THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Finding along the way – Zheng Lu Xinyuan
“Finding along the way” is episode 26, which follows a conversation with filmmaker Zheng Lu Xinyuan and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. Xinyuan said she wasn't too worried that Western audiences wouldn't understand her films because they were made for Chinese audiences. Thinking about her comment, Sonia watched some of her films with the feeling of missing something very important due to different cultural sensitivities. Meanwhile, she experienced what we so often feel: the understanding of something without fully comprehending it. Cinema evokes memories and feelings that have been forgotten or hidden for a long time. At the same time, a film can show some emotions while producing different, even contradictory ones. Sonia’s questions for the interview were more about feelings than cinema-making: how feelings help us to feel belonging. As Xinyuan recounts, belonging can also be a sentient situation in which the body feels pleasure or comfort. When talking about loss of control, anxiety appears. This feeling is also part of the process of making a film. As Xinyuan says, “finding along the way” is what matters when making films. Following Xinyuan's words, “it should not be artists who are afraid of censorship”. Those who censor are the ones who are afraid, but they pass this feeling on to those who are censored. It is not only about your own voice but also about those who accompany and support you so that your voice can speak and be heard.