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| A female portrait taken by Alec Von Bargen.(Photo/Shanghai Daily) |
Nothing Stranger" follows a young Chinese French woman who returns to China for the first time to visit her hometown, a fishing village - and finds "nothing stranger."
The short feature film is written and directed by young Spanish filmmaker Pedro Collantes, inspired by his previous trip to China, accompanied by a Chinese-Spanish friend who experienced a strange disorientation when he visited his hometown for the first time.
"I was right beside my friend during the hometown visit, and I was attracted to this disorientation and I knew I would come back and make a movie," the director tells Shanghai Daily. "This kind of feeling is both distinctive and universal. People from my generation can all sort of relate to it, because many of us move around a lot."
Collantes is one of an increasing number of artists and writers who find their muse in China and often times start out from Shanghai. The city has long been a magnet for its creative scene and has developed even more rapidly in the past three years, as the country and the city became better known abroad through increased cultural exchanges.
"I've seen a lot more exhibitions and other events related to China or Chinese artists in the past two to three years. The Chinese art scene and artists have definitely got a lot of exposure now in the United Kingdom," says Katie Surridge, a British installation artist working in Shanghai.
The city has a few residency programs, still small in number but getting more mature. It offers well-established programs and smaller, irregular but growing projects in both official and non-government sectors.
Collantes and Surridge are both guests of the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency Program, which provides artists from all over the world a space on the Bund for three to six months. It is one of the best-known residency projects in the city, along with writer-in-residence programs of the Shanghai Writers' Association, and the M Residency hosted by M on the Bund.
"The city has always been vivid, but compared with my last visit to Shanghai in 2009, the creative scene has definitely become more dynamic," says American artist Alec Von Bargen from New York, also part of the Swatch residency program. "Since I arrived, I have had exhibitions or art events to go to every day."
Since he arrived three months ago, the American artist has also been invited to give talks, to exhibit his works and to work with other artists.
Other projects, mainly hosted by galleries and art centers, include Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Island6, the Pantocrator Gallery and JIA Boutique Hotels, and the list is getting longer every year.
"The change is quite dramatic, and we have definitely got more interested parties who want to join the program," says Hu Peihua, external liaison officer for the Shanghai Writers' Association.
The association launched a residency project in 2008 to welcome up-and-coming foreign artists to discover and experience the city for two months. The program started with three writers in 2008, and it will welcome nine this September.
Inspired by Shanghai
"The increasing interest is not only in the number, but also in its diversity," Hu says. "This year, we will welcome our first African guest to the program and we are very excited about it."
Many residency programs don't require artists to leave behind completed projects, however, some writers and artists have finished more than expected because they were inspired by the city's history, cultural distinctiveness, ambience and various attractions. So they felt driven to create.
Malaysian author Tash Aw, who attended both the Shanghai Writers' Association program and M Residency, wrote a novel titled "Five Star Billionaire," a tale set in Shanghai about five Malaysian expatriates. Swiss writer Philippe Rahmy, who attended the writers' association project, published his journal about the experience after he went back.
Seasonal migration of Chinese left-behind children
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