On the afternoon of the 19th, the film "The Age of Innocence", produced by Guo Shipeng and Sandy Zeng (Canadian Chinese) and written and directed by the emerging director Han Rongsheng after the 1980s, was screened in Meizhou, and the audience was full. It is understood that the film will meet with a national audience on August 24.
The film "The Age of Innocence" was launched at the end of October 2017 and filmed in Songkou Ancient Town, Meizhou City, where the beautiful Hakka villages and the small town style of the 1990s can be seen in the film. The film tells the story of the growth of several elementary school students in the early 1990s. Several children with no acting experience starred in the film, although they were post-zero children who grew up in the city, they experienced the rural life of the 1990s in the village where the filming was set before the start. Therefore, the performance truly and naturally restores the appearance of their parents when they were young.
Abandoning the flashy gimmicks in the films of the consumerist era, the film returns to the basics, restores the highlight fragments of the childhood memories of the post-70s and 80s with a bland and warm narrative, does not deliberately pile up nostalgic elements, but selects representative images with age markers to build an independent time and space in the film. After the trailer full of Hakka local temperament was launched, many Hakka people said that they wanted to organize a group to see the movie. The post-80s audience who attended the screening said that they saw their own shadows in the film and evoked their good memories of their childhood.
The Southern + reporter first visited director Han Rongsheng, producer and chief producer Guo Shipeng, producer Sandy Zeng, producer Chen Shanbao, together to understand the story behind the creation of the film.
South +: What is the creative concept of this "Age of Innocence"?
Han Rongsheng: I watched a Golden Horse Award film "August" at that time, which told my own story, and after watching it, I was very touched, and I also wanted to make a movie that belonged to our time and tell the story of our childhood. In fact, there are many pictures in "The Age of Innocence" that I personally experienced when I was a child, such as writing brush characters, loving to read extracurricular books that were confiscated by teachers, and adapting them with reference to these experiences and making them into movies.
South +: What Hakka characteristics and cultures are reflected in the film?
Guo Shipeng: The filming of the film is in Meizhou, mainly in Songkou, Meixian County, because the Hakka culture there is relatively well preserved. When the audience saw this movie, the first reaction was the characteristics of the Lingnan region, there were rice, there were pictures of spring ploughing and autumn harvest, which contrasted with the north, plus the dragon house and the Hakka dialect, and the Hakka characteristics were also reflected. Although the film is mainly based on Chinese, the Hakka dialect implements the entire film, showing a strong Hakka culture and leaving the audience with a sense of mystery.
Southern+: Why want to photograph memories from the early 1990s?
Sandy Zeng: As a post-70s and post-80s, most people are "old at the top, small at the bottom", confused and confused in work and life, and will also encounter some setbacks, in fact, this is what we call the midlife crisis, so we will start to nostalgia, nostalgia for the simple life of childhood. In the early 1990s, when there were no digital products and no work pressure, it was a simple day. We want to awaken everyone's good childhood memories and give everyone some warmth when they are confused.
South+: What are the directors expecting at the box office?
Han Rongsheng: "The Age of Innocence" is a small-scale literary and art film, its living space has certain difficulties, and the attendance rate on the first day of release on August 24 also determines the future scheduling, so I hope that everyone will support us more in the theater. We want to let more people know about Hakka culture and Meizhou through this movie. At the same time, we also hope that after filming "The Age of Innocence", we can continue to shoot the next one, which is also to tell Hakka stories and spread Hakka culture.
Southern+: As a producer, what did you find the most difficult part of the filming process?
Chen Shanbao: The props are more difficult, the film must reflect the feeling of the early 1990s, and the props used must also have a sense of age. Like the Phoenix bicycle in the film, the black-and-white TV set, these are all brought back from Indonesia by my grandfather, very real, as well as old flashlights, old three-purpose machines, record players, etc., all of which were left behind in the nineties. To say that the most difficult props, that is, the classroom books of that era, are too difficult to find, and finally we found them in a small village in Matsuguchi, and the family kept a whole set of language books and math books, which was really lucky.
[Source] Southern Network
[All-media reporter] Wang Siting
【Author】 Wang Siting
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + Client South Network