Liu Jian
BY
Eric Kohn
The Chinese animation director discusses the transcendent power of art and cinema.
Liu Jian x2 opens at 7 Ludlow on April 26, with Have a Nice Day also streaming on Metrograph At Home.
Several decades into the explosion of CGI animation, any form of 2D, hand-drawn animation stands out. Even within that context, the work of Chinese filmmaker Liu Jian is an anomaly: a painter-turned-auteur who has made three features in the last 15 years that examine modern Chinese identity in a deeply personal fashion.
After launching his career as a painter, Liu pivoted to animation with his ambitious 2010 debut Piercing I, a delicate and discordant depiction of working-class life in a Chinese factory town. Widely considered the first independent animated feature in China, Piercing I established the style and sensibilities of a major new directorial voice who—like Jia Zhangke before him—highlighted the struggles and paradoxes of everyday Chinese life.
Piercing I also distinguished Liu as a filmmaker who likes to take his time. Liu, the founder of Le-joy Animation Studio, spent three years working on his debut by drawing every image by hand. His sophomore effort, the ensemble crime saga Have a Nice Day (2017), took four years and involved a similar process. A hit on the festival circuit, Have a Nice Day depicts China on the brink of global change against a grimy backdrop of chatty gangsters and other desperate wanderers in a small town. Six years later, Liu changed his tone with 2023’s Art School 1994, a whimsical portrait of soul-searching art students. Together these three features showcase the work of a cinematic visionary capable of injecting social realism into intricate animated worlds. His movies are talky and rooted in believable circumstances, but always operating at the whims of Liu’s aesthetic oversight.
Loosely based on Liu’s own experiences, Art School 1994 differs from the filmmaker’s earlier work in that it trades darkness for a more playful sort of introspection; at the same time, it shares some DNA with its predecessors in its autobiographical elements. Lui’s films are almost documentary-like in their ability to create fly-on-the wall experiences, even as their careful line drawings reflect the personality of a singular artist. His films create a profound sense of place, from the textures of each environment to the lengthy, discursive monologues delivered by his characters. With assistance interpreting from Tzu-Wen Cheng, Lui spoke over Zoom from China about his transition into filmmaking from fine art, art-making in the era of AI, and how he has navigated the country’s censorship laws.—Eric Kohn
Art College 1994 (2023)
ERIC KOHN: You entered animation as an extension of your work as a painter and the parallels are clear. Your background art often resembles landscape painting. How much did your process as a painter translate to the animation process?
LUI JIAN: I started as a painter in contemporary arts circles, using that as a way to express myself. For my first film, I was pretty much doing it as a contemporary artist painting a film. That was my perspective: how can I paint a film? After making three animated features, I’ve realized that I’ve somehow removed myself from that perspective as a painter. Before, that was all I had done: to paint. Now I don’t really paint anymore. I’m an animation filmmaker. Because the process is so complex, so much work, I am completely immersed in that role. If I had to summarize what has changed, maybe animation techniques remain idiosyncratic for me, but I do think that my personal understanding as a director of animation has evolved. I understand more about the medium as a filmmaker. Hopefully that will inform my future films.
EK: In Art School 1994, the characters have a complicated relationship to the avant garde. When a few of the students see an exhibit at a gallery that includes a sleeping bag, one of them jokes that their dorm room could be a work of art. What has your own relationship to experimental art been over the years?
LJ: I’m not as aligned with the avant garde practice now. I need a narrative, [a] structure, for the films I make because that is what is required within the industry. That is more what I’m doing now.
EK: When did that shift start for you?
LJ: If you look at my first animated feature Piercing I, it’s very much an extension of my contemporary art practice. I painted a film and treated it as a contemporary artwork, but the more I got into filmmaking and learn about the principles and logic of the film industry—the modes of production—I started to pivot towards filmic expression, trying to make [films] into something that can show in theaters and fit into the industry as we know it. That led me to evolve from a contemporary artist to be more of a filmmaker. But I do think that the core of my expression is the same. The approaches and mediums are different. I rarely do any contemporary artwork now. I see myself more as a film director than a contemporary artist. That is the evolution, the pivot that I have noticed with the films I’ve made and those I want to make going forward.
EK: You have characters in Art School 1994 talking a lot about Western art, culture, music, and the idea that “Beijing is not enough” fame for an artist with global ambitions. Was that your perspective at the time?
