On July 28th, the 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival came to an end, and at the award ceremony, 34 films decided 10 main competition awards and 2 off-field awards.
Speaking of the FIRST Youth Film Festival, it is very special, the predecessor of the University Student Video Festival, founded in 2006 at the Communication University of China.
Since its development, it has become a domestic film festival form service platform focusing on discovering and promoting young filmmakers and their works.
Despite the establishment of awards and their own trophies, FIRST is not a film festival, but a film exhibition, because at present, such a film festival initiated and held by the people can only be called a film exhibition.
However, this has become the advantage of FIRST, without the interference of other factors, there are only movies and people who love movies.
First Youth Film Festival is very positive, just like its name, it focuses on the current Chinese youth film industry, focusing on the discovery of new filmmakers' debuts or early works, generally speaking, the first three works of directors.
It is like an important position for Chinese independent films, in recent years, the number of excellent works going out of the FIRST Film Exhibition has continued to grow, and more and more people have paid attention to FIRST.
Lu Qingyi's "Four Springs" surprised everyone after winning FIRST Best Documentary Feature in 2018, and was subsequently nominated for the Best Editing Award at the 55th Golden Horse Awards.
At the same time, with a high score of 8.9 on Douban, it not only ranked among the top 250 Douban movies, but also won the 5th Douban Movie Annual List of Annual Chinese Independent Masterpieces.
Lahuaga's "Wanza's Rain Boots", which won the FIRST Best Director Award, was shortlisted for the New Generation Competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
Director Xin Yukun's "Labyrinth of Hearts", which won the FIRST Best Film and Best Director Awards, was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Award at the 51st Golden Horse Awards, and was also the highest-rated Chinese film in Douban that year.
Zhang Dalei's "August" won the Golden Horse Award for Best Film;
Zhou Ziyang's "Old Beast" won the Golden Horse Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor;
In addition, there is Ma Kai's hitherto unreleased small-budget horror film "Middle Evil", which can be said that FIRST has become a fertile ground for producing excellent independent films. While we lament the decline of domestic films, a large number of young directors are on the rise.
As a result, at the 2019 FIRST Film Festival, the number of feature films shortlisted broke the record, with a total of 13 feature films shortlisted, the highest in the past five years.
Finally, it was finally finalized under the controversy between Diao Yinan, chairman of the jury, and members of the jury, Charles Gilbert, Charles Desong, Zhao Fei, Shu Ping, Qin Hao and Chen Zheyi.
Regarding the evaluation criteria, Diao Yinan said: "A good film should have the tendency to be close to the general public and have popular feelings; the director, as the author, has a deep experience and emotional expression of the world and the author; and at the same time, he pursues the film art form thoroughly." ”
The complete list of winners of the 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival:
Best Picture: "Spring River Plumbing" Gu Xiaogang
Grand Prize of the Jury: "Mu Ling, YiMing, Wei Ming" Huang Zi
Best Director: Gu Xiaogang, "Spring River Plumbing"
Best Actor: Liu Deji, "Leaving Autumn"
Best Artistic Exploration: Wang Weihua, "Mosaic Girl" (photography)
Best Film Text: "Sherlock on the Plains" Xu Lei
One position: "Fish Paradise" Chai Xiaoyu
Best Documentary: "Xanadu" Zhou Mingying
Best Short Film: "Three Feet" Qu Youjia
Best Experimental Short Film: "Song Sigong's Forbidden Soul Zhang" Ma Lanhua
MOO Pioneer Music Breakthrough Award: Yoshihiro Hanno for "Spring Tide"
Face of the Year Honor: Lou Ye
Audience choice honor: "Spring Tide" Yang Lina
So what are the things to look forward to in this batch of newly released award-winning films? Below, Lao Meng will talk about the 3 FIRST film festival works that amazed Lao Meng from a personal point of view:
"Sherlock on the Plains" Director/Screenwriter: Xu Lei Starring: Xu Chaoying, etc
The FIRST Film Festival sounds like a film festival with a slight threshold, and most of the films in the past have been films with strong personal style and full of feelings, and this is even more obvious after Lou Ye won the Face of the Year this year.
However, "Sherlock on the Plains", which appeared in the amazing debut, is a film suitable for all ages.
