Posts Tagged ‘money’

Thanks again to the good folks at Chinese indie film distributor dGenerate Films, I finally had the chance to catch Liu Jiayin’s (pictured above, far left) cute “no-budget” flick Oxhide this past weekend.

Sipping on several tall Gambrinuses, I was amazed at how such a puny little film succeeded in making its splash on the festival circuit, given how Oxhide’s plot unfurls via a truly novel – and potentially unsettling — series of long static takes. Director Liu’s small DV cam doesn’t creep an inch from its fixed focal point, sequence by sequence, once we get settled in the scene. It’s a technique which normally blares “student film alert!” yet thanks to a combination of strong Czech beer and the tale’s emotional crescendos and swoons, I was pulled in mightily by the picture’s first quarter-hour.

Normally, I don’t appreciate this kind of artifice, though in Liu’s case – again, unsure whether it was due to the lingering effects of those brewskis I drank — I liked how Oxhide’s message crept up on me like that, drawing me in gradually. It made me admire director Liu’s clever use of her camera to mask the obvious budgetary shortfalls which would otherwise permit her to decorate her sets more lavishly and convincingly. Instead, whether we’re staring at a printer-adorned desktop or at a fixed position towards the family couch, for instance, the action takes place well away from the camera and we’re forced to listen intently for clues and cues. Liu’s long, sometimes twenty-minute, exposures draw us magnetically into Oxhide’s story by forcing us to rely – most unusually for a film – upon our ears rather than our eyes. It takes a while to get into, yet once your brain acclimatizes itself to the unchanging reality that her camera will never track along with her characters – Liu (as Bei Bei), mother (Hui Lan), and father (played by Liu’s real parents) — you drop all annoyance and begin to enjoy the story. You sharpen your listening skills and imagine the things you might not be seeing behind camera rather intently.

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