How did Chloé Zhao find inspiration?

Chole Zhao's Film 

Highlight  of

female directors

It's a Golden Globes first, but hopefully, not a Golden Globes last.

For the first time in the award show's history, three female directors earned nominations for best director on Wednesday, bringing calls for increased recognition for the work of women in Hollywood to an important moment.

Nominees Chloé Zhao ("Nomadland"), Emerald Fennell ("Promising Young Woman") and Regina King ("One Night in Miami") bring the total number of woman nominated in the category in the Globes' 78-year history to eight.

The other best director nominees this year were David Fincher ("Mank") and Aaron Sorkin ("The Trial of the Chicago 7").

Zhao, King and Fennell join a short but prestigious list of fellow female nominees in the category. Barbara Streisand, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay and Kathryn Bigelow have also been nominated in the category, with Streisand being the sole winner among them.

Streisand won the best director Golden Globe in 1983 for "Yentl."

In hailing King's accomplishment for her directorial feature film debut on Wednesday, Amazon Studios also pointed out that she is now the second Black woman nominated in the category.

Zhao, meanwhile, is the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated in the category.

The Golden Globes will air Sunday, February 28, 2021 on NBC, with hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

The process of finding inspiration

Zhao wrote, directed and produced the film starring Frances McDormand but admits, "I'm happier in the editing room than I am anywhere else in the process."

Multihyphenate Chloé Zhao wrote, directed, edited and produced Nomadland, but she notes, "I'm happier in the editing room than I am anywhere else in the process.

"I grew up with manga. I wanted to be a manga artist. So before I knew I could tell stories in words, I was telling stories in pictures, in edited pictures," she says, explaining her process. 

"When I'm writing a script, I'm editing it in my head. On set I will be thinking about how I'm going to edit it." During a shoot, she watches dailies every night and continues to write. "The script doesn't finish until the morning of the last day [of the shoot]," she says.

Searchlight's Nomadland, which has collected a string of honors including the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion, is set in the American West and based on Jessica Bruder's 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. 

Zhao offers a look at modern-day nomads, exposing the viewer to this world through the eyes of Fern, played by Frances McDormand, a woman adjusting to the itinerant life. The cast also includes David Strathairn and real nomads Linda May, Bob Wells and Charlene Swankie.

an Excellent partner

"We knew Fern is going to be a listener. [Those moments are] very crucial for the film. She gives you gold," Zhao says of McDormand, who also served as a producer. "There was also a choice of everything in the film being Fern's perspective, even if it's a shot that's looking at the redwoods. 

There is also a delicate balance [in the edit] of how much you go with landscapes without checking back to Fern. Because the moment you lose that perspective, you're out of it. It becomes a travel video."

Zhao also incorporated moments during which the castmembers who are real-life nomads shared their experiences. 

"It might seem a bit more like it's unscripted because that is a goal: You want the performer to feel in the moment," she says, adding that she knew their stories from previous conversations. "When they get to set, they are not going to deliver exactly the same thing, but they know how to tell their story."

She found that the imperfections of the nonprofessional performances made the stories all the more emotional. "It's that uncomfortable, almost too-real feeling of just holding on someone's face long enough and having them stumble on their lines, when they're speaking something so personal and real," Zhao says. "That's something almost impossible to re-create in a staged situation."

In the editing of those sequences, she often stayed on the shot of the speaker, whereas she gave a more "traditional" edit to scenes between McDormand and Strathairn.

"It's interesting to always think how many mistakes you want to leave in there," Zhao says of the more improvised stories. "It's a hard one for me. 

At what point does it become, people feel like, 'Oh, that's wrong?' At what point do you go, 'That's real?' And that's a very delicate thing. Because being human is being slightly off. That to me was exciting about editing these performances; you can play around a lot."

This story first appeared in the Jan. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. 

Next project：“The Eternals.”

Zhao’s nomination should not come as a surprise. “Nomadland” earned the top prize at the Venice and Toronto film festivals and the Chinese American filmmaker has been picking up accolades for her work throughout the season, including best director awards from various critics organizations such as the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the New York Film Critics Circle.

The Globes made history this year with three women in the directing category, as Zhao was joined by “Promising Young Woman” director Emerald Fennell and “One Night in Miami” filmmaker Regina King.

But the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. has a long history of overlooking women filmmakers. Before this year, the Golden Globes’ best director race has featured female nominees only seven times in 77 years. 

The last woman nominated in the category was Ava DuVernay, who was a contender at the 2015 Globes for “Selma.”

The Golden Globes also has a spotty record when it comes to the work of Asian American filmmakers. Due to HFPA’s rules that fails to recognize the true diversity of the American experience, acclaimed Asian American stories such as Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” (2019) and Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” have been forced to compete at the Globes as foreign-language films instead of in the marquee drama and comedy/musical film categories.

“Nomadland,” on the other hand, follows Frances McDormand as a woman who hits the road searching for work after the death of her husband and collapse of her small factory town. 

Among the filmmakers of Asian descent who have previously been nominated for the Golden Globe for directing are “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, “Brokeback Mountain” director Ang Lee (who has won twice) and “Elizabeth” director Shekhar Kapur.

Zhao’s next project is the highly anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe installment “The Eternals.”

 来源：DeadLine,Los Angles Times,CNN,Hollywood Reporter,South China Morning Post；图片来源于网络，如侵删。

---

编辑：俞梦婕监制：李璨
责任编辑：戴晨

扫描二维码

关注

【留学事务所】

微信公众平台

点击下方图片，了解留学杂志↓↓↓

联系我们

读者热线：400-803-1977

商务合作WeChat：13716319877

关注留学行业最新消息

客观深入报道行业事件

提供有价值的优质服务

想你所想 为你而来

入驻光明网、网易、腾讯、今日头条、一点资讯等各大平台