Jia Xiang I

★ Just now some young people asked: "Who can save us?" My answer may make young people uncomfortable: this is the thinking of slaves. Never wait for someone to save us. We all have to save ourselves step by step. I rely on drawing stroke by stroke, while Jia Zhangke relies on film inch by inch.

——Chen Danqing

★Chen Danqing called him "a different animal". Winner of the "Golden Horse Carriage Award" at the Cannes International Film Festival and the first Chinese director to win the award, Jia Zhangke is the first book to review his film creation and thinking process.

★I want to use movies to care about ordinary people. First of all, we must respect secular life. In the slow flow of time, feel the joy or heaviness of every ordinary life. "Life is like a long peaceful river", let us experience it.

Bei Dao wrote in an essay: People always think that the storm they experience is the only one, and they describe themselves as storms, trying to shake the next generation.

Finally, he said, how will the next generation live? This is the question they themselves have to answer.

I don't know how we're going to live, what kind of movie we're going to make.

Because "we" is an empty word—who are we?

——Jia Zhangke

★"Post Green" leather soft hardcover design, suitable for carrying around, carefully read "Ke Chang"'s deep thinking on film art and social status.

This manuscript is the first work of the famous film director Jia Zhangke to review his film creation and thinking process. It is also a sorting out and summary of his directorial career in the past ten years from 1996 to 2008. It has a panoramic record of his thinking and activities in these years. trace. This book was first published by Peking University Press in 2009. This time, it has been revised and published by the author. The book contains Jia Zhangke's tireless exploration and unique thinking on film art in various periods of his director's career, and also many representative interviews with key figures in the film industry, art world, media and other fields. The whole book is based on the films made by Jia Zhangke, and all included articles are arranged in chronological order of publication, showing the director's personal sensitive and persistent mental journey, and also reflecting Jia Zhangke's deep feelings of nostalgia expressed in films.

The camera looks at the spirit while facing the material.

Behind the characters' endless conversations, tedious singing, and mechanical dancing, we find that passion can only exist for a short time, and conscience becomes an accidental phenomenon.

It's a scorching film about the reality that some good things are quickly disappearing from our lives. We face the collapse, we are in a difficult situation, and life becomes lonely again to appear noble.

<Director's Words> ("1998, Xiaowu")

I want to use movies to care about ordinary people. First of all, we must respect secular life. In the slow flow of time, feel the joy or heaviness of every ordinary life. "Life is like a long peaceful river", let us experience it.

Bei Dao wrote in an essay: People always think that the storm they experience is the only one, and they describe themselves as storms, trying to shake the next generation.

Finally, he said, how will the next generation live? This is the question they themselves have to answer.

I don't know how we're going to live, what kind of movie we're going to make.

Because "we" is an empty word—who are we?

<I don't poetize my experience>

In a theater in France, I watched Wenders' latest documentary, Buena Vista Social Club (Buena Vista Social Club). The film, which was mainly shot in Cuba and tells the life of several old jazz musicians, was also shot with digital technology and then transferred to film. The coarse-grained images on the screen sparkle with the beauty of the record, and the dexterous shooting characteristics of the digital camera also bring rich perspectives to this film. The audience's enthusiastic applause was always accompanied during the viewing process, and I couldn't help but feel that a new film aesthetics is taking shape with the development of digital technology. The low requirements of digital video cameras for illumination, extremely small body, extremely easy-to-handle operation, and extremely low cost all make us see a prospect.

<With VCD and digital video camera>

Over the years, I've seen too many of my friends go through when they wanted to make a movie. Some people hold a stack of scripts in their arms, face the sign of "don't enter the salesman", and push away one company after another with difficulty. In front of all kinds of faces, self-esteem was severely frustrated, and ideals became murderers. Some people pin their hopes on interpersonal relationships, do everything possible to make friends, and hope to meet the elder brother and help the younger brother in every scene. But the big brother is always elsewhere, and hope is always ahead. One day, a "boss" will suddenly take away your script. After a year or so, you will find out that the "boss" is also empty-handed, and he is not a master. There are also people who "public relations" with foreigners and after attending a few parties in the diplomatic apartment, only to find that Westernization is difficult, and foreigners are just as practical. Big and small entertainment newspapers, you sing and I come on stage, a scene of prosperity. But walking around Beitaipingzhuang, my heart is still desolate. Opportunities seem to be many but there is no way to start. As a result, film studies have become less and less, and social skills have become stronger and stronger. A few friends with the same illness met occasionally, drank alcohol at Beihang food stalls, and said when they were doing boxing games: "People are drifting in the rivers and lakes, who can not be stabbed! One knife, two knife..."

<Summer in Tokyo>

Later, someone told me that you chose a character like a thief as the main character, which lacks universal significance and does not conform to your creative intention of recording this era. I think the universality of a character in a work does not depend on his specific social identity, but on whether you can grasp this specific character from the perspective of humanity.

The reason why I am interested in the role of the thief is because he provides me with such an angle, and cutting through this angle can show a very interesting relationship transformation. For example, Xiaowu’s friend Xiaoyong, who was originally a thief, transformed himself into a respectable “private entrepreneur” in the local area through smuggling cigarettes and opening karaoke halls. Here is a transformation of value relationship: smuggling cigarettes→trading, opening karaoke halls→entertainment industry. In such a world, people like Xiaoyong can change around like a fish in water in this way, constantly changing their social status. There are only thieves, and he will only be a thief when the time comes.

