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By European Business Magazine on 10 March 2022

24 March 2022 sees the launch of Love Infinity, the first art film of its genre, created in London by Oscar and BAFTA Winner and Chinese multidisciplinary artist from Hong Kong Tim Yip.

In 2014, BBC’s Sharanjit Leyl reports “While attention may be focused on Hollywood for the annual Oscars ceremony, investors in the movie industry are increasingly looking to Asia. The region’s movie market accounts for around 40% of global box office revenues – and it’s growing rapidly. In Singapore, the island’s attractive tax incentives are seeing investors put their money into the film industry and build new sound stages.”

In 2022, with the recent success of Crazy Rich Asians and most infamously Netflix unicorn Squid Game, investors are looking for the next talent to back.

Oscar Winner for Best Production Design and BAFTA Winner for Best Costume Design – both on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (dir. Ang Lee, 2000) – Tim Yip has a multi-faceted artistic practice that spans all disciplines, from drawing, sculpture and film to stage and writing. He has worked with some of the world’s most sought-after screen directors as well as world-leading practitioners of the stage Akram Khan, Robert Wilson and Yang Liping. His unique art blurs the boundaries between media, as in his recent stage adaptation of Eileen Chang’s novella Love In A Fallen City, which premiered at Shanghai Grand Theatre in 2021.

Love Infinity is produced by renowned artist and photographer Maryam Eisler and designer and conceptual arts curator Mei-Hui Liu.

Global streaming service MUBI is pleased present Tim Yip’s Love Infinity, allowing audiences of all cultures around the world to discover a truly beautiful film. Love Infinity will be available on MUBI UK from 24 March 2022. www.mubi.com

Focusing on East London’s unique creative spirit, Love Infinity brings together an inspiring cast with unparalleled access to some of the most iconic and diverse living artists and creatives of our time, across visual arts, fashion, music, and the creative industries, including, amongst others: Vivienne Westwood, Gilbert & George, Philip Colbert, Daniel Lismore, Stephen Jones, Pandemonia, Stik, Sue Webster and Jonny Woo.

The bold cinematic art film brings to the foreground societal themes of identity, diversity and freedom, and sees Yip turn his camera lens towards London at a period of economic uncertainty, political division, and environmental crisis, to create raw intimate footage of untold narratives. Love Infinity is an intricate map of interlinking stories. The resulting film gives a sense of being suspended in time, in a Love Infinity world which is both without time or specific place.

The film follows the perspective of Stella, a 17-year-old girl looking from ‘Grey London’ towards ‘Colourful London,’ a world created by artists in all their diverse forms. This world includes Stephen Jones as archbishop, Charles Saumarez-Smith as historian and as its omnipotent creator Daniel Lismore, a living sculpture who is also currently ambassador for Coventry City of Culture. The sculpture ‘Lili’ is an ever-present muse-like figure throughout Yip’s work, offering up questions around ‘Spiritual DNA’ and identity constructs. The abstract nature of Lili, in Yip’s view, means she has the ability to connect with everything at the level of the subconscious.

Filmed over the course of two years, technically Love Infinity departs from conventional narrative frameworks, seeking to develop a more open-ended approach and emphasising direct contact between film maker and subject. Working with a simple Canon 5D camera and a skeletal crew, Yip merges phantasmagorical dreamscapes with reportage, resulting in a film that is part-documentary,

part-fiction. On a journey through magical, historical London, we are gifted singular insight into the worlds of those who, from the fringes, over decades came to transform this part of the city. Through the outsider’s view, Yip gives clarity and texture to what is in plain sight, presenting a vision of the city as never seen before.

“Love Infinity begins at a moment in which, it seems to me, global commerce and economic development have had a flattening effect on the whole world, producing a new feeling of uncertainty, felt most keenly by the young generation. Historically, the East End has been a place of poverty and hardship but also of new beginnings. Nobody creates out of a void. As I filmed, a phrase came to my mind: ‘if you don’t like this world, you have to make a new one.’” Tim Yip

About Tim Yip

Tim Yip (b. 1967, Hong Kong) is a world-renowned multidisciplinary artist and creator, and winner of the BAFTA and Academy awards for his work on the 2000 martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Beyond his work in art direction and costume design, Yip’s multimedia artworks have been exhibited across Asia, Europe and the U.S. A prolific writer and thinker, Yip has published more than 20 books in various languages, which are globally distributed.

Yip has developed an illustrious career in film spanning three decades. Yip has worked with the world’s most sought-after directors, including Ang Lee, John Woo and Feng Xiaogang; his filmography includes, amongst others, Red Cliff, The Banquet and Dream of Red Mansions. Yip has also collaborated with prominent production companies such as English National Ballet and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, as well as leading practitioners like Akram Khan, Robert Wilson and Yang Liping. Yip’s stage productions have premiered globally, including Sadler’s Wells, London; San Francisco Opera House, Graz Opera House and Beijing’s National Center for Performing Arts. Yip was also the visual designer for the Athens Olympic Games handover ceremony to China and designer of the Italian Furniture Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

Current projects alongside Love Infinity include Yip’s role as Chief Director and Visual Designer for the Chinese drama Love in a Fallen City, as well as Set and Costume Designer for Nine Songs, a production choreographed by Helen Lai for Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company. 2022 will see the premiere of the opera Lohengrin, directed by François Girard, at the Historic Stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, followed by the Metropolitan Opera New York in 2023.

Yip has held solo exhibitions in: Today Art Museum, Beijing; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; Maison de la Culture D’Amiens and Maison de la Culture Bourges, France; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Design Institute Gallery, Hong Kong; Three Shadows Photography Centre, Beijing; Esplanade, Singapore; John F. Kennedy Center, Washington DC; Centro Cultural Antinguo Instituto Jovellanos, Spain; and Het Music Theatre, Amsterdam. Yip’s short film Kitchen won ‘Best Art Direction’ prize at the 8th ASVOFF Festival at the Pompidou Centre. He was central to the Asian Expo in Park Avenue Armory, New York, in 2005. His 2018 Cloud project launched in collaboration with London’s Southbank Centre. The artist has collaborated with fashion houses such as Dior, Chanel, Fendi and Swarovski.

Credits

Interview by European Business Magazine

The original article: https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/culture/investors-flock-to-asian-film-industry-oscar-winner-tim-yip-paves-way/