Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

Shanghai-
Belleville
Clandestine & Charivari Films
France
Writer/director Show-Chun Lee
Producer Juliette Grandmont
Synopsis
The lives and the destinies of Chinese illegal
immigrants play out on the streets of
Belleville, the Parisian ‘Eldorado’ where
they hoped to find a better life. Abandoned
by aspirations that are unfulfilled, they get
caught up in a web of violence.
Liwei, nicknamed ‘The Croat’, arrives
clandestinely in France with his little brother.
They have lived all their lives in Croatia
where their parents were part of a chain of
illegal alien smugglers. But their parents
died in a gang dispute and they made it to
France, speaking neither French nor Chinese,
adrift among the Chinese diaspora
with no cultural identity.
Zhou is the mysterious man who falls
from the sky. He has come to France to
find Gine, his wife, after two years without
news of her.
Gine is a phantom. She was drawn to
France by the promise of well-paid work, but
was drowned in an ill-fated attempt to cross
over to England. From the bottom of the
sea, her voice can be heard: “I want to come
home, I want to come home, I want…”
Meilie is a Chinese girl who works for
her aunt to pay back the price of her clandestine
passage to France. She dreams of
becoming the boss of her own boutique for
designer clothing. Meilie and The Croat
have fallen in love.
It is in Belleville that they get involved in
Zhou’s search for his wife. But Zhou lapses
into madness and melancholy and The
Croat goes to China to discover this ‘great
country whose future is becoming the envy
of Europe’.
Director’s statement
I have been filming the lives of Chinese
clandestines since 1997, but today I can no
longer take a camera out in their presence.
Fiction has become the only way I can continue
with my work as a film-maker. While
respecting the truths confided to me, I shall
make the film as a personal statement.
My experience has taught me how to
direct people out on the street. But I fantasise
about apparitions coming, not from
reality, but from cinema itself. What I imagine
is a film as hybrid as our cultures.
I want to stay within the traditions of aesthetic
and social engagement, but to explore
time and space according to an oriental
logic. For the scenes involving action, violence
and phantoms, I want to try out the
rhythms, camera movements and humour
of Hong Kong cinema.
But, for the scenes of everyday life, my
western side prompts me to envision an
approach which is closer to the rawness of
documentary.
Writer/director Show-Chun Lee
Having worked as assistant to Tsai Ming-
Liang then alongside Hou Hsiao-Hsien,
Show-Chun Lee has also gained recognition
in the world of modern art. She is one of
the first movie-makers to come out of the
Chinese diaspora, and has filmed illegal
immigrants since 1997 in her films My Life Is
My Favorite Music Video (2004) and Une
jeune fille est arrivée (2006). In addition,
Show-Chun has worked as a scriptwriter for
TV series and dramas.
At more than 400,000, the Chinese population
in France is one of the largest in
Europe. The Parisian immigrant community
which comes from the region of Wenzhou has
the longest history, but no feature film has told
their story to date. Show-Chun Lee was the
first director to film it, and her approach is very
different from that of the news media. Her
point of view is from the interior and is more
delicate and respectful. Her poetic vision protects
the destinies she reveals.
24 • NPP 2008