My aesthetic preference may more or less come from my reading experience of Borges' novels. Of course, I read the Chinese translation, so I have no way to judge his original text. Through the translation, what I have come into contact with are specific text images without modification. Borges used such a concise text to construct a complicated and confusing imaginary world for us through line drawing. When making a movie, I really want to achieve it. For example, in "Xiao Wu", after Meimei kissed Xiao Wu, the off-screen arrangement was accompanied by the sound from John Woo's "Blood Heroes", in order to create such an alienating effect: make our Perception can freely move back and forth between the two levels of reality and unreality.

<A folk director from the grassroots in China (talk)>

But after the movie started, I fell into the mundane life carefully arranged by Edward Yang. This is a movie about family, about middle age, about the human condition. The story expands from the middle class played by Wu Nianzhen, showing the truth behind a "happy" Chinese standard family. I can't tell the story of this movie one by one, because the truth of "happiness" pervading the whole film makes people nervous and heartbroken. At the end, the child's sentence "I am only seven years old, but I think I am old" made me even more sad. Edward Yang's masterpiece writes so plainly about the pressures of life that it even made me gasp from exhaustion. I can't relate "Yi Yi" to his previous films, because Edward Yang really outdid himself. His valuable life experience was finally not interrupted by the idea of ​​taking away the main content. In the slow and painful peeling off, the true feelings of fifty years old were exposed. And I myself saw the best movie of 2000 on this rainy afternoon in Paris.

<Who is creating a new century of Chinese-language films>

My method is to not get involved in that so-called circle at all, and I am not interested in the grievances and grievances in it. In Beijing, relatively speaking, I am an independent system. Although it is somewhat closed, I can focus on my work in it. From the very beginning, I have a relatively complete plan for my creation, hoping to gradually establish my own spiritual world in the film. This is a very attractive working method, which allows me to pay less attention to things other than creation, including the success of film festivals and the success of the box office. Because neither of these is my ultimate goal, what makes me anxious is always the problem of art, and the problem of art is your own business, which has nothing to do with the circle or others.

<Video Selection in the Experience World (Written Talk)>

I especially like a sentence that Antonioni said. He said that when you enter a space, you must first immerse yourself for ten minutes, listen to what the space tells you, and then you talk to it. This is almost a creed of my creation all the time. I can only know how to shoot this scene if I stand in the real real space. My sub-shots are almost formed in this way, and it really helps me a lot. In space, you can find something, feel it, and trust it.

I shoot a lot of space. Railway stations, bus stations, waiting halls, dance halls, karaoke, billiard halls, roller skating rinks, teahouses... During post-editing, due to space limitations, many things had to be removed. I found a rhythm in these spaces, An order, that is, many places are related to travel, and I chose the things that best fit this line.

Movies are an industry, and filmmaking is a very planned job. A director's independent production method is also to minimize the constraints and constraints brought by the industry. That kind of restraint is not only the pressure of producers, but also the control of film censors, and the method of film production itself is also a norm. DV brings people a pleasure of getting rid of the industry. When photographing the bus station, the local guide first took us to the coal mine to photograph a workers' club. After coming out, it was the place in the movie, and there happened to be some people waiting for the bus. The sun has started to set, and it feels like a hit. I just took photos of this place, and I kept shooting, and I shot a lot of things. When I photographed that old man, I was already very satisfied, he was very dignified, I have been patiently photographing him, when my lens followed him into the car, suddenly a woman broke in, I The sound engineer said that I was shaking at that moment. When I watched her, her background was a very flat worker’s dormitory area. At that time, I had a special sense of religion, so I kept taking pictures; then another man suddenly entered. I don’t know what they are related to. The last two All gone. During the whole process, I feel that every minute is a gift from God.

<Self-narration of "Public Place">

I still get used to meeting people in Huangtingzi in the afternoon: ask friends to raise a glass to reminisce about the old days, ask enemies to slap the table, accept interviews, persuade producers, beg for help, and seek advice from experts. If you don't drink a lot, you can talk a lot. My hometown, Fenyang, produces Fenjiu, and famous people often write inscriptions. Suddenly, I thought of a poem by someone: Only with wine can there be a stream of consciousness, and a large piece of writing will keep me entertained. So there are more mental activities. My heart sank suddenly when I was pushing a cup to change a cup, knowing that there was nothing to do, so I felt sad. The words suddenly stopped, and I lay on the table watching the candlelight beating, and the noise in my ears gradually became abstract, with the artistic conception of "Shanghai Flower". So I thought of getting old, and I also lived a life of dawdling. Feeling that life is frivolous and flesh is heavy. Leaving suddenly and strangely like an old man, seeing childhood memories in a trance in the darkness of returning home. Knowing that I was a little drunk, I said to the driver master: Only with alcohol can you have a stream of consciousness. The master has seen too much, and he will not respond. He knows that he will wake up again after dawn: he will smile at people, shake hands with people, completely unaware that he was so embarrassed and ugly.

In the afternoon, I was waiting for someone again. The guests didn't come for a long time, and the mood was no longer restless. In line with the leisurely atmosphere of the afternoon, I stood up and looked out the window. The people outside were riding bicycles and rushing under the white sun, not knowing what kind of fortune they were chasing. Feeling that the world is like a bird, I feel a little sad. A middle-aged woman came in suddenly, ordered a glass of wine and asked Xiao Chen to play Zhang Xinzhe's song. Before the singing started, the crying came out first. It turns out that this bar is also a place where you can cry.

Now go to Huangtingzi, the bar has been demolished and turned into a mound. This is a metaphor that everything can be turned into ashes. So I had to pay close attention to the movie, not for immortality, but for the sake of crying.

<Wine can lead to stream of consciousness>