The Summer Is Gone is my first movie
It’s set in 1994
When China was carrying out the reform of state-owned enterprises
A child was in his last summer vacation of the primary school stage
He was 12, so it was in his zodiac year
It was at the end of a cycle
And the movie shows what he saw and felt during that vacation
I remember that my father stopped working in 1994
He had been a film editor
And then he started to develop various hobbies
Such as growing fish
Doing Tai Chi
Selling clothes
He once sold T-shirts printed with the portraits of the Hong Kong “big four’
But he lost money soon because he was not a good seller
They worried about life
I often heard the word ‘money’
But as a child, I felt quite happy anyway
Because I didn’t need to do any homework for the whole vacation
I remember that
All I did was playing
Playing billiards, dancing in the ballroom and playing video games
We played whatever the adults played
Those are my true memories
For that quite cruel age
What I have are all good memories
I’m willing to bring up those memories
Day Is Done tells a real story in 2000
It’s actually a continuation of The Summer Is Gone
Several years later
The child grew up into an adult
He was going to go abroad for further study
It was again a summer vacation
He went back to his hometown
He seemed to find clues of his childhood
But he couldn’t stay there
Kong Weiyi really has grown up
He was quite naughty and always called me ‘Dalei’
And gave me a pat like this
Now if I say ‘let’s have a video chat’
He would send one to me
And start by ‘Director, are you asleep now?’
‘I’m available now. Shall we chat?’
I would say ‘Yes’
For Day Is Done
It took less than a month from the end of shooting to the final editing
Two days or three days before we started shooting
My grandfather couldn’t play the role for personal reasons
I was quite worried
I didn’t have enough time to find a non-actor
So I had to turn to professional actors
And the first one I thought of was Mr. Li Xuejian
My grandmother passed away in 2016
And my grandfather lived alone since then
The old man aged quickly
He was really lonely
Every time we visited him
He was very happy
He was sitting there chatting with us
And the next minute he just disappeared
And after a little while
He showed up, pushing a wheelchair with a big watermelon in it
He bought that watermelon for us
He treated us like honored guests
I grew up in a film studio community
Just like Xiaolei in the film
In 2016
The studio and the cinema were all pulled down
I and my old friends met there
Without any arrangement
So the scenes in the film were all found by me
When I walked around there
Xiaolei lounged in a chair under the grape trellises in one scene
I found that chair in a rubbish dump
The Summer Is Gone is dedicated to the elder generation
To some extent
Day Is Done, however, is about my personal feelings
Totally
It’s an afternoon that I yearn for
It’s dedicated to myself
The movie’s English title is Day Is Done
I want to remind myself that the afternoon is gone
We don’t need to worry about efficiency and economy
Just slow down and have some free time. Don’t hurry