Interview: Blooming Night

CiLENS: You studied philosophy in university and later turned to filmmaking. What prompted you to shift from a theoretical discipline to a practical creative one?

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Bell: I have loved watching films since I was very young. Literature and cinema have always been things I wanted to pursue. But in high school, none of my friends studied film. Most of them went into science or business, more mainstream fields. So, at that time, film was just a hobby; I never thought of it as a career. Later, when I arrived in Beijing, the environment was different. I met many friends who studied film and art. It immediately sparked the idea that studying and making films was something possible. So, I switched to film later on. I’ve always liked it; I just didn’t have the right environment before.

 

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CiLENS: From the films that influenced you in childhood to your later creative work, which kinds of films have had the deepest impact on you?

Bell: Quite a lot, actually. When I first started watching films, I looked at IMDb’s Top 250. The recommended titles were all well-known, like The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump. But sometimes, when you encounter a particular director’s work, your entire perspective changes. I think many film students have this experience. For instance, the first time you see Quentin Tarantino’s films, you realize movies can be made this way. The same goes for Wong Kar-wai, and the early works of Jia Zhangke and Diao Yinan. They completely shifted my understanding.

There were also many arthouse films that I couldn’t really understand when I was young. Everyone said they were great, but I didn’t know why — still, I forced myself to watch them. Directors like David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky — their works had a huge impact. They were nothing like the films shown in school or watched with parents. You suddenly realize cinema can be made like this, and it feels fascinating.

Another director who truly influenced me after I began studying film was Tsai Ming-liang. His works are presented through a completely different perspective and aesthetic. He doesn’t always tell a story. Often, it’s about mood, emotion, and feeling. That had a big impact on me later, because I realized that film is often about psychological flow rather than pure storytelling. But for me now, I love both good commercial films and good arthouse films; I don’t really prefer one over the other.

 

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CiLENS: Thank you for sharing that. I noticed that the protagonist in your film shares your name, Bell, and is played by you. When interpreting this role, were you portraying yourself, or did you want to convey certain traits through the character?

Bell: Naming the character with my own name was purely an act of laziness, since the protagonist’s name isn’t actually mentioned in the film. This film tells a very self-contained story. Its theme is about expressing a young man’s loneliness and his desire — how to represent and release it. I see the character as a young man in the city who is constantly searching through his instinct for desire. He accidentally stumbles into a space that awakens or transforms his understanding of sexuality. But the story has nothing to do with my personal experience.
 

The origin of this story came from a second-year NYU project. The requirement was that you could shoot anywhere in the world, even return to your hometown. I had been writing other scripts, but something felt off, too forced. Short films are often hard to tell well because time is short, and ours had to be under ten minutes. I was still in New York, but nothing I wrote felt right, until one day I discovered such a ballroom in Shanghai. I had never been there before, but when I found photos, I thought, “I can make this story very simple.”

The primary version was richer, but in editing, I cut everything away. The story was initially about a boy following a woman in red heels into a restroom, where she transforms into a cross-dressing person. It’s a very simple story, showing youthful desire and sexual impulse. The rest was about how to depict this story through Shanghai’s spaces.

 

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CiLENS: So, the whole story is fictional?

Bell: Completely fictional. The dance hall no longer exists now, but there are still many such venues for middle-aged and elderly people across the country. When I researched them, I found them fascinating. On weekdays (Sunday to Thursday), they were open to straight older couples, but on Fridays and Saturdays, older gay men and women would come to dance. Many were in their 50s, 60s, or even 70s, some with walking sticks. I read about this in the news and thought it was really interesting. So I wrote this story.

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I shot in a similar dance hall, but only one or two of the actors were from there. Most didn’t want to be filmed. I asked many people, and only a couple agreed; the rest were extras.

 

 

CiLENS: You mentioned that this ballroom no longer exists. When did that happen?

Bell: Several years ago, maybe around 2019. After I finished Blooming Night, I saw another documentary about it called Come Dance with Me.

 

 

CiLENS: Yes, that documentary expressed concern about the closure of the Lai Lai Dance Hall. After shooting your film, did you ever return there?

Bell: No. I passed by once but never went in again.

 

 

CiLENS: What about that space attracted you?

 

Bell: I think it was the older community there. I talked to the dancers, including the transgender performer in my film. Through them, I learned about their lives. Many had families who had no idea about their sexuality. Some were elderly, like 60s, 70s. Back then, it was completely forbidden. I found it fascinating how they lived through those years.