LJ: In that period you had this influx of Western thought, cultures, and this clash of the new and old. That was just the zeitgeist and as contemporary artists we debated it. The way of thinking through those debates was incorporated into our own art practices. Regardless of the differences between Eastern and Western thinking—or modern and traditional thinking—art is universal. For me, when I go to the United States, I can’t communicate well because my English is not great. But at the same time, I find that my art can transcend language barriers. As students, we listened to Michael Jackson and Nirvana. We appreciated and enjoyed them. We didn’t understand the lyrics but the artistic expression went beyond that.
Have a Nice Day (2017)
EK: Your last film Have a Nice Day took place in 2016. How different was China by that point?
LJ: The eras between my last two films saw the greatest transformation and the most drastic changes we’ve witnessed in Chinese society. I look back at my college days in 1994 and see that I was very pure, hopeful, immature, childish. I was full of ideals, dreams, and hopes. Through the transformation of society, come 2017, as you see in Have a Nice Day, you see the kind of social issues that we experienced at the time as a result of this dramatic evolution. The people changed, their values changed. That’s my way of depicting what I witnessed in real life as an artist and filmmaker. Similarly, I see continuing changes from 2017 until now. I’m not a sociologist, but as an artist and filmmaker I can use my perspective to report and preserve what I see for this particular era here and now.
EK: How do you deal with censorship?
LJ: This is a serious issue that we have to face and overcome as filmmakers. It’s there, it’s inevitable, and it’s something we cannot avoid. All we can do is our best to create the work we want to make within these limitations and make sure [we] can continue to do that work. We won’t stop as a result of the limitations imposed on us. However, I tend to not think about censorship and other issues within the filmmaking industry in China as something that should or should not be there. My concern is more about what the possibilities and options are. Knowing that they are there, how can I maximize the options that I have? That has been the way that I see my work—to see the things I have no control over and can’t avoid as a way to motivate myself even more to find a way to tell my stories to the best of my ability.
EK: You have voiceovers in the new film from filmmakers Bi Gan and Jia Zhangke, two very different generations of Chinese directors. What sort of discussions do you have with them about the challenges of working in China today?
LJ: It was a pleasure working with them. The most important thing for us is for the films to be made continuously. It’s also important for people to be able to see them. All the directors I talk to in China feel the same way. The way to change anything, if we can, is to continuously have films coming out and use those films to somehow communicate not only with audiences in China but in the entire world. We need to put something out, films to be seen by people. Whether or not there are challenges with censorship or other problems we encounter, we tend not to be the ones to advocate for changing those limitations in such a way that they no longer will be there. As filmmakers, we can pay close attention to our own work to make sure that through the quality of the work we can somehow be a part of the film ecology in China. That is my place. Hopefully, because of the work being shown constantly, we will eventually change things for the future. That’s my way of doing my part. I might not be the advocate for people who are at the forefront of the political struggle to change the existing issues we’re having, but I’m doing this from the artistic side to make a mark.
Art College 1994 (2023)
EK: Given that you have recently made a movie with people debating the artistic process, what’s your take on the status of AI and its potential impact on the future of filmmaking?
LJ: Some people think it’s an existential crisis for artists. I think it’s the opposite. The ubiquity of views about artificial intelligence will make handmade art even more precious, even more irreplaceable. For me, that’s an opportunity for artists who rely on original art practices, which will become something people will seek out more when they are inundated with AI-generated work.
EK: You’ve spent years working on each of your three features. How hard is it for you to decide when you’re finished?
LJ: Yes, it takes a long time for me to make my films but that is the tempo, the rhythm of my filmmaking. Since my films tend to be very conversation-driven and we don’t use a large-scale crew, it takes a lot of patience for us to really take our time to reach the artistic goals we want to accomplish. I hope that future films will take less time. Maybe three years instead of five like this last one.
EK: Do you know what that is yet?
LJ: If everything goes well, it’ll start production next year. This will be something very different from what I’ve done in the past and more challenging for me to do, but I’m hopeful that I can make it happen—and that it will take less time.
Eric Kohn is the head of development and strategy at EDGLRD, Harmony Korine’s multimedia collective, and an adjunct professor of cinema studies at NYU. He previously served as vice president of editorial strategy at IndieWire.
Art College 1994 (2023)
