Sichuan Dialect: Qiu Jiongjiong's 'Fuxi' Competes in Tokyo

Four distinct eras are connected in Qiu Jiongjiong's new feature, Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting, which is currently competing at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The film originated during the global pandemic, a period Qiu describes as one where people felt an urgent desire to return to everyday life and gather around a table. That sense of longing served as the starting point for the project, which uses food and shared meals as a central theme. An opening title card defines Fuxi as a phrase that evokes both the delight of food and the act of eating itself.

The entire film is spoken in the Leshan dialect of Sichuan province. This linguistic choice required extensive preparation from the cast. Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng, known for his work with director Tsai Ming-liang, plays two elderly women from different time periods. One of these roles is a dying grandmother in the film's prehistoric chapter. Kang-sheng worked with several dialect coaches to master the language.

Qiu explains that he was drawn to the mysterious quality of Kang-sheng's presence, which he felt was perfectly suited for a character from ancient times. This impression led to the decision to cast the male actor in a female role. Kang-sheng notes that the film contains the most dialogue he has ever had to deliver, yet he could not understand a single word of it during the initial process.

Taiwanese actor Lee Hong-chi also worked with dialect coaches for his role as the Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo. Hong-chi had long admired Qiu's visual work and expressed a strong desire to be part of the film because of its nonrealistic aesthetic. He stated that he only learned he was playing Su Dongpo upon receiving the script.

Qiu, who is primarily known as a painter, says this is his first time working with professional actors. He notes that the experience has broadened his creative ambitions. Unlike his previous feature, A New Old Play, which focused on an individual's personal history, Fuxi unfolds in sequence across four eras through four short stories. The director uses the meals at the center of each chapter to approach questions of life and death.

The filmmaker aims to explore a specific kind of relativity through the individual lives of the characters. He describes this as the relationship between the large and the small, or between a meal and the sun and the moon. The film connects these disparate elements through its fantastical vocabulary and shared focus on the table.

A related solo exhibition, Qiu Jiongjiong: Fuxi: A Feast for the Universe, is running at Chengdu's A4 Art Museum through January 31. The show is built around three Sichuan-style banquets and uses painting, video, and installation to explore the region's culture. Qiu is still developing his next project and has not yet settled on its subject or medium.

When asked about recent films that impressed him, Qiu cited Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, expressing fascination with its reconstruction of history. Kang-sheng, who recently wrapped filming on Argentine director Iván Fund's science-fiction film Bodies of Summer, mentioned watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. He was surprised that such a brilliant film could have been made so long ago and said it made him more curious about different kinds of films.

Kang-sheng suggests that an action or martial-arts film could give him a chance to step outside his familiar screen image. He says he usually lets roles find him and wants to bring his own version of himself to each part, whether playing a gangster or an old woman. He adds that whenever one of Jason Statham's films comes on television, he still wants to stop and watch it to the end.