Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra and Chinese auteur Bi Gan had only just met for the first time last month in Paris, but at the Shanghai International Film & TV Market the two directors sat down together as if they’d been arguing about literature for years.
The panel, “Stories Travel Further: Literature & Cinema in Spain-China Dialogue,” opened with short films by Carla Simón, Turbo and Nicolas Mendez and a presentation on Spanish literature’s cinematic potential from the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain.
Serra, whose films draw on classic texts without treating them as blueprints, said the source material barely registers by the time he starts working.
“I just used some means or some very basic ideas that everybody knows, and from that point of departure to create something on my own,” he said. “So in fact, to write a script with [literature’s] principle and to write a script based on a new idea, it’s not very different. The development of what you will do in the film, it’s totally new and creative.”
“I don’t care. I just want to do a good film, an original and personal film,” Serra added. “I think more about my own style and how to develop it.”
