Huayu: Director started with art films

Li Yishu remembers that the Asian Film Awards was established around 07 and was hosted by the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Speaking of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, although it was established early, in 1977, earlier than the Hong Kong Film Awards, the influence of this film festival is almost non-existent.

Anyway, whether in her previous life or this life, Li Yishu had basically never heard of this film festival. However, after the Asian Film Awards came out, it was still very influential. The winner of the first Asian Film Awards for Best Film was South Korea's "The Host".

The reason why it left such a deep impression is that this movie beat Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower".

The Asian Film Awards has a wide influence in Asia. In addition to the three countries of China, Japan and South Korea in East Asia, participants also come from countries in the Southeast Asian Peninsula, including India and the Middle East.

No matter it is a film festival or a film award, entertaining oneself is the most boring. The fundamental reason why the three major European film festivals are world-famous is that there are many participating films and many films exhibited, which have formed an atmosphere of film culture over time, commonly known as "big style".

If Lee Ye-su hosts the Asian Film Awards, apart from other things, at least it will have influence. As the director with the highest box office and the highest artistic achievements in Asia today, he naturally has a certain degree of attention.

Especially in China and Japan, Lee Yi-su is the most famous, and in Korea, his reputation is also extraordinary. Today, when Korean films have not yet started to rise, Hong Kong films have almost swept the Korean film market.

Most of Li Yishu's literary works have been introduced to South Korea through cooperation with Xu Suo and Qiu Fusheng. His "Farewell My Concubine" was also nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Korean Film Blue Dragon Awards.

Although Lee Yi-su did not attend the event in person, she still won the award.

If we can handle the three countries of China, Japan and South Korea, then the Southeast Asian Peninsula, India, the Middle East and other regions will not be a problem.

There is no Bollywood in India today, and movies from the Southeast Asian Peninsula cannot even go beyond the country, let alone the Middle East. After the Gulf War, that place is still in ruins, and the film market is very small.

There is no leading film award in Asia at the moment. If Lee Ye-su holds this film award, it will definitely attract a lot of attention...

Of course, the prerequisite is that it must be done well, and at the same time, international film producers must be invited. Even if there is no film festival, but just film awards, those directors must see the benefits so that they can bring their films to participate.

Just like Lee Yi-su a few years ago, the reason why she was keen on making art films rather than commercial films was not only to win awards and show off her image, but the most important thing was that art films made money!
Due to the current exchange rate issue, even if the copyright in one European country is only sold for tens of thousands of dollars, if the copyright is accumulated from dozens of countries, it will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention the North American, Asian, and African markets.

Therefore, as long as you can win awards and sell copyrights, making money is a sure thing.

Listening to Li Yishu's plan for the Asian Film Awards and the Asian Television Awards, Huo Wenxi hesitated and said:

"Asian Film Awards, there is no problem for ATV to host it. However, the TV station is currently in charge of the Miss Asia beauty pageant and The Voice of Asia, so I'm afraid we don't have enough time and energy to do it."

"It doesn't matter. I'm not asking you to get it done in one go. You definitely don't have time this year. We'll hold the first session starting next year. When Amy comes, I'll ask her to invite the international film producers we have cooperation with. By the way, I'll also invite the mainland's film bureau, Japan's Toho Co., Ltd., and South Korea's..."

Since we are going to do it, we have to do it loudly and on a bigger scale.

Small awards like the Hong Kong Film Awards, which are given for self-entertainment, will probably become a local feature of Hong Kong in the future.

Let them submit all their films except Hong Kong films to the Asian Film Awards.

Li Yishu has already made up her mind that she will try to hold the Asian Film Awards during the Hong Kong Film Awards every year.

Calculating the time, there is probably about a year left.

From the preparation to the first session, I think there shouldn't be too many problems. At most, we can do more publicity this year, and it will be considered a success if no less than 100 films participate next year.

"Okay, boss." Huo Wenxi nodded: "I will hold a meeting tomorrow and ask the people below to come up with a complete plan as soon as possible."

"Well, the grand prize still has to be hosted by the TV station. As for responding to the call, I will invite people one by one."

Li Yishu has not been working in vain over the years. Although she has done some work, she has also met many well-known international filmmakers.

Of course, the Asian Film Festival Awards, in the final analysis, still need to invite more well-known Asian directors, producers, actors, film critics, etc.

The Asian Television Awards are much simpler. TV crews will certainly be happy to participate because it provides a channel to showcase their TV series. They might be noticed by others and have the overseas copyrights bought, thus making a small profit.

