In Conversation with Chinese-Australian Filmmaker Lydia Rui

Posted on: Dec 05, 2024

Photo Credit: Jordan Harris

By Tahlia Norrish

Few filmmaker’s origin stories start with a stint studying howler monkeys in Nicaragua, but Lydia Rui’s does. Such a story is just one of many that informs the Chinese-Australian writer and director’s voice as a filmmaker today. 

Now based in the UK, Rui grew up between Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore, before moving to the US to study a BFA (Film & TV) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

Rui’s films have screened at BAFTA- and Oscar-qualifying festivals, including Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival, garnering her two Australian Directors’ Guild Award nominations and the 2020 Flickerfest Emerging Female Filmmaker Award. 

Here we speak to Rui about working for Beyoncé, skill sets for the future and much more. 

For someone still relatively early in their career, your resume is nothing short of astounding. What might others consider to be your unique superpower? 

That’s very kind of you to say. I’m unsure what others would consider to be my unique superpower, but I often find myself in situations where I’m surrounded by brilliant people – not just brilliant in the loudest sense but also in the most unassuming ways. I’m a curious and pretty compassionate person, which has perhaps opened doors that might otherwise be overlooked. 

Straight out of NYU, you booked a job as Beyoncé’s videographer on her Mrs. Carter World Tour. What was your biggest takeaway from that big gig? 

That Beyoncé really is a superwoman! Honestly, she’s one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met – [though] my mother is up there alongside her. 

My biggest takeaway from working for her was that success, especially success by women of color in a Western world, is earned, no matter how effortless it looks from the outside. It also taught me that success on your own will only get you so far – you need to be able to inspire a team to support you to achieve and evolve in your mission. 

You then returned to Australia to work at Exit Films as a director’s assistant. Have any lessons from those years remained with you? 

Absolutely. Exit Films was like an unofficial film school, setting me up later to make the most of my Masters of Directing Fiction at the National Film & Television School in the UK.

I learned so much from working at Exit, from a technical standpoint – using various software, becoming a creative researcher, designing pitch decks, creating animatics and sizzle reels, location scouting, casting, learning what PPMs are [pre-production meetings] – but perhaps most importantly from a cultural standpoint, too. I worked for some incredibly kind and generous directors who remain friends and mentors to this day and really helped develop and expand my taste. 

I don’t come from an “artistic” family – it’s only now that some family members are in their 60s-70s that they’ve started dancing, knitting, experimenting with cooking, that kind of thing. So, being exposed to these artists was formative in my development as a filmmaker. 

These are two significant positions. How did you approach job hunting in your early days? 

As soon as I transferred out of Media, Culture, & Communications and into my BA in Film & TV at NYU, I started putting myself out there as someone who would do anything – I ran, I gripped, I sparked, I ACed, I camera operated and I edited for students in both the BA and MFA programs. 

I also put myself out there for work outside of NYU. I interned at various companies as well, where I did all those roles, wrote grant applications, and got to see what bibles and treatments looked like. So, during my studies, I was on a lot of sets and got a reputation within the school as someone who was good at camera operating and documentary-style shooting. 

A friend who was working as a PA at Beyoncé’s company heard there was a job opening and suggested me and I was put up against someone else who had more experience. I landed the role by a tiny margin. With getting a job at Exit Films, I was a 2nd AC for someone who had previously worked there, and that person offered to make an introduction to the EPs [executive producers] at Exit. 

Funnily, I had sent Exit a cold email prior to this, which had gone ignored. By the time I met the EPs, I’d finished my first film at NYU and had finished my work for Beyoncé, so I was better positioned to get the director’s assistant role. I really is just about saying yes to everything and creating opportunities for yourself to get lucky. Things don’t work out as linearly as you’d expect. 

Yet, from the outside, it could be easy to assume you’ve gone from win to win. Can you tell us about a challenge you faced starting out and how you overcame it? 

I’ve had plenty of experiences with microaggressions, racism and sexism – and I’ve had plenty of rejections! We don’t publicize our failures, but there are hurdles every day. 

I also had a gap in my filmmaking where I made nothing for years – I wrote plenty of shorts but never had the funding to make them, and didn’t know where to look for crew as I’d just arrived back in Australia. Eventually, I began with a documentary, which I could make with as little as three people, and sometimes, even just with myself and the characters.

Your films always seem to have a lot to say. What advice would you give an emerging director or writer striving to define and hone their filmmaker “voice”? 

Don’t rush or put pressure on yourself to know what you want to say. I often don’t know what I’m trying to say; rather, I have a sentiment I want to express, and I struggle to do it in a sentence. 

The industry would like a pithy thesis wrapped up neatly with a bow, but it’s not always so simple. And, as paradoxical as this sounds, sometimes it’s the very simplest sentiment that requires a whole film to unpack. There will always be people who implicitly or explicitly try to silence you or invalidate you – don’t listen to them! 

As our industry continues to evolve at an ever-accelerating pace, are there any qualities or skill sets do you feel will become more and more valuable? 

I think we’ll have to be increasingly adaptable and multi-hyphenated – capitalism makes it harder and harder for anyone to become a specialist, or you do so at the risk of becoming obsolete. That being said, I really hope we’re able to protect and delineate space for people to become specialists. 

Being a multi-hyphenate isn’t for everyone, and you risk eroding the evolution of your development by diffusing your focus. It’s something I always worry about – whether I am intrinsically a pluralist or an essentialist. The other skills that I’d hope are future-proof are soft skills – skills and qualities that make you a good leader and a good collaborator: kindness, open-mindedness, curiosity and courage. 

Finally, are there any films or TV series you’d advise emerging filmmakers to study as a masterclass on the craft? 

I’ll suggest a film that’s not too personal to me but that amazes me on a craft level: No Country for Old Men. It’s not a Wong Kar Wai film – who is perfectly imperfect and who usually shoots without a script, and it’s not an Edward Yang film – who began filmmaking later in life and whose films resonate with poetic wisdom. However, the Coen Brothers are absolute masters of craft, and No Country for Old Men is a film that, no matter where you begin within the film, will hold you hostage so that you stay until the end. 

Check out some of Lydia’s work here:

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Special thanks to Lydia Rui for her time. Follow Rui on Instagram.

Tahlia Norrish is an Aussie-Brit actor, writer and current MPhil Candidate at the University of Queensland’s School of Sport Sciences. After graduating from both The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (Distinction, Acting & Musical Theatre) and Rose Bruford College (First Class Hons, Acting), Tahlia founded The Actor’s Dojo — a coaching program pioneering peak performance and holistic well-being for actors.

Browse thousands of jobs and find your next gig! Sign up or login to Staff Me Up and get on-set today!

You may also like:

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *