on the ruins of the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival.
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"Don't see you again, Fish Pond" won a position of FIRST
Niu Xiaoyu (left) and Ye Zi on the red carpet
Later, the short film "Youth Restraint" was shortlisted for the FIRST Film Exhibition, so I took my mother and friends to the red carpet. The whole female lineup was 5 people, and the situation was very big. Everyone must be wondering, who are these people?
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Children Niu Xiaoyu, the sculpture in the fish pond was moved into the movie by her.
Three generations of women in our family share softness and strength with each other, but men are absent.
In the movie, the disappearance of men is the source of their pain. In reality, I think my father is very much like an tea pet . When drinking tea, a little ceramic frog or monk will be placed on the tea table. After pouring the tea, take the remaining tea and pour it into the tea pet. It just stays there all the time, without any practical effect.My father doesn’t take on any major functions at home, but when he is really not here, you also feel that something is missing.
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filming park singing and dancing scenes. The crew set up a bamboo raft and floated on the water
I am a very idle person and I never think that making movies is a must. After graduating from college, I worked for two years and did work such as storyboard animation, making some money, but because the work was too hard and my waist broke, I had to go home to rest after the operation.
I could only lie down for half a year, and I started thinking. The doctor felt it was incredible. A 22-year-old man with such a herniated lumbar disc, is this what my life will be like in the future? Just lying on the bed to draw a storyboard?
I think I still have to make movies, so I continue to study for graduate school. This time, the feature film was my first attempt to produce it in industrialization. The whole process of building it was a bit scattered and confused.
art director teacher Lan Zhiqiang, I directly "kidnapping" him back to Hefei, and then showed the script to photography director Deng Xu, and he decided to join. This was ten days before the filming started, and there were only three people in this group.
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yezi is a non-professional actor
I called Yezi back to play another heroine. We met when we were about six or seven years old. We were all together in elementary school, junior high school and high school, and were the closest friends. She is a product manager of an internet company and has never acted in any other movie except starring in my works. In order to help me, she quit her job and came to the acting. After the acting, she encountered a major layoff in the Internet and could not find a job for a long time.
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Niu Xiaoyu and producer Zhu Wenhui were at the roadshow site. The proportion of female members in the team was high
Later, the producer rushed over and brought an executive director. The executive director brought another live editing. The live editing was requisitioned as a naughty child, and the stills became an actor of the mute son. Everyone called friends and gathered from all directions to help me complete the work together.
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The light flashing by is real shot
illumination, which tortures our photography to death. The description in the script is just a few words. Grandma is wool on the sofa, and grandpa's shadow appears on the gauze curtain behind grandma. This shadow looks at grandma quietly and walks on the gauze curtain.
Teacher Deng Xu saw this description for the first time and thought it was a special effect shot. I said it was not. It was a real shot, and it was necessary to achieve flashes and fleeting light in physical space. He thought I was joking, so I showed him a lot of photos of strange lights I collected at home, saying that these lights were all grandpa. He realized it was true.
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Photography group uses glass, leaves, etc. to achieve light and shadow effects
He stayed at my house for two or three days, observing the changes from morning to night with me, and finding the source of strange light. We built a three or five-meter-high platform outside the window, spent a lot of money on the light, turned on a large light, shot it on the mirror, and found subtle angles, which were achieved through very complex light refraction. I couldn't see anything at home, and the whole house was already in chaos.
There is another way to come from grandma. In the past, when our family would dry bacon and sausages in winter, the bird would come to steal food. Grandma thought of a trick, hang the used CD on the balcony and make it look like a small fish. The CD refracts the sunlight and drives the bird away. We kept this object in the movie.
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Niu Xiaoyu painted props on the set
scene shot is my home. Because I believe that grandpa’s soul is really in this space, I don’t believe that if I change the scene, grandpa’s soul can reach it. But shooting at home will not be like this again in the future. It is simply a big search of the house.
The lethality of the crew to a space, I had no expectations. When all this happened, the arrow was drawn without turning back. A living space, more than 100 square meters, thirty or fifty people go in, and there is no place to stand. The most direct horror is that everyone needs to go to the bathroom. Our floor has been used for 20 years and it is still like new. After the crew entered the film, the floor has cracked.
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Intentionally leave behind shots in the movie
For example, the actor of the Bear Man is so hot that he takes off his bear skin
When the art guide sets the scene, he turns out everything in the house and places it according to the needs of the picture. That is definitely not a life requirement. We usually set the scenery of the next day first at night. When we came to the scene the next day, the scenery completely disappeared, everything was returned to its original position by the grandma. Some important props were also hidden.
Grandma always felt that our live props were stealing her babies. So the props team plays a time difference with grandma, whoever hides things first in the game. Sometimes my grandmother still took the lead, so the prop team would ask my grandmother to take it out and lend it to me? Grandma would pretend to say, "I didn't take anything, I don't know what you are talking about."
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grandma came from the hospital to the premiere of Hefei,
This is the first time she has watched this video
His grandma is in one breath. I think my grandma can live until now because she has a strong desire to see this movie, so she can hold on until the day of premiere in one breath. After the release of
, we held a screening for grandma in Hefei. Ms. Zheng Shengzhi, sitting in a wheelchair, became a real star and attended the premiere of the movie she starred in.
A few days ago, I took the movie to the film festival and asked the user to apply for a visa. I opened it and saw that the page of my grandfather said "Lognable". It has been many years, but it is still difficult for me to accept those three words.
This thing that relatives die is never forgotten. It is precisely because we will not forget the relatives who have left, so that they can live forever in our world of consciousness.
These pains in life are like a brick. I put this brick in my pocket. This weight is always there, but the longer the time, I will gradually get used to the weight of this brick.
