Renowned filmmaker Yonfan’s No. 7 Cherry Lane is an epic, beautiful and emotional romantic drama. It’s also Oscar qualified for this year’s Best Animated Feature prize. In this Email Q&A, Yonfan explains how the first animated film of his career came to life.

YONFAN: I am not an art dealer but I was gifted with ability talking to the paintings. Some of the record breaking works of Chinese art from Sotheby’s and Christies they bear my collection seal. I was never considered part of the Hong Kong film industry because whenever “Yonfan wants to make a film he sells one painting”. Through this way I produced, directed, and wrote 14 movies independently, and No. 7 Cherry Lane is a perfect way to show my appreciation for all the support those different paintings I sold gave to me. Animation could be a great collection of paintings. I chose the story [to be set] in 1967 because that was a revolutionary year. Everything starts changing, and I was trying to make a film of love among the ruins, an epic in an animatic form of art.

JACKSON MURPHY: This is a captivating romance with literature as a key component. Have you always been interested in romance novels/stories?

YONFAN: I considered myself to write the best Chinese when I was a student. But after starting photography and filmmaking, the glamorous lifestyle tarnished all my good abilities. In 2009 I stopped making films to become a writer again and people started realizing my ability and [I] published seven books during this period. During this time I also made No. 7 Cherry Lane, which won the best screenplay at the Venice Film Festival. Among the circle of critics they said the prize was for name dropping great writers and their books. What can I say? I am only an independent filmmaker.

JM: You’re making animation history by having rendered all the characters in 3D before hand-drawing them in 2D. Why did you decide to implement this technique?

YONFAN: When I started the animation, we tried many ways to make the exact movement I wanted for the characters. I didn’t want to treat it as an animation, I wanted it to be a live action movie full of paintings. We tried live action shooting with actors but I was not happy with it. My animation master Zhang Gang said he would do a 3-D animation to give me the exact movement I wanted and then hand draw it to 2-D to give the imagination I wanted. But it was going to be costly because you’re doing two animations at the same time. I had a glance of the beautiful Zheng Dai-Chien’s Summer Mountain in California and said “let’s take the experience”.

JM: As a very experienced filmmaker exploring animation through this epic love story, what surprised you the most about the animation process?

YONFAN: Animation is a long-term process. I benefitted and learned tremendously from it. It is very meditative, imaginative, you never know the end result, you can only hope [for] the best. But when you see the best, that is the kindest reward. No. 7 Cherry Lane is a very complicated story but done in a very simple way. I so appreciate the people that worked for and on this film. Especially Zhang Gang and Hsieh Wen-Ming.

JM: There are some amazing dream sequences. How did you approach presenting them?

YONFAN: You can not do it any other way. Only animation.

JM: You tilt the camera often in key moments. And the opening shot of the plane flying overhead is fantastic. What are some of your favorite technical moments in the film?

YONFAN: I have been a cinematic person all my life, whether it was in writing, photography or films. The camera never stops in my mind. The opening shot of the plane flying overhead is something that we see every day, every hour in Hong Kong for more than 50 years before the new airport was built. Isn’t it surreal?! Sometimes true to life can be surreal. But people do forget. I personally like the movie house scene, the Bandit dream sequence, and the cat scene. So much humour to it. I always believe you have to enjoy what you are doing.

JM: No. 7 Cherry Lane is also a love letter to the cinema and an homage to classic movies. The scenes in the theater are so well done. What do you love the most about going to the movies?

YONFAN: I was a lonely child and going to movies was paradise for me, a way to meet people. Don’t get me wrong, I mean the people on the screen. I started learning English from Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor and the imagination that can last for days. Movies are my source of imagination.

JM: How was it developing Madame Simone on screen through the scenes from her films and creating those sequences?

YONFAN: I did the shots of “Room At The Top” only from my memory without any DVD reference. There was an Academy member who saw the sequence and sent me the original scenes. After I saw it, I had tears in my eyes. I wrote him back “I did not disgrace my favourite movie from my memory.”

JM: The music is absolutely gorgeous. You collaborated with a few others on it. What were your goals with the music?

YONFAN: It is an elaborate score, isn’t it? A Thai composer Chavpvich Temnitikul did most of the writing, my long time friend Yu Yat Yiu was involved in all the recordings and being in the most extravagant animation from Hong Kong, yours sincerely controlled everything.

JM: How do you feel about being Oscars qualified and what would an official nomination mean to you?

YONFAN: The film has been around festivals all around the world but joining the Oscar race is something different. First nobody would notice this movie, but slowly people have started getting interested, you start having good reviews. It’s a long way because of the pandemic, but honestly I am just happy to be involved. As an independent filmmaker who can talk to paintings and finally do a movie with all the paintings that I loved, what else can you ask for?