With his new documentary about Mio Pang Fei’s life and work, Portuguese director Pedro Cardeira reopens the discussion on neo-orientalism. The film recently had its world premiere at the DOCLISBOA film festival in Europe
In just 90 minutes, director Pedro Cardeira manages to explain what Mio Pang Fei took a lifetime to communicate to Eastern and Western people. This is what Mio himself commented after watching Mio Pang Fei, a documentary about his own life and work.
Produced by local company Inner Harbour Films, the documentary had its world premiere last month at DOCLISBOA, a film festival in Lisbon, Portugal. Soon, Mio Pang Fei will be showcased in Macau and CLOSER spoke with the director about his new film.
Macau CLOSER: Who did you meet first, Mio Pang Fei the man, or his art work?
Pedro Cardeira – Let’s say I was first attracted by his works, before I met him. The first time I came into contact with Mio Pang Fei’s works was through my wife, who showed me a catalogue. At that time I found them fascinating, without even knowing anything about the painter. That was back in 2005. On my second trip to Macau, in 2009, I started reading about his life, his works and his way of thinking. When I came across his ideas, I found everything even more fascinating.
How did you finally meet him?
My wife’s family and master Mio’s family have been quite close for some years, and I asked my wife if I could meet him. We had a gathering, but we didn’t speak much, because we don’t speak the same language.
Without this family connection, would it have been possible for you to do this documentary?
Maybe it would have taken longer. Family ties got me close to Mio and his family very rapidly. It would have been harder, also because of the language. During our first meetings, it was my wife who translated everything for us and we immediately started to build up a relationship. We had a mutual interest in art, so it was easy for us to understand each other. We started to develop this mutual trust, something that is very important when you want to do a documentary.
What was the starting point for the documentary?
Research is always the starting point. I only took the decision to come to Macau for good after understanding how was I going to work on this project. That was the moment when I presented Mio the idea of shooting a documentary and he told me: “It’s going to be really interesting to have a Westerner doing this film”. This meant that he was already prepared for another perspective on his works – not a Chinese one, not a local one.
In that sense, could we say this is a “foreign eye” on Mio’s works?
Film-wise, yes it is.
Where did you film the documentary?
The film starts in Shanghai, where Mio has his origins. We travelled there with him, his wife and his brother. We went to look for his past, something very important for his work and the thesis he developed afterwards. We mustn’t forget that Mio lived more than 40 years in Mainland China before moving to Macau.
Do the places where he lived still exist?
There are still some places. He was from a petite bourgeoisie family. His house has been demolished, but his father’s factory is still there, as well as his grandmother’s house. It was very interesting because both Mio and his brother haven’t been there for more than 60 years. In that part of the film we also explore his relationship with his brother, who’s also a painter, and we understand how Mio started to get interested in art. It started during his childhood, doing cartoon books and illustrating stories. Another strong element in his life is Chinese Opera. He always used to go to the same theatre in Shanghai and we took him there again. The theatre still exists.
In the film, you don’t use any old photos to show Mio’s past. Why is that?
We have his voice over the images we captured but we never show images from the past, only his past works. I think it’s more interesting to show Mio in the present and let the audience imagine his past. This is a documentary about a living artist, who’s still working, and who’s going to continue working. We also mention his ties to Fujian, but we couldn’t film there because there were some restrictions.
What is Mio’s connection to Fujian?
He went to study Fine Arts there, at a very complicated moment in China’s history, the end of the 1950’s, during The Great Leap Forward. There was an episode related to Fujian that I wanted to put in the film, which is the moment when Mio discovered Modern Art. It was there that he discovered expressionism, cubism, fauvism, and that’s a moment that was to influence him for the rest of his life. After that, we move to the darkest moments, during the Cultural Revolution, until the 1970’s and the beginning of the 1980’s. At that time he was chased, arrested and went through a process of ‘re-education’. He was the son of a small businessman and that’s the main reason for what happened. We also filmed his reunion with his students, some of them who became very well known in China, such as Zhuang Xiao Wei, a prominent glass sculpture artist.
How was that meeting with his old students?
They have a great respect, almost a reverence for Mio Pang Fei. Zhuang Xiao Wei said: “I went to study in England but Mio’s ideas were the ones always following me”. We must remember that at that time, these modernist principles were forbidden. He couldn’t talk about Picasso or impressionism, because the only important thing was the Socialist Realism. Within such a context, Mio still managed to pass this information on and to influence his students, who started progressing towards contemporary art.
What attracts you most to Mio’s way of thinking?
Neo-orientalism was a thesis Mio developed during the 1960’s and 70’s. It started in Shanghai and it ended up in the 1990’s, in Macau. He calls it an ‘idea’, but I prefer ‘principle’, because that leads us to the concept of ‘mission’, which is what he proposes. So, Mio’s proposal is to continue looking to the traditions of Chinese art but also to look outside – in his own case, he looked into modern art, contemporary Western art – to try to understand these two perspectives and question how to rethink Chinese art, its culture, its society. During the 1990’s, China was divided into two worlds: its own world, its past, traditions with 5,000 years of history; and an openness to other things that were happening in the West. China was receiving all these external influences and had to understand how to balance them to recreate, re-launch and rethink Chinese art and culture. This is Mio’s proposal.
With this documentary, are you trying to bring neo-orientalism back into the discussion again?
I am. Macau, which has always been between two worlds, made Mio feel at home when he arrived; it was always a sort of laboratory for these kinds of things. We need to discuss this topic again. This can help us to define what China is going to be and Macau’s position. To look at what Mio suggests in his works can reopen that discussion, if there’s openness for that. The film doesn’t give any answers, but raises some questions, for example: “What’s the future, where are we going, what are the connection points at a time of strong individualism?” Mio says something very interesting: that the actual idea of neo-orientalism is to launch this discussion. I would like that the film could do that.
How did Mio Pang Fei react when he watched the film?
He watched it with me and told me something curious. He told me that he has spent almost 30 years, all his life, trying to explain his ideas and what he wanted to say, and that with the film, I managed to do so in just one and a half hours.
