Photo courtesy of Qian Li
Editorial intern Rose Saint-Clair ‘25.5 talks with Qian Li ’19, former NER intern and current director and screenwriter, about shared storytelling, mentorship, and evoking “the force of life” in her art.
Rose Saint-Clair: Where are you now geographically and professionally?
Qian Li: I’m studying at Chapman University in Southern California as an exchange student while finishing off my third and last year as an MFA candidate in film directing at Beijing Film Academy. I just finished shooting my thesis film, which is a 30-minute narrative short about a 26-year-old Korean-Chinese (also known as Chaoxianzu) girl torn between her life in the States and her family back home.
RSC: As a filmmaker and storyteller, how do you balance your voice and your subject’s?
QL: Whenever I take up a project, there’s something about it that genuinely interests me, i.e., the subject, the theme, etc., and throughout the creative process, I will discover my relation to the project and find out what I really want to say. I almost always choose to work on something I can relate to, resonate with, or have a strong passion about. And because of that, my voice will gradually emerge upon embarking on a new project.
RSC: How has the Beijing Film Academy altered your craft? How do you approach your creative work?
QL: I study narrative film directing in the directing department at Beijing Film Academy. I’ve sharpened my understanding about what makes a good story, what are the story beats, and how to convey a good story using visual elements. I think my experience at BFA gives me a different perspective that will help me thrive professionally and inspire me even more to find my own style.
RSC: Which stories are you most curious about?
QL: I’m most curious about people who are lost in life and how they retrieve the force of life. Some of the themes I am particularly interested in: mother-daughter relationships in eastern Asian cultures, displacement issues and identity crises, the desire and fear of human connection, etc.
RSC: In what setting did you learn the most at Middlebury? What was it that you learned?
QL: I learned the best in discussion-based courses and production workshops at Middlebury. I learned how to give and take feedback from my professors and peers. All of my professors were super supportive of the work we were doing and they would try to give us inspiring and constructive advice on how to convey our ideas. I think the collaborative spirit and the respectful, encouraging attitude was a big takeaway for me from those classes.
I also realized that my experience at Middlebury shaped some of my aesthetics without my even knowing it. Not only was the student body very diverse, but the course material, whether it was film or literature, was also very international, and I benefited a lot from that.
RSC: Your senior project at Midd was a documentary focused on your grandfather and why he changed his name during the Cultural Revolution. The name of the piece was originally titled Sunset Song: A Documentary Discovering the Past of My Grandfather, but the project later became Nothing to My Name. Why change it? How did you come to the new title?
QL: The original title was actually a tentative one. I knew I wanted a different name if I could come up with a better one. After I finished shooting and began the editing process, I came across a song by Cui Jian, who is known as the father of Chinese rock, and I kept listening to that song again and again while I was editing. That song’s Chinese name is “一无所有,” which translates to “nothing to my name.” At some point, I realized it captured my grandfather’s story better and seemed to be the perfect title for my film.
RSC: What was the biggest takeaway from your NER intern experience?
QL: Rejection doesn’t mean you are not good. It’s more important to keep writing and making stories.
RSC: Would you say you live in the past, present, or future? How does that impact your art?
QL: I live in the present because I have to experience my life fully with dedication before I can create art.