Will movies become protected cultural relics like Pingyao Ancient City?
◎Zhang Hailu
After the heavy rain, two Pingyao inside and outside the movie palace
Fortunately, the Fifth Pingyao International Film Festival was successfully held after the extreme rainstorm in Shanxi, almost the entire course of the sun was held. It was like the last-minute rescue scenes in classic Hollywood movies, due to floods, epidemics and more. On the first night of the opening, fans from afar finally knew about the screenings and exchange activities.
Rainstorm damages the ancient city. Only when you reach the southwest section of the 6-kilometer Great Wall, you can see the partial wall falling after the rain-proof cloth and the collapse of the rammed earth walls of some dangerous houses. This happens every year, only this year. More serious.
However, fans and industry professionals who are busy with the film exhibition and negotiation, at most only asked the operators of shops and inns near the movie palace about a sentence or two about the disaster, and after hearing a less serious answer in the city, they continued to return to the fictional image. In the world.
The flood in the city is indeed not serious. Even the Shuanglin Temple, which has the most famous ancient sculpture of Wei Tuo on the side of the city, was closed for three days on October 6, 7, and 8.
Even the documentary writers participating in the film festival are unlikely to visit the villages near the really serious river dikes and ditches that have destroyed crops.
Inside and outside the movie palace, there are two Pingyao parallels.
The distressed reality outside this year's film festival is naturally the disaster-stricken villages.
Facing the flood disaster in Shanxi, the film festival set an example early. The chief partner Zhiwen Group held a donation ceremony at the opening site and donated another 10 million yuan.
On the last day of the festival, there was a very expensive screening, a 39-minute short film "The Last Director of the Earth" starring Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao.
Each event ticket sets a minimum donation amount of 300 yuan and a maximum unlimited donation. The donation is collected by the Pingyao County Red Cross and used for flood relief in the county.
Jia Zhangke retreated behind the scenes, became an actor and also made commercials
After announcing his withdrawal at last year's film festival, Jia Zhangke is now at ease behind the scenes and no longer does everything by himself as he did in previous years, showing films and an academic exchange platform for everything.
At that time, looking at his presence on various occasions, I would be very curious: How does this extremely smart director manage his time?
Now, after finishing his roadshow of "Swimming Until the Sea Turns Blue", Jia Zhangke returned to Pingyao. At the opening ceremony, he took Mr. Xie Fei and danced to the disco rhythm of "Little Girl Under the Street Lamp" adapted by Wu Tiaoren; Halfway through the film with Tsui Hark, talk about each other’s complex with Hitchcock’s work, and elaborate on the techniques of "Telephone Murder"; at the closing ceremony, a short film of himself and Ning Hao’s transformational actor was brought to the audience, and they argued. If a movie becomes an intangible cultural relic one day, who is more qualified to serve as the inheritor.
At the same time, Jia Zhangke pretended to be busy and miserable and was "tortured" by Party A, and starred in a creative advertisement for a certain coffee brand's "Double Eleven" promotion.
Perhaps, by swimming until the water turns blue, you can really deal with everything about the movie with ease.
After leaving Jia Zhangke's dominance, the Pingyao Film Festival also ushered in some new changes.
The thick Chinese and English film festival manual has become a flimsy daily newspaper updated daily.
The layout design is good, and the content of the publication is basically the daily event agenda, the introduction of the team’s main brain, the introduction of the jury, the screening information, the statement to prevent filming and piracy, the movie palace map, and many pages of sponsor advertisements.
Although all this information can be seen on the official official account, in today's decline of print media, this kind of ritual operation that seems to respect the movie is still recognized by too many audiences and guests.
In the industry unit, in addition to the previous WIP and venture capital for the completion of the script, a new drama plan has been added this time.
From script completion to shooting creation, and from post-production to derivative series, Pingyao Film Festival is trying to open up a complete industrial chain.
It’s often heard in the Gucheng coffee shop that the director of a literary and artistic film is going to make a web drama, and the industry producers I met also said, "No way. Money must be long-term development.” So it sounds, as predicted in "The Last Director of the Earth", movies may become cultural relics in the future.
Introspection and exploration, so that the film will not become a cultural relic
In Pingyao, 46 feature films from 32 countries and regions were screened. The global premiere rate reached 32% and the Chinese premiere rate was 100%, fulfilling the original promise of the film festival to give the audience a sense of freshness.
Of course, there are inevitably uneven quality.
Although the feelings and preferences of watching movies are their own advantages, both in Douban scores and media scoring, there has been a rare high degree of convergence.
The screenings of "All Things Are Soul", "Thank You for Warming My World" and "Sonata" participated in the screening, all received a neat one-star bad review.
They either didn't think about what story they were going to tell, or they misunderstood the spirit of experimentation.
The "Crouching Tiger" unit of the 12 international film competitions are mostly works from the non-main competition units of the three major European film festivals. Although they are not stunning, they also have stable film quality and their own unique artistic flavors, which will make the epidemic. Movie fans and travellers who were trapped in the country during the years have seen some social aspects of other countries and the changes in artistic expression on their respective soils over the years.
My favorite is a Georgian movie "What do we see when we look up at the sky?"
"The director expresses his Argentine fan complex very willfully, and even breaks the fourth wall in the film to interact with the audience.
However, the jury awarded the largest prize of the unit to the Egyptian film "Feather", which also has the spirit of experimental exploration.
In the "Hidden Dragon" unit of the Chinese film, Fei Mu honored the two major awards for Best Picture and Best Director, convincingly given the two most popular ones, "Universal Exploration Club" and "The Story of Yongan Town". .
These are two outstanding works of art with completely different appearances and styles, but they both successfully mobilize the emotions of the audience between sorrow and joy.
The latter used the phrase "Maradona is dead" to end the common and unresolved differences and disputes among film creators; the former used a love poem written to the vast universe and the spirit of exploration, with a poem above all trivial matters in the world. Think grandiosely to make people cry.
With the existence of these unique works of artistic temperament, I believe that there is still hope for the development of film, and it will not become a protected cultural relic like this thousand-year-old city that houses the film festival.