Being a director starts with fighting domestic violence

After the audience realized what was going on, they began to applaud.

Female directors and screenwriters like Li Guowei were especially excited.

After the award ceremony, many filmmakers came to congratulate Gao You and expressed their concern for the two foundations.

Li Guowei also came specially to find out about this matter.

"Next month, I will hold a discussion meeting and would like to invite everyone to participate. We can then have a good discussion together." said Gao You and others including director Li Guowei who gathered around him.

"That's great. Count me in." Li Guowei nodded.

"I'm coming too. I have a few scripts in my hand, but I've never had the chance to take them out. Can I give them a try?" screenwriter Wu Ling asked excitedly.

"Of course." Gao You agreed. The more people involved, the better.

Gao You wrote down their contact information one by one and promised to contact them later.

The next day's newspapers reported on the winning of the Golden Gourd.

At the Golden Gourd Awards Ceremony that night, Gao You's "Mulan" won six major awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Art Direction, almost sweeping all the most important awards of the Golden Gourd Awards and becoming the biggest winner of the night.

Gao You's plan to establish a Women Filmmakers Foundation and a Young Filmmakers Growth Foundation was also reported by many media outlets.

Many media have expressed that they will continue to pay attention to this matter and hope that these two foundations will bring more vitality and fresh blood to the mainland film industry.

The great harvest of the Golden Gourd once again boosted the box office of "General Mulan".

More than a month after its release, the box office in mainland China exceeded 30 million.

In addition to the box office revenue of 38 million in Hong Kong, the film grossed over 20 million dollars in other regions.

Although the total box office has not yet been calculated, there is no pressure for it to compete with "Cold Dew" for the top five or even top three Chinese-language films in the box office in various places that year.

In early September, Gao You convened a group of female filmmakers in Beijing and held a meeting to discuss the foundation's affairs for several days.

Finally, it was decided to establish an association of women filmmakers and a foundation at the same time.

Director Zhen Lai was invited to serve as the association's president, and filmmakers such as Gao You, Wang Lan, and Li Guowei served as vice presidents.

Other filmmakers have also joined the association, including Mo Huan, Zhao Qing, Tong Li, Ke Ying, Yu Lishu, Zhou Can, Lu Xue, Lu Shuang and many more.

Gao You is the president of the foundation and Li Guowei is the vice president.

During this discussion, Gao You and her colleagues collected many people's ideas, understood their difficulties, and received quite a few scripts.

Due to various restrictions and practical conditions, they have ideas but no way to realize the shooting, which is what distresses them most.

Some people were assigned to film studios after graduating from the directing department, but they had never even made a movie and could only work as clerks in the studio and do odd jobs on the set.

Someone works as a screenwriter in a film studio, and the scripts he wrote are rejected again and again and gradually become covered in dust.

There are also people who spend all their salary on preparing a movie, but still never get to make a single film.

In any case, this association and foundation gave them a glimmer of hope.

During this period, Gao You was helping Yan Hui prepare her first feature film "Night Talk".

This is also the first film prepared by the foundation.

Yan Hui found the twins to continue the cooperation.

Lu Xue and Lu Shuang also liked the script of "Night Talk" after reading it.

Seeing that Qu Linglang was a little uneasy as it was her first time as a screenwriter, Lu Xue took the initiative to give her some guidance and help. This touched Qu Linglang's heart and she cherished this opportunity very much.

After several revisions, the script was finally approved, and we got a filming quota from Qingying Studio. We set up a crew, assembled a team, and started looking for actors.

As the producer of this film, Gao You asked her senior, Chen Jiayin from the directing department, who was one year older than them, to help.

Lu Xue and Qu Linglang served as screenwriters, Lu Shuang served as photographer, Zhu Xiaoya served as art director, and Liao Hanyu served as sound recorder.

There are also some behind-the-scenes staff, such as the production team, photography team, art team, recording team, and some actors, all of whom were trained by Gao You Company.

Some of them are retired female soldiers, and some are sisters who were unable to find jobs after being released from prison. After several months of training and group study, they are now basically capable of doing these jobs.

The teachers who train them are all retired teachers from Beijing Film Academy or veteran filmmakers who have retired from various film studios.

These veteran filmmakers have already trained two batches of students in the training class founded by Gao You. They jokingly call this training class "Little Beijing Film Academy" and it continuously supplies talents to the film and television industry.

Many years later, many people discovered that many female film and television practitioners came from this training class.

The actor for "Night Talk" was Yu Lishu, who played the educated youth Wei Wei.

She won the Best Supporting Actress Award at this year's Golden Gourd Awards for her role as Huaying in "General Mulan". She is now somewhat famous in the mainland film and television circles and has received many film invitations.

However, Yu Lishu certainly still wants to participate in her classmates' works.

After all, they are all in their senior year now and will graduate soon. They will be assigned to different places or units, and there may not be many works for them to work together on.

Yan Hui also found Li Manan from the Performance Department to play another female educated youth, Ren Di.

Two male classmates from the Performance Department, Zhao An and Wu Xingyan, played the two male educated youth in the film.

The crew assembled and went to a small town in the south to shoot.

After finishing the preparations for this film, Gao You continued to work on the post-production of "Extreme 8848".

This time she asked her senior sister He Meiying from the directing department to help her with the editing.

After graduating this year, He Meiying was assigned to Qingying Studio, where she was a highly acclaimed editing expert in her class.

Not every student in the directing department can become a director immediately. He Meiying only realized the difficulties involved after studying this major.

So she found the editing industry and specialized in it. After four years of hard work, she really made a name for herself.

He Meiying was also very happy to edit the film for Gao You this time.

Although the little junior sister is young, she is very capable and never forgets to help her senior sisters. She is a great example.

Among the five female classmates in her class, three received funding from Gao You to shoot their graduation works, and the finished products were quite good.

The short film "Live in the Moment" shot by my classmate Dou Liu was shortlisted for the Skyline section of this year's Venice Film Festival. He has now gone to the water city to participate in the film festival.

Another classmate, Yu Cheng, was invited by Gao You to direct a TV series about reform and opening up, "Working Sister", which is now in preparation.

Another classmate, Chen Jiayin, was invited by Gao You to be the producer of junior sister Yan Hui's film "Night Talk".

He Meiying also heard that the TV series "No Longer Silent" invested and filmed by Gao You Company was sold to the TV station for 300,000 per episode and was being prepared for broadcast.

He Meiying estimated that the production cost of "No Longer Silent" should not exceed 50,000 per episode, and it was sold for 300,000 per episode, which means 1.8 million for six episodes, not including advertising revenue.