Director: Jill Coulon
assisted by Jifan Liang
Cinematographer: Jill Coulon, Julien Gidoin
Editing: Alex Cardon
Sound: Ma Nui
Music: Laurent Dury
Production: Futurikon
Contact:
Andana Films
25 route de l'Echelette
07170 Lussas
France
Tel: 0033 4 75 94 34 67
Mail: [email protected]
Year: 2015
DCP, Color, 56 min, OV mandarin with French subtitles
Unreleased
1 bus - 6 countries - 4000 km – 10 days. Italy / Vatican / Austria Switzerland/ Liechtenstein / France. Journey to the West is a documentary on board of a bus with Chinese tourists visiting 6 European countries for the first, rushing around within 10 days. Playing with mirrors and contrasts, this road-movie humorously deconstructs all stereotypes about Chinese emergent middle-class with intelligence and poetry; it reveals how the Chinese see ‘us’, European and Western people.
“The topic gathers my favorite themes: Asia, how we relate to another person, the cultural differences and the incomprehension that may occur, humor, altogether taking place in a story of human adventure. It is a good opportunity to scrape off the stereotyped images and reveal what a “Chinese tourist” really is; find in another person what echoes within me, and finally within all of us. The very fact of being a tourist holds a burlesque aspect which attracted me. There are very few documentaries which are funny. I wanted Journey to the West, named from the famous Chinese adventure novel, to be a funny film. Funny and deep. Deep and moving.”