Chen Yunmei is extremely important for Chinese medicine, especially because of her contribution to containing the SARS. After graduating in China, she continued to specialise further, in Moscow, but she’s not only an extraordinary expert, but also an extraordinary person.
How did you decide to make a film about this scientist?
First of all, she (Chen Yunmei) is very important for Chinese medicine, especially for her contribution to containing the SARS. She specialised in Moscow, after graduating in China, but she’s not only an extraordinary expert, but also an extraordinary person. All of that instigated an interest to tell her story. She is still alive, she is 91 years old.
Which was more important to you - developing a rapport between the main characters in the film, or the document aspect?
They were equally important. The film begins with our hero being only 18, and ends with her being 89, which is a wide time span, played by a single actress, who is now 43. So she has invested a lot of effort and emotion to build this character consistently.
Why did you choose this specific actress and what was your collaboration like?
I thought about whom to cast for a long time. At first, I was inclined to choose an 18 year old actress for that specific period of her life, then a middle-aged actress, and then an older one, but then I realised that it would be better, for the entire effect of this film, to choose this actress. She is 43, but looks very young, so she also has the maturity that this role demands. She has succeeded in an incredibly difficult task of wrapping it all together. She is an extraordinary actress. There have been some difficulties with the make-up, we needed to make her look much younger and, also, much older. It took some time to make her look appropriate every day, but the big screen revealed a lack of a natural look from time to time, so we combined the make-up and the special effects. He had to do this with the main actor as well, not only with her.
Did you have to sacrifice some consistency of the biography for the sake of the “flow”?
Everything you seen in the movie, all of the details, all of the events were taken from her life, which was paramount to me.
How difficult is it to make a film and what are the conditions like in China?
Ours is a studio that deals only with the war, military topics and the like, every film from our studio has this primary subject, even this one, since Yunmei was actually a military doctor.
Did you have an opportunity to collaborate with directors from the West and do the filmmakers from Europe have an opportunity to work in China?
I haven’t worked with anyone from the West, but I have had an opportunity to meet Nikita Mikhalkov, whom I have also befriended. In China, we collaborate more and more with other countries - mostly with the USA and Japan, then Russia, the UK, so you may say that many people are working and developing in China. I hope that some Serbian directors and actors will come our way as well. Our studio is rather well-known in China, we have around 900 workers and they all take part in the making of the films - if anyone from Serbia is interested in coming to work with us, they are more than welcome.
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