Cecilia Yip and Rebecca Li Manxuan represented two generations of talent when they appeared at this year’s Kering Women in Motion session in Shanghai and they turned their attention to how they saw the Chinese film industry had evolved.
Yip first emerged in Chinese-language cinema in the early 1980s – winning the best actress prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards for Hong Kong 1941 (1984) – and recalled how she was immediately struck by the objectification of the actresses she worked with, as much as herself. But times, she said, had slowly changed.
“They used to refer to us as ‘flower vases’,” said Yip. “It caused me a lot of distress but it is not a phrase you hear anymore. Women’s roles these days carry real depth.”
Li – nominated in Shanghai for the Best Actress in the Asian New Talent Awards for her turn in Like, Happy, Love in 2023 – said she had learned to trust her talents, and to persevere, and that now she was being offered “characters with layers.”
“It’s not like [success] is going to happen right away,” she said. “Sometimes a little bit of failure at the beginning may strengthen our motivation and let us know which aspects we can do better.”
The discussion came at a time of increasing presence for women and female-centric movies in Chinese cinema, as recent hits including last year’s Shao Yihui-directed comedy Her Story ($93 million) and the 2021 groundbreaker Hi, Mom from filmmaker Jia Ling, which grossed around $848 million.
The second hosting of the Kering Women in Motion event by the Shanghai International Film Festival continued the French luxury brand’s commitment to highlighting “women in arts and culture to change mindsets and combat gender inequality” – an initiative launched in 2015 and which in the past has collaborated with the likes of international A-listers Michelle Yeoh and Julianne Moore to get the message across.
On stage with Yip and Li at the historic Cathay Theater in Shanghai this year were the Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha and Peruvian documentarian Carla Gutiérrez, in town to serve on the main feature and documentary juries, respectively.
The session was designed both to inform and inspire and Bouchoucha looked to her own, vast career as a leading light for women in African and Arab cinema to point the way forward for any young filmmakers in the audience while Gutiérrez took up the opportunity on stage to share the origins of a career that brought her acclaim for Freda, the 2024 documentary on the famed Mexican artist.
“I remember that sense of being transported somewhere, that sense of, you know, feeling myself what the character feels,” she said. “Then when I saw this one documentary, I also saw how non-fiction reality is so compelling. It takes you through a journey, it takes you through a ride where you know you become very empathetic to somebody else’s experience.”
Fittingly, given all four panelists were tasked with reflecting on their careers, it all came to a close with the question of what message might those gathered share with their younger selves, on the first day of their career. “Have more courage,” said Li as Yip agreed.
For Gutiérrez the message would be to make more noise. “I’m already a very blunt, loud person. But I would want to tell myself, be louder!” she laughed.
And Bouchoucha finished the session with the advice to “just be yourself.” “Be true to yourself and just don’t try to please everybody,” she said.
