The Heart Behind the Lens: Lydia Rui
Lydia Rui is an Australian Directors Guild (ADG) Award nominated Chinese Australian filmmaker and photographer. She recently sat down with KOS to share her story of documenting and inspiring change through the medium of film. You can watch her film This Perfect Day on Wednesday Feb 12th at Kino Cinemas.
Thanks so much for chatting to us about your filmmaking career so far! What are you most looking forward to in 2020?/What are some of your goals?
I’m looking forward to getting settled into the UK and starting my course at NFTS. The goal is to make great films with great new collaborators! We’re also directing a play that will be shown at the Soho Theatre, and I’ve never directed theatre so that will be an exciting new challenge.
How long have you been making films?
I studied film in 2011-13 (whilst also studying other subjects) at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where I made a student film called ‘Touching is Teaching’ (2014). ‘This is Yarra’ (2018) was the next thing I made and ‘This Perfect Day’ (2018) came after that. I had a long hiatus where I was working full time and didn’t make anything.
What kind of filmmaker/storyteller do you strive to be?
A narrative (fiction) filmmaker who makes work that feels utterly real. A filmmaker who renders reality poetic. A filmmaker whose work is accessible and affects a broad audience through catharsis and can shift their perspective (or make them feel understood).
Tell us a little about how ‘This is Yarra’ came to be? How did it begin?
My friend, Bonnie Moir, had told me that her friend, Nima Sobhani, was a coach for the Yarra Wild Beasts — a predominantly South Sudanese refugee basketball team. I had been back in Australia for about two years at that time, in 2016, and didn’t feel at home.
I was interested in how people formed communities, how home was not a place but a feeling that can be created. To me it seemed the players in that team were more at home, had more of a sense of family and belonging, than I did. Yet there was a lot of rhetoric around ‘African gangs’ and a sentiment of distrust for refugees in the media — so I wanted to capture a portrait of a community that provided an alternative narrative to that.
What was the filmmaking process like during production of This is Yarra? I recall you mentioning you had a very small team for this documentary as opposed to the crew for This Perfect Day.
It was a very small team but we had a lot of help. There were two half shoot days where we borrowed a friend’s Alexa and had more assistance, but otherwise the majority of it would be myself recording sound, Barun Chatterjee operating the camera (most of the time on a Canon 5D Mark ii), and Nima Sobhani, the producer, assisting in other capacities. Some days, our other producer Bonnie Moir would be there too.
On one day with Riyadh, it was literally just the two of us, with me operating camera and sound. There was also another day that Matthew Chuang shot. For the tournament both Barun and I operated Canon 5D Mark ii cameras and Bart Bee recorded sound. It was very bricolage and we filmed things in spurts.
The post production process also took a long time because we had such talented additional editors, Andrew Chaplin, and editor, Maria Papoutsis. They were in high demand so the only time they were available to work on the project was over holiday periods. Maria and I spent the whole Christmas and New Years period of 2017-18 completing the edit for the film.
Exit Films had kindly lent us their space and equipment to do so, whilst The Butchery provided a space for us to do the colour, which was done by Kali Bateman. Electric Dreams provided their assistance by allowing the brilliant Tommy Spender to compose our music, whilst Jemma Burns from LevelTwo offered to music supervise. Sensible J and Remi provided some tracks as did the South Sudanese artist Cidi5K.
Film is really a medium that has many moving parts, so even if on the ground it looks small, there were still so many people that contributed to making this what it is.
What have you learnt about the South Sudanese community and society through the documentary’s production?
I’ve found that they’re incredibly resilient and supportive of one another. I’ve learnt that many of the younger generation would identify as more Australian than South Sudanese. Yet despite the potential cultural discord, they seem to maintain a great sense of community. Basketball was a truly beautiful way to strengthen that community — whilst also making it accessible to a broader non-South Sudanese public.
What has been the reaction/impact of This is Yarra?
It’s been so rewarding as many people have told me they’ve been moved to tears at screenings. It’s led to some donations being made to the Yarra Wild Beasts and Steve Earl, the managing director of the team, is now showing ‘This is Yarra’ to potential patrons and people who have the ability to really make a difference.
To show them what an impact basketball can have for the young people of that community, and to humanise them. It’ll be broadcast on Topic soon, an American streaming platform which specialises in films with impact.
What does the documentary mean to you?
Well, besides some exercises in a documentary summer course, helmed by the Academy-Award nominated Alice Elliott, ‘This is Yarra’ is really the first documentary I’ve made. So there is that. I am really focused on bettering my craft, to create better films to further important narratives.
But the documentary is also a gift — I’m really grateful I was able to meet such beautiful humans and capture them at the time I did, as well as for the wonderful working relationships I had on it.
What do you think of film as a medium for creating change and on-going representation?
I think visibility is important for raising awareness and a sense of self, then on top of that, film combines it with time and sound to expand empathy and provide hope.
Yuval Harari argues that storytelling is the reason why humans have dominated as a species — and I would argue that film (or moving image) is the most potent medium for storytelling.
Do you have some specific influences that got you into film/documentaries?
Actually David Attenborough is probably the single most notable ‘beginning’ — because of his Planet Earth series I interned as a primatologist’s research assistant for a year at Hunter College in New York, which led me to embark on a month long study of howler monkeys in Ometepe, Nicaragua.
That eventually led me to take a summer documentary course at Tisch, which cemented my love of moving images and motivated me to transfer into film. I had always loved film but never had the courage to pursue it — the responses I got in my summer class gave me the confidence to apply.
Do you think there are unique benefits in using art specifically to inspire social change as opposed to traditional mediums i.e fundraising, volunteering etc?
I think art can be the glue that connects us and rallies more supporters to the cause.
Art provides that visibility that we need in order to inspire and reminds us that there are issues we won’t forget about. Or it’s the song that we play at protests.
It reminds us of the point of it all, or it can provide alternative perspectives. It appeals to our emotions, that limbic part of us that, for better or worse, often dominates our experience.
What is your advice to other creatives out there who are hoping to tell unique stories and create change through artistic means?
Know where you want to go, then think about who will come with you — not the other way around.
COMING SOON
You have a new narrative-driven short coming out publicly in 2020 - This Perfect Day. Could you tell us a little bit about it and your feelings towards its public release?
The film had its (initial) premiere at Tribeca Film Festival 2019, and was made on a weekend with a small group of awesome Melbournians. The film captures a moment, when expectations confront reality.
Where can we find it/view it once it’s out?
It had its Australian Premiere at Flickerfest 2020 in Bondi, NSW and also played as part of Flickerfest’s ‘Best of Australian’ tour where it screened at 41 venues. In Melbourne it will screen on Feb 12th at Kino Cinemas.
You can buy tickets here.
You can find more of Lydia Rui’s work on her website: https://www.lydiarui.com/
