Interviewing Sylvia Chang: "With all the things going on in the world right now, there are bound to come more stories on a global level."

In a year that Asian film festival Cinemasia focusses on Chinese language movies, what better main guest could it have hoped for than Sylvia Chang: a living legend with nearly a hundred titles to her name, working as a singer, actor, director, writer, producer, manager AND entrepreneur. But hold your horses (no pun intended), that’s not all. She’s also the Chairman of the prestigious Golden Horse Awards! Time to have a talk with this Asian megastar and Jack of all trades. About the biggest changes in the industry, her recent movies, and more.
 
 
Mrs. Chang, you’re a true multidisciplinary artist. As mentioned, you act, direct, produce, sing and so on. But how do you combine all these different roles. Do you feel they influence one another?
 
“Well, I actually started as a singer when I was very young. That made me discover multiple facets of performing. Through singing I had the chance to get into acting. That really grabbed me, and even more so as I was learning about it. Acting kept me very busy for over twenty to thirty years, even until now. It’s ever changing. The technology is changing, the audience, the world in general.”
“As for the other things I do, they feel naturally related. It’s all in the same industry. For instance, when you can’t find a good writer for your ideas, you have to start writing yourself. And sure, at first that’s scary. But as you sit down to write what you want to say, you develop your technique, little by little. If you work hard, you eventually will get to this point of multi-tasking. “
 

You’ve been in the film and entertainment industry since the seventies. What are the biggest changes you saw happening in Chinese language movies?
 
“The biggest change is the Market, no doubt. Especially the Chinese one. We used to make films because we loved them. Of course, we also wanted to see good numbers, but that wasn’t the only thing we were looking for in a project. Now the new perspective of filmmaking is solely about making money. When you hear people talk about a movie, it will be about how much it made at the box office, no one seems to talk about the movie’s story anymore. It has even gotten to the point that for the investors it’s not about the actual amount of money it made, but about how they can trade their stocks to make even more money.”
“I hope it will not continue like that. In China rules and regulations are changing all the time. It seems the government is not too happy about what is being made. So let’s see what will happen in 2016.”
 

In 2015 you could be seen as an actress in Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart and Johnnie To’s Office, and you also directed Murmur of the Hearts. Three very different projects, but each in its own way a reflection on modern day life. What can you say about the similarities between them?
 
“It’s funny because they weren’t necessarily intended to all come out in one year. As directors the three of us have a different voice and style, but the one thing we share is that we care about what is going on in our own environment.“
“To me, these movies can almost be seen like a trilogy about life in three different Chinese speaking regions: Hong Kong [Office], Taiwan [Murmur of the Hearts] and China [Mountains May Depart]. With our movies we try to get people to think, throw some questions at them. But of course, people don’t like to listen. They don’t want to be confronted, they just want to be entertained. Once a film hits too close to home, they don’t like it. And that’s exactly what our movies trigger.”
 

This week the Oscars were handed out. There was a lot to do about the race debate and #oscarssowhite. As a chairman of the Chinese language Oscars The Golden Horse, do you recognize something in this debate?
 
“I had a jetlag so I haven’t seen the show [Chang arrived in Amsterdam the night of the broadcast], but earlier this year I did watch clips of the 2016 Golden Globes on YouTube. That didn’t feel very white to me. It was as if they wanted to be very black, like they wanted to ease this whole issue beforehand. But I must be honest that I don’t know: is there really an issue, or is someone trying to make an issue out of it?”
“As for the Golden Horse, we are very transparent. Every year the films are chosen by a different jury, ensuring that every film has just as much chance, no matter if it’s a small one from Malaysia or Singapore [like Ilo Ilo in 2013]. In 2014 Lou Ye’s Blind Massage from China took home almost all the awards. We all knew that Taiwan would be almost infuriated. We simply stated: ‘If Taiwan wants to have an award, it simply has to make the film for it.’ That’s all there is to it.”   
 

And when it comes to gender rather than race, what is your stance as a female filmmaker in a male dominated industry?
 
“As a female filmmaker, the only thing I can do is to continue making films. You don’t win respect by just shouting, you win respect by making something and having people like it. That’s the only thing I believe in. But yes, it’s true, the film industry is still very male dominated. Not just where I come from, but everywhere in the world. Just look at the Oscars, throughout all these years only one female [Kathryn Bigelow] has won best director.”
“The reaction to films of female directors still is very much ‘this is way too melodramatic, this is too soft’. It’s actually really sad that these men can’t see it through different eyes. They are still too tied up, locked in their own tunnel vision. [Laughs] Why not open up and embrace us.”
 

Focus of this year’s Cinemasia is the Chinese language cinema. Do you see any possibilities in collaborations between the Chinese spoken industry and the industry in the Western world?
 
“My generation has gone through a period of time when all of a sudden the western industry was very curious about the Asian world. So I’ve met Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci [who made The Last Emperor], I made a film with Mike Newell in London [Soursweet], I made The Red Violin in Canada. Going through this period of time, I slowly found out that most people came to look for some sort of exoticism, not because they cared.”
“I remember walking out of Shanghai Surprise, the film with Sean Penn and Madonna. It didn’t even come to a reading with the other actors because I felt so humiliated by that script. They were begging me to come back, but I refused. That script was such an insult to Asian people, even worse than a stereotype. You also see that with a film like Memoires of a Geisha. As a western director, you have to drop your fantasy of Asia, and in that last case Asian women, to make a good film.”
“Of course, it also happens the other way around, Asian filmmakers try to make movies about the Western world. The only person able to do so is Ang Lee, and there is a simple reason why he succeeds: he lives there, he understands, he is partly a New Yorker. As for the rest: you see John Woo going to Hollywood and returning again, same goes for Peter Ho-sun Chan, and the list goes on.”
“That being said, with the world opening up right now I see a lot of possibilities. There are so many immigrants, people going abroad, western people going to China. With all the things going on in the world, there are bound to come stories on a global level. That’s when we will see conflict, emotion, love and hate crossing borders.”

This interview also appeared on the site of Cinemasia.