Compared to the documentary, I didn’t dig that deep. My film presents only a surface and there’s no dialogue. You see everything through the protagonist’s subjective gaze: he realizes the person he was following is a transgender person, and quite old.

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CiLENS: From the opening scene, the protagonist’s gaze is drawn by the red heels, leading him through mundane spaces until he enters a dazzling queer setting. Do the red heels carry any symbolic meaning?

Bell: Not really. Red heels, to some extent, are kitsch and cheap but directly evocative of desire. They’re gaudy, but they trigger attraction immediately.

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CiLENS: The protagonist’s sexuality isn’t explicitly defined. In the final shot, he collapses onto the cross-dressed older man. How do you interpret this intimate gesture?

Bell: It can be understood in many ways. The simplest is that a young man discovers his homosexual desire or curiosity. But what I wanted to express is that when someone is in a state of strong sexual impulse, if a form of comfort appears, he may touch it out of desire. It’s about contamination through yearning.

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CiLENS: You’ve often mentioned your interest in “desire.” During your studies, were there any ideas you drew from?

Bell: Not directly, because it’s quite difficult to literally embed philosophical concepts in film. But indirectly, yes. When studying philosophy, I was fond of Lacan and Freud, both of whom studied desire. I remember one idea: we don’t generate desire because of an object. Rather, we are the desire itself; its force exceeds any object. For example, if I’m attracted to someone, it’s not because of them as an object, but because of desire itself. The power of desire is enormous, and our so-called objects of desire are actually manifestations of desire itself.

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CiLENS: In the ballroom sequence, you use the song Evening Bell at Nanping Hill, which appears in many art films. Why did you choose it?

Bell: No special reason. I was simply choosing a ballroom song. I thought it was beautiful. Also, whenever we shoot ballroom scenes, we naturally think of songs with a Republican-era feeling. I just thought that Evening Bell at Nanping Hill sounded lovely. It’s not contemporary, so it easily transports you to another space, cutting you off from reality. The ballroom also looks old, not glamorous but nostalgic. The lyrics are about searching, too.

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CiLENS: Blooming Night features many spatial transitions, from the underpass to the restroom, and finally the ballroom. Compared to outdoor spaces, these are more hidden. To some extent, they mirror the repression of marginalized groups who couldn’t reveal their identities in past decades. You also mentioned Tsai Ming-liang, who often films overpasses and drifting urban spaces. How did these particular urban spaces shape your film’s environment and atmosphere?

Bell: We shot far more material than what appears in the final film. Originally, the story followed the young man as he tracked the woman to many locations before entering the restroom and encountering the transgender person at the ballroom. The actor playing that role was Chloe Maayan, but I eventually cut her narrative thread because I hadn’t found a satisfying way to show her transformation.

We filmed many everyday spaces. My main requirement was visual beauty. The underpass, for instance, represents urban isolation amid bustle. Other locations included a large outdoor screen under a bridge, a demolished construction site, and a ramen shop where the two characters eat at separate tables, aware of each other’s presence. There’s also a shot of Waibaidu Bridge on the Bund, plus the restroom and ballroom. The commonality among these spaces, I think, is their visual appeal and ordinariness — places everyone passes daily, yet I didn’t want viewers to know exactly where they were shot.

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CiLENS: In the tunnel scene, the camera remains fixed while pedestrians pass by and seem aware of it.

Bell: Yes, originally I wanted the space to be completely empty, so we didn’t hire extras. We shot very early, like around 4 or 5 a.m., but there were still pedestrians. So I decided to just keep them in the shot. The original idea was an entirely empty space where the two leads meet.

 

 

CiLENS: After Blooming Night and Having a Good Time, you are now preparing your feature film Lost in Entanglements. What stage is it in now?

Bell: It’s at a transformative stage! I might discard the entire script and start over.

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CiLENS: What made you decide that?

Bell: The story was becoming too large. I wanted a multi-line narrative about city life, which would require significant funding. I also keep debating whether to make a film entirely for myself disregarding censorship or something that can be released domestically. Lost in Entanglements has no censorship issues, but it feels dull. I might prefer a smaller, riskier project.

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CiLENS: Does it also deal with loneliness in the city?

Bell: That’s one part. It also has multiple storylines: different classes, professions, and ages, all unfolding within three days. It contains loneliness, suspense, even crime, and reflects social realities.

CiLENS: Thank you for accepting our interview today. We look forward to seeing what your first feature will become after revision.