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By Vivienne Chow, Varity on 15 March 2022

After a film career spanning more than three decades, production-costume-art designer Tim Yip has achieved plenty, including winning an Oscar and a BAFTA award. But he is only now launching his most uncompromising production, which he calls a “living film project,” and which he hopes will challenge the tradition of cinema.

“I want to make a film that is infinitely long,” Yip told Variety. “I also want to explore my potential and other possibilities. I can keep working on even bigger projects, but they may not be as satisfying as work on this project… which is just me and my camera.”

The result is an ongoing art film project titled “Love Infinity,” a hybrid of fiction and documentary through which Yip re-thinks the format of filmmaking, while investigating the cultural scenes beyond his native Hong Kong.

Produced by art patron and photographer Maryam Eisler, and Mei-Hui Liu, a designer and curator, the first two films of the project, “Love Infinity: When the Sun Goes Quiet,” and “Love Infinity: Memorandum for The Next Golden Age,” will be premiered on art house streaming platform Mubi on March 24, 2022. Tim Yip Studio handles international sales.

Shot over the span of two years, the two films are set against the backdrop of the unique cultural scene of East London. The nearly three-and-a-half hour long “Memorandum for The Next Golden Age” is a semi-documentary, in which Yip revisits the history of East London through interviews with some of the key players of the local scene, from fashion designer Vivienne Westwood to artistic duo Gilbert & George, Philip and Charlotte Colbert, artist and campaigner Daniel Lismore, sculptor Andrew Logan, and Jonny Woo, a comedian and drag queen.

“When The Sun Goes Quiet,” on the other hand, is semi-fictional. The film also features Yip’s enigmatic creation Lili, an imaginary character from a world of the future that appears in the form of a mannequin or sometimes as a sculpture.

Unlike the many meticulously planned blockbuster film projects that the 54-year-old has worked on, from Ang Lee’s 2000 martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” for which he won an Academy Award for best art direction and a BAFTA Award for best costume design, to John Woo’s “Red Cliff” (2007), and most recently, the yet-to-release Chinese fantasy epic “Fengshen Trilogy,” “Love Infinity” happened rather spontaneously.

It emerged following “Cloud,” an artistic project that Yip worked on for London’s Southbank Centre in 2018. Through this project, Yip interviewed 100 young people and got in touch with the East London scene. The process inspired him to take on a new challenge.

“I wasn’t planning to make a film in London. I came just to shoot some footage,” he said, while admitting his curiosity about British culture, which previously had great cultural influence over Hong Kong. “But I met a lot of people, and through these encounters, I have accumulated enough footage that could be edited into a film.”

Yip said the creative process of “Love Infinity” has revolutionized the way of filmmaking he has become accustomed to over the years. Whether it is commercial or international art house films, he said, the way how films are made has already “matured,” and been set in a certain way. And with social media’s increasing influence over storytelling, he was worried that filmmaking would remain stagnant.

“I want to get rid of all the baggage that comes along with filmmaking. I don’t want it to affect the way we finish a film,” Yip said, adding that the whole project was completed by himself as an individual, with a few helping hands here and there, but no major financial backing. “It’s complicated to ask for funding.”

Yip has been venturing into the world of theater and fine art as a multi-disciplinary artist in recent years. He has worked on a number of major stage productions: directing the stage adaptation of Eileen Chang’s classic “Love in a Fallen City” at the Shanghai Grand Theatre last year; several collaborations with the famed choreographer Akram Khan; Hong Kong Ballet’s acclaimed 2019 production “The Great Gatsby” choreographed by Septime Webre; and most recently as the set and costume designer for “Lohengrin,” which premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. (He just managed to get out of the country shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine).

Yip has also staged solo art exhibitions, including “Mirror” at Today Art Museum in Beijing. And he is working on his first major solo show at a top museum in the U.K., scheduled to open in 2023.

But while juggling various projects, Yip will continue to grow “Love Infinity.”

He is in London for the project’s premiere while also shooting new footage. He said he will keep filming and whenever he has accumulated enough materials, a new title from the project will appear on Mubi, with which he is eyeing on a long-term collaboration.

Yip is also exploring stories in other cities to be told under the “Love Infinity” umbrella. “This project is a part of my life,” he said.

Credits

Interview by  Vivienne Chow , Variety

The original article: https://variety.com/2022/film/news/hong-kong-tim-yip-love-infinity-art-film-series-1235203207/#recipient_hashed=0544ccb16309a93104ac73bb5550b4d929df96964a1a9508a9048ec04e03bbc9