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.

How did you meet these people? Most kids in the Suzhou River ghetto are the offspring of Chinese migrants who settled there in the ’40s. I grew up there. I only left when I went to university in Beijing. I live in the neighborhood and simply bonded with them.

Do you have a producer this time? You didn’t with “Shanghai Panic.” No, the arrangements were the same as “Shanghai Panic.” I’m my own one-man crew.

What’s so good about digital video? People still say DV is no good as film, but that’s f—ing sh-t. DV has its own strength: you don’t rely on other people, you work fast, the film ends up being more authentic, more real. I run around these days to university campuses and bars to get the message out: young filmmakers need to know that with DV you don’t rely on anyone…. I use all kinds of special effects for the different stories. I want it blurred, precise, MTV style, cold and bloody. All mixed together.

How do you differ from the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, like Zhang Yimou–who also got his start at the Berlin festival? Directors like me were born in the late ’60s. we experienced the Mao Zedong era and the Cultural Revolution as kids. It didn’t have the same impact on us as it did on the Fifth Generation. We grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and experienced China’s dramatic economic changes. That changed everyone’s lives totally.

Why are thirty something filmmakers in China suddenly doing these gritty, authentic films? Many Chinese films are too fake, too alien from a young person’s perspective. There’s nothing that connects you with real life. Younger filmmakers have a passion for what they’re doing. When I’m 40, yes, maybe I’ll do this kung fu stuff, this bourgeois film style. Don’t get me wrong, though. I have nothing against people like Zhang Yimou. He’s a master at what he’s doing. But audiences need to see different stuff.

What makes it possible for you to film such themes now? China is opening. [The censors] are not against the trend, but they are not promoting such films. China simply has become more tolerant. That was not the case about five years ago.

“Shanghai Panic” was banned on the mainland. Will your new film ever be shown officially in China? Obviously not.