The lives of foreigners can take a dramatic turn when they come to Shanghai, and American Michael Ouyang's life is no exception.

Having come to Shanghai in 2004 to finish a PhD degree in early 20th-century Chinese literature, Ouyang stayed to forge a career directing Chinese reality TV shows as a way of financing his first love, film making,

Over the weekend, the latest creation of the writer, producer and director, a 15-minute short film, "Pigs in Zen," was screened in Beijing.

The film was shot in Shanghai using locally based actors. Set against the backdrop of the swine flu outbreak, it tells the story of struggling advertising executive Jim Fu whose life is falling apart.

Fu has been sacked from his job, he suspects his girlfriend of cheating on him and her pet miniature pig reveals a shocking secret, a plot by animals to unleash biological warfare to wipe out humans.

The film features animation by Shanghai-based artist Wang Taocheng and the film is screened at his solo exhibition, which opened on Saturday and runs until August 22 in Beijing.

Ouyang plans to screen the film in Shanghai but wants to gauge audience's reactions and make final adjustments ahead of possible screening at Chinese and overseas film festivals.

Ouyang has also enjoyed success with "Goodbye Shanghai," a short film he produced that won the Best Short last month at the New Media Festival in Los Angeles.

Directed by Adam Clark, the film also screened at the Beijing International Film Festival and is screening next week in Hollywood at the Holly Shorts Festival.

Ouyang says that there is a huge interest among overseas audiences in films that tell stories from China's fast-changing society.

"There is still a fascination with China in general and there have been very few good movies that tell stories about contemporary Shanghai," he says.

Ouyang grew up in Boston and his creative talents are a stark contrast to his family, who are all scientists. His mother works in cancer research, his father is a physicist and his brother is a theoretical physicist whose latest project is researching whether time travel is mathematically possible.

"I come from a family of scientists, but apparently the math gene missed me somehow," he jokes.

Ouyang says he was always a big film buff growing up and he continued his interest in film with his doctorate, about a group of 1930s Shanghai writers who were inspired by Hollywood's golden era.

"Movies, in my opinion, are really the most modern art form," he says. "They combines everything like music, a lot of technology, visuals like painting, and photography as well as human performance like acting and writing. The things you can do with lighting are incredible - it is really the most complete narrative form."

Ouyang moved into film after answering a classified advertisement. The job was working for former Shanghai-based film producer Jay Rothstein, and the job opened doors into the local film community.

Ouyang also wrote a number of commissioned scripts including a science-fiction movie set in a post-apocalyptic world where survivors settle their disputes by playing games of billiards.

"It was like a kung fu-type movie except with pool not kung fu, it was weird but was also a lot of fun to write," he says.

In 2006 Ouyang broke into the local television industry and has worked in a range of programs from game shows to dating shows.

Some of his better-known efforts have been the dating show "Wo De Qiubite" ("My Cupid") and "Laowai Lai Zuoke" ("The Foreign Guest"), an intercultural game show in which teams of foreigners and Chinese compete in specially designed games related to a particular country.

"It's chaotic and we think up some pretty crazy stuff for the game show," he says.

"For instance, we had an England show where we made the contestants joust and, of course, we didn't have horses so we made them ride bikes," Ouyang recalls.

Other TV adventures have included the host of his dating show throwing a contestant in a lake because of his bad attitude to his female potential love interest.

Ouyang says he has now reached the point where he feels he can make a short film every quarter and says there is no shortage of inspiration in Shanghai for a film maker.

One of his most fruitful sources of ideas, says Ouyang, is the Shanghai Daily and the quirky stores he reads. His next film is based on a story about a businessman who falls on hard times and has to "fire" four of his five mistresses (February 2009).

To work out which one to keep, he holds a talent contest that judges the women on such things as their looks, singing ability and capacity to drink.

But events take a tragic turn when one of the spurned mistresses drives a car with the man and the four other lovers off a cliff in Shandong Province, killing herself and injuring the other passengers.

"I always keep an eye out for weird stories like this," he says. "You could never invent something like that."

Michael Ouyang

Nationality: USA

Age: 36

Profession: Director/producer (TV, film and stage)

Self-description (three words): Individualistic, whimsical, callipygian

Q&A

What's the best part of Expo:

Honestly, the best part of the Expo is the Expo taxis. They are big and comfy, they still have new-car smell and the drivers are staggeringly polite. I would trample over a couple of grocery-laden grandmothers carrying their granddaughters to get an Expo taxi.

Favorite place:

Jinling Road E., aka Guitar Street. Those guys all can hear me coming a kilometer away by now.

Strangest sight:

Water chestnut drink. It's crunchy but refreshing at the same time.

Motto for life:

Anarcho-syndicalism is a way of preserving freedom.

Worst experience:

My worst experience was working with the worst movie producer in China. He was one of those expats who sort of feels privileged in Shanghai just because he's a foreigner (and there's too many of those people anyway), who didn't know anything about film making. Anyway, the day we had to let the entire production crew and cast go because the money had disappeared, he refused to see anyone and I had to go be the hatchet man.

How to improve Shanghai:

Two things that are sort of interrelated. Traffic and personal space. Perhaps because of overcrowding, there's not a lot of politeness about personal space, which is irritating if you're not used to it (and I probably never will get used to it), and it affects traffic too, because many times when it'd be best for everyone to understand their spatial relationship and thus make driving smooth, instead they all just charge ahead, causing traffic jams and accidents.

Advice to newcomers:

Strap your helmet on and just dive in.