Beijing, April 4 -- On April 8, "Burning Notre Dame Cathedral" held a special screening at Peking University, and the film director Jean-Jacques Arnaud shared the behind-the-scenes story of the creation with teachers and students, and conducted exchanges and dialogues with Chen Yu ("Manjiang Red" and "Sniper") on Chinese and French film culture with Professor and doctoral supervisor and famous screenwriter Chen Yu ("Manjiang Red" and "Sniper") at the School of Arts of Peking University.
Source: Photo courtesy of the organizer
The movie "Burning Notre Dame Cathedral" is based on the fire incident at Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019, showing the death of human civilization 4 years ago through multi-perspective narrative and realistic lens style, and in 110 minutes, teachers and students followed the film to complete an immersive "exploration journey".
Talking about film creation, director Jean-Jacques Arnaud recalled that he read all the reports about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, visited many firefighters, journalists and witnesses at the time in order to confirm credibility, and also made a large model of the reconstruction, reproducing many parts of Notre Dame according to the actual scale, and found several cathedrals like Notre Dame as "stand-ins" to shoot.
Source: Stills from "Burning Notre Dame"
Jean-Jacques Arnaud was once known for his expertise in animal-themed films, and his "Wolf Totem" is still fresh in the memory of many audiences. Although there is a lot of fate with Chinese movies, the director laughed that he couldn't actually say Chinese, and the only sentence was "Go one!" at the dinner table! He recalled that when he was filming, despite the language barrier, the run-in with the actors and staff was very smooth.
At the scene, the students of Peking University presented the Chinese calligraphy of "exchange, mutual learning and tolerance" to Jean-Jacques Arnaud, and the director cheerfully said that "what I do is the exchange between people": "I respect Chinese civilization very much, respect the hospitality of the Chinese people, and also respect the achievements of the Chinese people, thank you for your sincerity to me." ”
Source: Photo courtesy of the organizer
In the dialogue session, Professor Chen Yu condensed the viewing experience of "Burning Notre Dame de Paris" into "master restraint": "Jean-Jacques Arnaud has his figure from the front of the stage all the way back, he puts the important point of view of the personified Notre Dame Cathedral in front of the stage, for this kind of creative mentality with white drawing, naturalistic technique, I think only a very mature film director can do it, in my opinion, this is a very advanced and mature view of film." (End)