The Art of Film.docVIP

The Art of Film 　　Knife in the Clear Water， a movie that revolves around a man’s struggle to keep his beloved bull from being sacrificed for his dead wife’s funeral rites， won the New Currents Award at the Busan International Film Festival （BIFF）， which took place in South Korea in October. 　　As one of Asia’s most significant film festivals， BIFF focuses on introducing and supporting new Asian directors and their works. 　　The film， which marks Wang Xuebo’s directorial debut， was adapted from a namesake novella that won the Lu Xun Literary Prize， the highest literary award in China， in 2001. 　　Following his wife’s death， the main character is advised by his son to sacrifice the family’s bull to feed the guests attending the traditional purification ceremony to mark the 40th day since the wife’s passing. Although the protagonist is reluctant to kill the bull， which has labored for him all its life， he has no other option given the family’s limited resources. The bull sees the knife that will be used to slaughter it and refuses to eat or drink in the three days leading up to its sacrifice. 　　 An artistic experiment 　　The novella’s author， Shi Shuqing， a member of China’s Hui ethnic minority， said faithfully adapting the story to a film was not a simple undertaking. Although many directors had proposed the idea over the past decade or so， he had refused to give away the copyright until he saw Wang’s script. 　　According to Wang， making a story of merely 6，000 or so Chinese characters into a film was challenging， especially since 80 percent of the novella consisted of descriptions of the lead character’s state of mind. “The protagonist is not good at talking ... I had to represent his thought patterns through his relationships with the surroundings and his interactions with the bull and other people. Initially I tried to represent his psychology through monologue but found this way of presentation to be awkward，” said Wang， adding that the plots in the original