'Cold and Bloody' Chic.(Brief Article)(Interview)

Andrew Cheng has become one of the hot new faces at the Berlin Film Festival. After a decade studying moviemaking in Australia and directing spots for MTV-China, the 34-year-old represents a generation of mainland directors who make low-budget, highly personal digital- video films. Cheng's first, "Shanghai Panic," won him the prestigious invitation to Berlin. Released last year, it portrays young Shanghainese grappling with drugs, HIV and homosexuality. Drawn partly from the underground novel "Candy" by Shanghai's "bad girl" author Mian Mian, Cheng's directorial debut was banned on the mainland, but after private screenings is "causing a stir with its radical docu-drama looks and punchy themes," as Screen International magazine put it. Recently Cheng spoke with NEWSWEEK's Katharina Hesse in Beijing. Excerpts:

HESSE: What's the panic in Shanghai?

CHENG: The individual search for identity: youth identity, gay identity and so on. At the beginning of the movie, the first panic comes when one guy thinks he's HIV-positive. As soon as the AIDS panic ends, a new panic sets in. In the movie, the younger guy Jie shows up in a scene of intimacy, taking a bath [with his male friend], which gives the audience the impression he's gay. In fact he turns out to be straight... Love in Shanghai has nothing to do with feelings for a person, but with material success. Jie sets conditions for love: I love you because you're famous, you're rich, you're capable. This is typically Shanghainese.

What's special about your new film "Zuodong" ("Breath")?

It's about a group of six or seven youngsters between 17 and 20 who live in the Suzhou River ghetto in Shanghai. The ghetto is about to be demolished. These people are poor, and they're bad students. Maybe one in a thousand is lucky enough to make it to university. I talk about the destinies of these young people, through six or seven stories about gangsters--well, "gangster" sounds negative in English. I mean a person who has murdered someone, a male prostitute, a drug dealer, cops, a thief...

Do you use professional actors?

No. They all play themselves.