But there is no rush. Let’s make a plan first. Once I become familiar with the Asian Film Awards, I will then take charge of the Asian Television Awards.

After talking about the film awards, Li Yishu discussed Pioneer Electric with Huo Wenxi. Pioneer Electric is now developing rapidly. Not only has it opened in Hefei, it has also built a huge factory in Guangzhou with more than 10,000 employees.

Specializing in OEM for Sony VCDs, in addition to VCDs, Huo Wenxi also reached other OEM cooperation agreements with Sony before taking over ATV this year.

To this end, Pioneer Electric invested all the money it earned in the past two years into Guangzhou Pioneer Science and Technology Park. The price of the land was not expensive, almost half sold and half given away, and the main purpose was to introduce advanced production equipment and assembly lines.

Nowadays, domestic electrical appliances are indeed not as sophisticated as Japanese products, whether it is air conditioners, refrigerators, or televisions. Japanese electrical appliances have great advantages in this regard, but also because of the existence of tariffs, the prices are frighteningly high.

A Japanese Panasonic refrigerator can cost as much as twenty or thirty thousand yuan.

Li Yishu's idea for Pioneer Science Park is to start with OEM, which is the easiest way to learn technology and train skilled workers. All the money earned from OEM will be invested in research and development, and then the company will launch its own brand of home appliances, thus creating a virtuous cycle.

Afterwards, taking advantage of the home appliance boom after the millennium, the brand was fully expanded and its reputation was wiped out by foreign products.

Unfortunately, Li Yishu is not interested in this.

That evening.

Repulse Bay.

Qingxia’s mansion.

"round and round!"

Li Yishu picked up her darling son. The boy is now more than eight months old and is still quite heavy to hold.

If Lee Yi-su hadn't occasionally carried the camera herself to shoot on the set, she might not have gotten used to it.

"Sister Qingxia, why didn't you tell me you were coming to Hong Kong?" Li Yishu looked at Qingxia while holding her eldest son in her arms.

He came out of ATV in the afternoon and was returning to his villa in Mid-Levels with Li Jiaxin when he suddenly received a call from Qingxia. After learning that the other party had come to Hong Kong a few days earlier, he left the Hong Kong sister with a resentful look on his face and ran to find Qingxia.

Miss Hong Kong can play anytime. Li Yishu hasn’t seen her eldest son for a month and misses him very much.

"It's because I didn't tell you because I thought you were in the mainland."

Qingxia smiled and said, "I came back to Hong Kong mainly because Shi Nansheng called me and said that there was a movie that needed investment and asked if I was interested."

"Invest in movies? What movies?"

"Xu Ke has written a script for an alternative martial arts film. He is currently short of funds and wants to ask if I am interested. It just so happens that I haven't been back to Hong Kong for a long time, so I thought about coming here to live for a while. When your film starts shooting, I will go to the mainland to find you." "Do you have a script?"

Li Yishu became interested in Xu Ke's movies.

"Yes, I'll get it for you." Qingxia went upstairs to the study to get the script.

Li Yishu chatted with Huang's mother for a few minutes and saw that she seemed very happy to return to Hong Kong, so she was not surprised by her thoughts.

Huang Ma is originally from Hong Kong and has lived here for decades. In the past six months, she has been in the United States and Taiwan. It is good to go out and see the world, but after a long time, she can't help but want to return to Hong Kong.

Soon Qingxia came downstairs and took out a script: "Here you go!"

Li Yishu handed the child to Huang's mother, took the script and looked at it. There was "刀" written on it, just one word. But it was not surprising. It often takes a long time to determine the name of a movie, unlike him who is so unpredictable.

Sitting on the sofa, Li Yishu opened the script.

Qingxia asked Huang Ma to take the child upstairs to play, and she went to the kitchen to make a cup of wolfberry water for Li Yishu.

Well... Qingxia knows Li Yishu's habits very well and knows that he likes to drink wolfberry water.

The story of "Knife" is not complicated. Ding'an, the eldest disciple of the knife foundry, was chosen by his master as his successor. Later, he learned that his father was killed by the horse thief Feilong. Ding'an took his father's broken knife. The master's daughter Xiang Ling pursued her for love, but was captured by the horse thief. When Ding'an sacrificed himself to save her, his right hand was unfortunately cut off and he fell off the cliff...

Halfway through the show, when the male protagonist broke his arm, Li Yishu instantly remembered the movie "The Broken Blade" starring Zhao Wenzhuo!
The plot is a bit vague. The most impressive part is when Zhao Wenzhuo was fighting Xiong Xinxin, he kept shouting "Too slow, too slow, too slow..."

