URUMQI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Ask Janar Sahat how to make a period drama and her answer is simple: stay true to the historical figures and forget about the market.
The first thing the 53-year-old director does after deciding to start work on a new project is to read the script thoroughly and dive deep into a sea of memoirs, biographies and other historical materials.
Driven by the fidelity to history, Janar Sahat has made her name in the television industry after decades of experience in direction.
Her recently aired work, "The Great Waves," is a 40-episode series recounting the early development of the Communist Party of China.
A mastery of historical accounts provides her the confidence to pursue creativity in period dramas.
"It is laborious to prepare for and shoot such scripts. I must read a lot, heed the details that I previously missed and have a better understanding of the Chinese history spanning various time periods because respecting history is of utmost importance," she said.
Born in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and raised in Beijing, Janar Sahat, a member of the Kazakh ethnic group, has 20 creations to her credit. She has also won top national awards during her career spanning 27 years.
Her works include "How the Steel Was Tempered," a TV series, released in 2000, adapted from the eponymous novel arising from the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Janar Sahat started her rendezvous with literature and art, and was exposed to rich cultural diversity at the age of two when her family moved to Beijing to comply with her father's job transfer. Both her parents were journalists.
During her growing up years, she used to live in an apartment complex dwelled by her father's colleagues from various ethnic minorities from across China. Her mother would read Kazakh poems in rhythm to her whenever she had time off work.
"At that time, on almost every weekend, my family received visitors on business trips from Xinjiang. After dining together, they strummed the traditional musical instrument tamboura, danced to the music and talked about their newly-published poems and newly-authored books," she recalled.
Participating in such activities piqued her interest in art. During her primary school years, she often performed on the stage. In the later years, however, Janar Sahat distanced herself from performing as her academic grades slipped.
When she was 17, a call from a film director pulled her back to the realm of performing art.
"I felt numb at that moment when I received the call from director Guang Chunlan, saying she wanted me to play the lead role in 'Romance of an Orphan Girl,'" Janar Sahat said, adding that she could not believe the news.
A newbie to acting, she succeeded in the role following the director's detailed instructions and her own understanding. She realized that "the experience rekindled her interest in performing arts."
Later, she was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama, and refocused her major from acting to direction after finishing her freshman year at the academy.
Janar Sahat honed her skills in direction, pursuing undergraduate and graduate courses at the All-Russian State University of Cinematography, on a scholarship from the Chinese government.
"During the years when I was away from home, I learned Russian language and direction from scratch," she said. "Initially, when I used to go to the theater to watch movies, I could hardly understand the lines, but I just sat there watching over and over."
In retrospect, she said, her "aha moment" came after years of language learning, studying film appreciation, having discussions with her classmates, teachers and insiders from the industry, and more importantly, by practicing film making.
In Moscow, she made her debut featurette "The Eighth Day of the Week" as her graduation project. She also co-directed the "Red Cherry," a film released in 1995, in which she was in charge of amending the script, casting and organizing extras, among other tasks.
"This time I learned how to direct step by step, putting professional knowledge and skills I acquired into practice and staggering over one obstacle after another. The results turned out to be good," she said.
In 1998, she returned to China. Thereafter, she worked on several television projects, mostly centering on Chinese history.
Over the years Janar Sahat has developed her own style of directing.
She follows up on the entire teleplay-making process from script reading, casting, dubbing, final cut, to its broadcasting.
She doesn't usually cast megastars, and instead chooses artists who share similar characteristics like age and temperament to the historical figures, even though they may be less experienced.
She also persists in ascertaining the details concerning the historical figures as she thinks the specifics are what make the show lively.
"Almost every line the actors deliver in the series I direct has been kept in accordance with historical facts so that the dialogue of the characters could be as credible as possible," she said.
Even some fictional plots of the TV series are settled after consulting with the technical director and experts from the relevant fields in order to ensure the plots "make sense."
After completing one project, she would shun the spotlight and prefer to stay at home reading books to prepare for the next series, as her motto is "to pursue continuous self-improvement."
"I take every task seriously, no matter how small it is," she said.
She goes back to her hometown of Xinjiang once a year, accompanying her father and revisiting the places her parents had mentioned to her.
Janar Sahat has two goals for her future career: try to create film and TV works of various themes and craft one for Xinjiang. Enditem