Director Phan Dang Di: The person who brought the innovative 'form' of Nghe people into cinema
(Baonghean.vn) - Phan Dang Di is a famous director and screenwriter. As a native of Nghe An, although he has become famous and traveled all over the world, in a corner of his soul, he admits that he is still the child who craved the taste of Tet pork roll from his hometown and considers Nghe An culture as a part of himself.
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Director Phan Dang Di. Photo: NVCC |
From a child who dreamed of becoming a writer…
Phan Dang Di was born in 1976 in a family of teachers, growing up in the teachers' dormitories from Nam Phuc (Nam Dan) to Xuan Tien, Xuan Vien (Nghi Xuan) and then Vinh city. Those were the days of his childhood when he had to frequently move places to eat and live due to natural disasters and the hardships of living on ration cards during the subsidy period, but that was also the time when precious spiritual values were formed in him.
“In this land, harsh natural disasters and the hardships of life make people not choose peaceful things for themselves but always have to be ready and have the will to face challenges.” - Phan Dang Di said.
During those days, his joy, besides playing with his friends in the neighborhood, was the magical world in books. The books his father bought opened up many new things, allowing the young Di to freely imagine and dream. Thanks to books, he developed the ability to think independently and a desire to explore the world right from the beginning of high school. Dang Di was lucky because that was also the period of economic - cultural - social innovation in the country. He not only had access to classic domestic literary works but also translated works from abroad.
The period of “unleashing” literature with sharp, individualistic realistic works had a great impact on Phan Dang Di’s thinking, urging him to “write something”. And he wrote, freely writing what he thought, with the dream of becoming a writer. Thinking back later, those early drafts were the foundation for his scriptwriting ability - which brought him many valuable awards in the profession, including a nomination for Best Screenplay at the 2010 Asian Film Awards for the script for the film “Choi Voi” by director Bui Thac Chuyen.
…come to cinema because of Vietnamese pride
Phan Dang Di admitted that it was his hometown Nghe An - the birthplace of many great patriots such as Nguyen Truong To, Phan Boi Chau, Nguyen Ai Quoc... that helped him realize a very unique patriotic spirit of Nghe An people: Patriotism associated with the consciousness of innovation.
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A scene from the movie "Bi, Don't Be Afraid". Photo: NVCC |
While an 11th grader in Vinh, Dang Di saw the sparkling images of Vietnam that director Tran Anh Hung brought to life in the film “The Scent of Green Papaya.” The film won the Caméra d'Or (Golden Camera) award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. This inspired him to switch from pursuing his literary dream to cinema, because he believed that cinema could help him bring the image of Vietnam to the world as Tran Anh Hung had done.
In 1994, Phan Dang Di passed the entrance exam to the Screenwriting Department of the Hanoi University of Theatre and Cinema. That was a time when the entire film industry was struggling with shortages and backwardness, and at times, he felt… disillusioned with filmmaking! After graduating with a major in screenwriting, he went to work at the Vietnam Cinema Department, with the intention of settling down as a civil servant. However, Phan Dang Di gradually understood: Cinema could not be a safe choice. With everything he had read, heard, and learned, he realized that the cinema he wanted could not fit within familiar frameworks, so after 6 years of working as a civil servant, he decided to quit his government job to become an independent filmmaker right after completing the short film “When I Was 20” which he wrote, directed, and produced himself.
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Poster cluster promoting the movie "Father and Son and..." by director Phan Dang Di in Paris. Photo: NVCC |
A special thing in Phan Dang Di's works is that there is always somewhere the memory and cultural soul of his hometown Nghe An, it can come from a piece of childhood memory about wild watermelons growing next to a soccer field that he tried to hide from other children. This is a detail that he impressively included in the film "Bi, don't be afraid!". But, for Phan Dang Di, memories and love for the homeland are not only artistic materials, they are in the director's soul, to one way or another, become the spirit of cinema that always tends towards innovation. This spirit originates from the desire to explore the world, the ambition to surpass oneself, to reach new things in creativity, a form of innovation that has made up the identity of many generations of Nghe An people.
Phan Dang Di is known for his works that have received many major awards such as “Bi, Don't Be Afraid!”, the Outstanding Asian Project Award at the Pusan International Film Festival 2007, selected to participate in the L'Atelier activity of the Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival 2018 and won 2 awards in the Critic Week category of the Cannes Film Festival 2010. The film “Father and Son and…” (The French version is called Mekong Stories) is the first Vietnamese film to be selected for the official competition category of the Berlin International Film Festival 2015.
Talking to Phan Dang Di in the days leading up to the Year of the Cat, he excitedly shared his future plans, including a new film “Full-moon Party” which he hopes will once again bring Vietnamese films to the world’s leading film festivals. Along with that, the program “Autumn Meeting” - an annual international film event founded by him and producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Over the past 10 years, this program has become a meeting place for Vietnamese and many Asian filmmakers to study, exchange experiences and seek filmmaking opportunities. Many Vietnamese and Southeast Asian films produced here have won awards at many prestigious film festivals. He firmly believes that only educational programs aimed at the community are the only way to change the mindset and position of Vietnamese cinema.
When asked about his memories of Tet in his hometown, Phan Dang Di always remembers the “specialty” pork roll dish from the famine period, which had 7 parts flour and 3 parts meat, that his maternal family used to give him. It reminds him of the time when everything was “stuffed” but it was warm and could not be separated from his hometown memories.