Start with Jacques Behan wanting to shoot China

Not long ago, French director Jacques Behan came to Beijing again and was invited to serve as the honorary chairman of the documentary section of the 7th Beijing International Film Festival. Last year, his new work "Four Seasons of the Earth" was released in China. He said: This time I came to Beijing, I have a very clear goal, that is, I hope to realize one of my dreams and make a film that takes place in China. According to his vision, the film is not a pure documentary, but more like a fairy tale, "a fairy tale about a little boy, who travels with migratory birds and then discovers that in a country like China, there are such spectacular mountains and rivers, such a long history, such magnificent buildings and all kinds of magical legends and stories." He also introduced: "We already have a wealth of information about the natural scenery and human history of more than 30 places in China, and even the economic data of a century ago we have found." I think China has a very rich documentary genre. ”

Jacques Behan is a world-famous documentary filmmaker who focuses his documentary on China and thinks it's very rich, which reminds me of our own documentary creation. According to the just released "Research Report on the Development of Chinese Documentaries (2017)", in 2016, the total annual production investment of Chinese documentaries was 3.47 billion yuan, and the total output value exceeded 5.2 billion yuan, an increase of 15% and 12% year-on-year, respectively; in 2016, a total of 5 documentary films produced that year entered the theater line and received 76 million yuan at the box office. Of course, we should be happy about this, because the year-on-year growth is obvious, and the documentary in previous years still belongs to the cold palace, and now it not only has an output value, but also a box office. However, compared with many countries in the world, it still feels very pitiful. Over the years, in addition to a few works such as "China on the Tip of the Tongue", how many works belong to the world? Especially in 2016, the four satellite documentary channels across the country all appeared in the phenomenon of similar content and a high proportion of imported programs.

Is there a lack of documentary subject matter and materials in our country? Obviously not, as evidenced by Jacques Behan's statements and ideas; is there a lack of documentary audiences in our country? It seems that it is not, the introduction of programs is very attractive to the audience's attention, and even the programs of satellite channels take the introduction as the focus. Nowadays, Chinese stories and China's world are increasingly valued by the international documentary industry, and several documentaries about China in Sino-foreign cooperation have shown unique charm on the international stage, but the total amount is still too small, the market is still not large, and creating its own exclusive original brand and producing a generation of leaders is still the goal of future efforts.

In many fields of cultural creation, in fact, it is often favored by foreign countries before being valued by their own countries. Nature documentaries have long been loved by audiences in the world, and are also favored by audiences in China, Jacques Behan is good at nature documentaries, China's natural scenery themes, materials are even richer, but with contemporary high-level documentary shooting started very late. Especially after listening to Jacques Behan's intention to make a documentary reflecting China and the relevant information he has collected, there are many places where we should blush. Therefore, expanding horizons, opening up ideas, looking for those uncultivated virgin lands, and improving the innovation ability of choreographers are most needed for documentary creation, not always waiting for foreign lenses to come, we suddenly realized, but should have the spontaneous original imagination of "China on the Tip of the Tongue", otherwise it will always be in a lagging position.

I remember that many years ago, there was an acrobatic ballet "Swan Lake" came out, the work of the classical ballet "Swan Lake" and traditional Chinese art acrobatic grafting, resulting in a new kind of art, as a result, continue to tour around the world, great acclaim, box office also created a performance miracle, almost became a permanent reserved repertoire. Unfortunately, however, this work slowly faded out of the international stage. An excellent original of its own, but it has not been carried forward, the reason is still outside the art, its lessons are worth summarizing.

Chinese stories, Chinese scenery, and its best works, I hope that in the future, it will be best to be created by China.

People's Daily (2017-05-04 19th edition)

(Editor-in-charge: Zhou Wen, Zhou Tian)