Animating Chinatown――Color,Culture and Culinary Delights

GIVEN the vast cultural and linguistic differences between China and Australia, writer-director Eddie White knew he would need some serious help when he dreamt up the idea of an animated film co-production between the two countries. Working across cultures is never easy, but producing a movie in the labor-intensive world of animation, with two teams speaking different languages, would be a major achievement.

A year later, in February 2007, the 17-minute Sweet and Sour was unveiled to the world. The film is the result of a collaboration between the venerable Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS) and Eddie White’s People’s Republic of Animation (PRA), a company of youthful filmmakers based in the southern Australian city of Adelaide. Theirs is the first animated co-production between the two nations.

It’s a Dog’s Life in

Chinatown…

Appropriately for such a groundbreaking cross-cultural collaboration, Sweet and Sour tells the story of a small dog discovering the color, energy and cuisine of Chinese culture through his exploration of Chinatown in an imaginary Western city. The metropolis of the film’s setting is a cold, bleak place, until one night the main character inadvertently stumbles upon Chinatown’s golden carved gateway. He enters, passing into a warm, dynamic world of startling sights and tantalizing aromas.

Like so many others, the dog begins his love affair with Chinese culture by sampling the myriad culinary delights on offer, from noodles to soups to steamed dumplings. After reveling in the rich tapestry of all things Chinese for several nights, the little dog’s romantic image is suddenly shattered when he realizes that he and his canine comrades may be destined for some of the area’s restaurant menus.

Chinatown’s hospitable ambiance is suddenly transformed into a threatening air of menace, full of monsters and knife-wielding chefs, and the dog flees in terror. Enticing scents eventually lure him back, and before film’s end he manages to find salvation, along with his four-legged friends (including one stray turtle!), in Madame Li’s Vegetarian Restaurant.

Although Sweet and Sour’s story is played mainly for its humor, vegetarians may discern a subtle anti-meat message, particularly as some Chinese delicacies utilize endangered species, or in the case of a dish like shark-fin soup, involve harvesting practices that inflict considerable pain and suffering on animals.

“Chinatown Isn’t China”

Ironically, the concept of Chinatown was the first cultural stumbling block when the Shanghai animators read Eddy White’s script. Australia has a long history of Chinese immigration dating back to the nation's colonial days, when laborers, mainly from southern China, flooded in to work on the country’s booming goldfields. Since then a steady stream of Chinese people have immigrated to Australia and “Chinatowns” C urban enclaves packed with Chinese shops, restaurants and cultural activities C and have long been a part of every major Australian city.

However, the idea of a concentrated piece of diasporic Chinese culture in the middle of a Western metropolis isn't easy for many Chinese mainlanders to grasp. “It took quite some time to get the ‘idea’ of a Chinatown in a foreign country across to the Shanghai animators,” recalls the film’s Australian Shanghai-based executive producer Barry Plews. “They had no concept of it. That was one of the many surprises for the PRA side. One of the issues that needed clarification was that ‘Chinatown’ was not China... we had to do sessions where we showed the Chinese animators extensive folios of Chinatown photos from around the globe.”

After straddling this initial hurdle, Plews and his associate producer Hu He played a vital ongoing role in facilitating communications between the Australian and Shanghai animators. “The Shanghai Animation Film Studio did its first ever co-production in 2000, a 3-minute short with France. So Sweet and Sour was only the second co-production they had undertaken… neither the studio nor the PRA could be expected to come up to speed on each other’s expectations, working practices and so on in the course of a single short film. I and Ms Hu ended up being the conduit and the bridge, interpreting each side’s expectations and looking after both sides’ creative interests.”

Ms Hu not only interpreted on a day-to-day basis for the Chinese and Australian filmmakers, but also translated the original script and later the film’s storyboards (the initial sketches on which animated sequences are based). A graduate of the elite Dalian University of Foreign Languages, Hu is described by Plews as being “at the forefront of a new generation of young Chinese producers.”

The end result of all these cross-cultural negotiations speaks for itself. Sweet and Sour plays out in a stunningly detailed animated world that comes into its own when the main character enters the film’s gorgeously sensuous Chinatown. Modeled on a dream-like 1930s Shanghai-style reality of bright colors, sensual women, raucous restaurants, gambling dens and bustling street life, the astonishingly detailed setting and expressive fluidity of the main character’s movements were borne of the two teams’ respective strengths.

The backgrounds and some characters relied on the PRA’s skilful use of digital technology. The cute lead character was designed by the Australians, but drawn by the Shanghai team, demonstrating the studio’s legendary skill at producing hand-drawn 2D animation. The finished film marries the SAFS’s hand-drawn characters with the PRA’s digitally-generated backgrounds to beautiful effect.

Bridging the Cultural Divide

So how did writer-director Eddie White manage to realize his dream of a China-Australia co-production? The extensive track record of executive producer Barry Plews proved crucial in setting up the Sweet and Sour deal.

Plews first came to China in 1995 to organize a tour by an Australian orchestra, and liked what he saw. “I studied Chinese art and literature at university and I really liked the feel of China.” After moving between the two countries for several years, Plews relocated to Shanghai in 2002, when he produced the Australia Week program of the 4th China Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Apart from being generally known and trusted in China, Plews was already working with the Shanghai studio developing an animated TV series when Eddie White’s PRA approached him with the co-production proposal. As the Australian filmmakers were completely unknown to the SAFS, the studio would only agree to the deal if Plews acted as executive producer. Aware that the talented PRA have moved to the forefront of Australia’s small but highly active animation sector in just a few short years, and always eager to further the cause of transnational artistic partnerships, Plews agreed to come onboard. Shortly thereafter, the first animated China-Australia co-production was born.

Future Projects

Sweet and Sour premiered in February 2007 at an open-air screening in Adelaide's Chinatown, during the city’s biennial film festival. The Hong Kong International Film Festival will unveil the film for Chinese audiences in March 2008, and approval for mainland screenings was granted at the end of October 2007. In addition, Sweet and Sour has been accepted into 14 festivals in countries as diverse as Australia, the R.O.K., the U.K. and the U.S. It has also garnered several awards in Australia, including Best Short Animation at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2007.

Even more exciting than Sweet and Sour’s current success is the prospect of future collaborations. Despite the cultural divides that had to be bridged in the course of working with an Australian company, the Chinese animators greatly enjoyed the experience. “The SAFS told me they really liked working on Sweet and Sour and were very impressed with the PRA’s pre-production,” says Plews. “So much so that after we finished the studio formally adopted the PRA’s pre-production procedures as their own. A nice compliment from a 62-year-old studio!”

The two sides are now working on developing a feature-length project. A memorandum of understanding was signed last June and two potential movies are currently being discussed: a film entitled Train to Never Was, and another about Christmas. Plews says they’re “leaning towards the former, but will make up their minds very soon.” The SAFS hopes to release the new animated feature in either the summer of 2009 or during the 2010 Spring Festival.

Given the level of artistry achieved in Sweet and Sour, the prospect of a feature-length co-production is an exciting one for animation fans. Joint projects between the Australian and Chinese industries will no doubt provide artistic stimuli for both. What’s more, they will further develop the relationship between two nations located on the same side of the world, but culturally light-years apart.

DAN EDWARDS is a language consultant for the English edition of China Today.