Then there was a flurry of flying knives!

The action scenes in this movie are very unique. It does not have the flying and hiding style of Hong Kong martial arts movies, but instead adopts a semi-realistic style.

The film's tone and shooting techniques are also very different from Hong Kong films.

If the film director and most of the actors were not from Hong Kong, Li Yishu would feel that this was a pure mainland film.

After all, most martial arts films in the mainland adopt this realistic style. For example, "Yellow River Hero" by Sword Saint Yu Chenghui adopts a relatively realistic shooting technique.

"How is it? Is the script okay?" Qingxia couldn't help but ask as she watched Li Yishu close the script.

Li Yishu smiled and said, "The script is quite interesting. It seems that Xu Ke wants to make a different martial arts film this time."

Qingxia said, "Yes, Shi Nansheng told me that Director Xu wanted to shoot a different martial arts film this time, different from "Once Upon a Time in China" and "Swordsman", a story about a swordsman on the Loess Plateau."

“You want to invest?”

"If the script is good, you can give it a try."

Qingxia has a good relationship with Shi Nansheng and also has a good relationship with Xu Ke.

Over the years, she has filmed many Xu Ke's films. Besides "Eastern Unbeaten", the most famous one is "New Shushan Swordsman", a film that few people mention nowadays.

In this movie, Qingxia plays the lord of the fairy castle, and this is also her first collaboration with Xu Ke.

So this time when Xu Ke wanted to make a different martial arts film, many Hong Kong film companies were not very optimistic.

Xu Ke is very famous, and many of his movies have hit high box office, but there are also some that have failed miserably, like "New Shushan Swordsman", which lost so much money that Xu Ke almost disappeared from the public eye.

"Then let's give it a try." Li Yishu nodded: "Xu Ke's martial arts films are still guaranteed to be good. Although this script is different from Xu Ke's previous works, I think it shouldn't be too bad."

Qingxia nodded: "Okay, then I will tell Shi Nansheng tomorrow."

Li Yishu asked, "Do you have any money now? Do you want me to give you some money?"

"No, I haven't spent the ten million dollars you gave me last year."

Qingxia smiled. After she gave birth to Li Bangguo last year, Li Yishu not only bought a mansion in Beverly Hills, but also gave Qingxia 10 million US dollars in pocket money.

"Okay, if you need money, tell me."

Li Yishu nodded and said nothing more.

The reason why he asked was because most of Qingxia's own savings had been used by him to cooperate with Xu Lu's husband, Mr. Tang, to develop a project in Lujiazui, Shanghai.

In the first few years, you may not see much return on your investment, but the future is bright.

Lujiazui will be a land of great value in the future. The more than 100 million Hong Kong dollars invested by Qingxia can at least increase tenfold in the future!
Moreover, as long as Shanghai's economy does not collapse, the location of the properties over there will not fluctuate too much when the real estate market is not doing well in the future.

Among the four cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, housing prices are least likely to fall in Yanjing and Shanghai.

The former is the capital with great welfare benefits, while the latter is the core of a super metropolitan area with international trade and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It is basically unrealistic to expect a sharp drop in housing prices.

Two years ago, even when Japan was experiencing an economic bubble, the house that Li Yishu and Izumi Sakai bought cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thinking of Izumi Sakai, Li Yishu hasn't seen her for a while. She was thinking about going to Japan in a few days, staying with Izumi Sakai for a few days, and then flying to Cannes?
"Jingle Bell……"

At this moment, Qingxia's cell phone rang. She stood up and picked up the phone. As soon as she answered it, her face was filled with horror: "What did you say? Lijun... Lijun passed away?"

Li Yishu was slightly stunned when he heard this, and then frowned.

"Okay, I get it. I'll watch TV now."

Qingxia hurried to the TV, turned it on and watched Asia Television.

"An urgent news interruption: Today, May 5, at around 8:16, Ms. Deng Lijun was rushed to a hospital in Bangkok... She received emergency treatment for nearly 45 minutes, but at around 17:30, the hospital confirmed that she had missed the opportunity for effective treatment and died..."

Qingxia's eyes became red. She and Deng Lijun had known each other for many years and their relationship was pretty good. She didn't expect to receive such bad news suddenly.

While watching the show, Li Yishu walked to Qingxia with a sigh and patted her shoulder.

After his rebirth, he had no contact with Deng Lijun except occasionally singing her songs with others. He did not expect that the next time he heard about her, it was the news of her death. (End of this chapter)