Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 582 Let's fight him!
Li Qiutang never underestimated the difficulty of reorganizing a film festival's film awards.

So he chose to start with venture capital, but he really didn't expect that someone would cause trouble for venture capital.

The film festival lasts a total of 5 days. The project pitching session is said to be held concurrently with the film festival, but it is actually only 4 and a half days long. The last half day is reserved for the judges to hold a closed-door judging meeting.

On the morning of the last day of the film festival, during the final three hours of the project pitching session.

A media outlet with the prefix "South" publicly questioned the Jinlu Venture Capital judges' alleged misconduct on Weibo.

It is alleged that Li Qiutang, the chairman and judge of the venture capital conference, instructed his company to contact and sign contracts with high-quality projects that he favored, which violated the conference's recusal system for judges.

"You can't be both the referee and the player."

Li Qiutang had a long-standing feud with the Southern Media Group. The fiercest criticism that "In Time" encountered came from the Southern Media Group. However, "In Time" was a special case, and it was protected by higher-ups. At that time, Mr. Hu, who had not yet been promoted, led a team to take down several heads of the Southern Media Group, which made the Southern Media Group keep a close eye on Li Qiutang.

This accusation left Li Qiutang helpless; it was like having mud fall into his crotch—he couldn't explain himself.

Li Qiutang didn't intend to explain.

He has acted uprightly and walked the straight path; why should he explain himself to others?

The media outlet continued to accuse Jinlu Venture Capital of being a makeshift operation.

"There were quite a few guests present, but few were willing to discuss things. Most company representatives would just add each other on WeChat and leave, or fail to show up for the meeting."

"Reporters photographed a very deserted negotiation area. There were 30 tables on site, but only four or five couples were talking."

Li Qiutang wouldn't dare say that her first venture capital conference was perfect, but such attacks were clearly deliberate attempts to find fault.

However, these media outlets have clearly attacked the wrong place. To put it bluntly, 90% of ordinary netizens don't care about film festival pitching sessions at all, let alone the pitching session of the Changchun Film Festival.

No matter how much they hype it up online, netizens won't follow up or pay attention.

The Changchun Film Festival organizing committee naturally wouldn't respond to these ridiculous questions, because the first Golden Deer Project Pitching event seems to have been very successful so far. Almost all of the major domestic film companies sent representatives to participate, and with those shortlisted for the final review, there were nearly a hundred projects at the pitching event.

Whether it succeeds or not is another matter, but the Changchun Film Festival organizing committee is certainly satisfied with this scale in its first year. As for violations, that's a matter for later. They can investigate for a year or two; there's no need to respond during the film festival.

On the evening of the 11th, the Changchun Film Festival closed. Compared with the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony was much less star-studded, indicating that the reform of the Changchun Film Festival still has a long way to go.

Before the official awards ceremony, Deer Ventures will report on its achievements and present the venture capital awards.

32 projects were shortlisted for the final review, and nearly 100 projects received negotiation opportunities at the venture capital conference. Jinlu Venture Capital will continue to follow up on the progress of the supported projects.

The jury's special recommendation award was given to a film called "The Taste of Rice Flower," directed by Peng Fei, who is already a well-known up-and-coming director and has won several prestigious newcomer awards.

This award has a prize of 70 yuan, which should be able to solve Peng Fei's immediate financial crisis.

Li Qiutang awarded the "Most Investable Project" prize to "Mountain Chase," with a prize of 100 million yuan. This is also the highest award from Golden Deer Venture Capital, demonstrating that Golden Deer Venture Capital encourages genre films that can generate box office revenue.

After awarding five prizes to the venture capital division, the first Golden Deer Venture Capital Forum can be said to have officially come to a close.

The Changchun Film Festival has closed, with Huang Xiaoming winning Best Actor and Bai Baihe winning Best Actress. It's no surprise they'll be criticized by the audience. The next festival won't be until two years later, so Li Qiutang still has time.

…………

Before Li Qiutang returned, Liu Yifei planned to tidy up the bedroom and study. While tidying the bedroom, she found that there weren't many things left in the drawers, so she planned to buy two more boxes that evening.

While tidying up the study, I found two scripts on Li Qiutang's desk: one was "The Butterfly Lovers" and the other was "The Wandering Earth," along with storyboard manuscripts for both plays.

Li Qiutang's study is small, only 15 square meters, but it is very messy. Liu Yifei usually doesn't touch her husband's books and documents, and at most she will sweep the floor for him.

She had already read the script for "The Wandering Earth" and knew that she wouldn't be in the film. Besides, she had already acted in two "Pacific Rim" movies and was a bit tired of science fiction films, so she didn't want to act in "The Wandering Earth".

But she was very interested in her husband's first art film, which hit her right where it hurt. For the past two years, she had wanted to play some profound, nuanced roles that would prove her acting skills.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong, but Liu Yifei was one of the first people in the world to know about this play, yet she still hasn't read the script for "The Butterfly Lovers."

The script was written for more than a year and went through several revisions. Liu Yifei didn't read any of the drafts except for the story outline of her husband.

She stopped sweeping the floor and started carefully examining her husband's script and storyboard.

The story is simple: the male and female protagonists suspect each other of cheating, while the female protagonist's mother is caught in the middle, and the whole family lives in a state of confusion.

However, Liu Yifei was a little confused when she watched it for the first time, feeling that the structure of the whole play was a bit messy.

Watch it again.

After watching it a second time, she finally understood what her husband wanted to do. In "The Butterfly Lovers," he boldly used a Rashomon structure, narrating the other's infidelity and his own honesty and dedication to the family from the perspectives of the male protagonist Liang Jiangong, the female protagonist Zhu Xiaoyan, and his mother-in-law Aunt Sun.

After reading it for the third time, Liu Yifei began to understand the deeper meaning her husband wanted to convey in the story: life has no right or wrong, and doesn't even need the truth; family life is a huge, chaotic system. Liu Yifei even gleaned another meaning: the inability of people to communicate and understand each other.

Liu Yifei picked up the storyboard drawn by Li Qiutang again, and sure enough, Li Qiutang once again used his mature line division and three-layer spatial narrative from "In Time".

In "In Time," lines are used to represent the class differences between people, while in "The Butterfly Lovers," the gap in communication and understanding between people is represented.

Liu Yifei is not someone with a high level of literary appreciation, but she could still sense that "The Butterfly Lovers" would be a very good movie.

The chaotic nature of life itself, as depicted in the script, deeply attracted Liu Yifei.

Isn't this exactly the kind of profound and thought-provoking story she's always wanted to portray?

Liu Yifei first called screenwriter Li Qiang, asking questions here and there, and finally learned that Li Qiutang was stuck on the casting issue.

Li Qiang also said: "He said that the most perfect choice for the role of Zhu Xiaoyan in his mind is 28-year-old Zhang Manyu."

"We then approached Yuan Quan and Zhou Xun, but neither of them were available."

After hanging up Li Qiang's call, Liu Yifei was actually a little angry.

Zhang Manyu is 28 years old. How could he even think of that!

Unfortunately, he will never be able to photograph Maggie Cheung in his lifetime.

"After eating, drinking, and sleeping with you for so many years, the first art film I'm making doesn't even cast my own wife."

Liu Yifei decided to have a fight with Li Qiutang when he came back!
(End of this chapter)