The film tells a simple story, an old rural man Chaoying because the same villagers were hit, felt that he could not swallow this breath, decided to find the driver who caused the accident.
By sneaking into the school and pretending to be a delivery man into the community, Chao Ying found what they identified as the "perpetrator", but after the injured Person Shuhe woke up, he found that everything was a misunderstanding.
Sherlock on the Plains won FIRST's Best Cinematic Text Award, the first of its kind this year, to recognize screenwriters who present superb textual skills and skills in video creation, and creatively and efficiently combine literary and audiovisual language.
According to director Xu Lei, the story of the film has a real background, stemming from the real story of him once returning to his hometown, which gave him inspiration, what if the story is put into the movie?
Although the film is called "Sherlock on the Plains", from the trailer and film information, the focus of the film is not to solve the car accident case itself, but to depict the rural style and style presented by this event.
This takes the film away from the heavy and serious atmosphere and instead moves in the direction of light humor. Through a specific local background, the film skillfully combines artistic, commercial and genre elements, and presents a sense of humor and humorous interest in layers of drama.
In addition, in the clean and regular picture, with the simplicity and reality of the local elements, the film is full of vegetarians, starring in the director's father.
The director once said that he originally wanted to shoot with a class of actors, but when he arrived at the shooting site plain, he found that the effect of the performance was not good, and there was less simplicity.
"Bad Luck" was the evaluation given by the audience after the first screening of Sherlock on the Plains, and it did.
Chunjiang Plumbing Director/Screenwriter: Gu Xiaogang Starring: Du Hongjun / Qian Youfa / Wang Fengjuan
The director integrates different daily scenes in a lifelike way, and is extremely creatively ambitious. The director actively seeks to control the artistic expression of different levels, presenting a clear aesthetic appeal and a high degree of completion.
——The 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival • Best Director Award Speech
In the time-space integration of Chinese urban landscape and ink painting aesthetics, family stories are supplied, and in family stories, we can see the Chinese face of hometown, society and seasonal circulation, and make modern explorations of traditional aesthetics.
——Award speech for Best Feature Film at the 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival
If the biggest winner of this year's FIRST Film Festival is "Spring River Plumbing", which won two awards for best director and best feature film, it is none other.
Speaking of director Gu Xiaogang, this is not his first time to participate in the FIRST Film Festival, in 2015, he came to FIRST as a documentary filmmaker with his work "Planting Life".
The first battle was successful, "Planted Life" won the best documentary of the year, and 4 years later, he came to fight with a feature film, which still attracted attention.
600 years ago, Mr. Huang Gongwang, a painter of the Yuan Dynasty, painted the "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" with the style of the two sides of the Fuchun River, and in order to welcome the 2022 Asian Games, Fuyang is in full swing to build a new city.
In this context, "Spring River Plumbing" tells the story of Hangzhou's Fuchun River, four brothers take turns to take care of their mother who has dementia after stroke in four seasons, and the four families face the test of family affection and life, through the changes of cold and warm throughout the year.
The most surprising thing about "Spring River Plumbing" is the freehand aesthetic of the director's ink painting in the film.
Director Gu Xiaogang used a large number of landscape and air shots to create a poetic atmosphere, and the film team spent 2 years filming all over the town, shooting the four seasons of Fuchun, and exerting the beauty of Fuchun to the extreme.
So in the film, there are both spring flowers and flowers, summer greenery, autumn leaves and lonely boats on the river in winter. Like the poster of the film, it shows a complete aesthetic structure full of elegance.
"Spring River Plumbing", as the premiere of the closing film of the Film Critics Week of the Cannes Film Festival in May this year, of course, is not only the pursuit of picture aesthetics, but under the combination of Chinese urban landscape and ink painting aesthetics, it integrates the most ordinary family stories, and the audience who have seen the film has a very unique evaluation of it: it has the taste of Yang Dechang's classic "Yiyi".
Yang Dechang's "Yiyi" must have been seen by many people, and it is not unfamiliar with it, it calmly and sharply dissects the relationship between the characters of the family in the film, although it is not in it, it cannot help but produce a faint melancholy.
But in "Spring River Plumbing", the dementia of the old mother, four middle-aged sons, the younger generation, although the three generations of friction in the daily life, but there is still an inexplicable warmth between each other.
That is to say, in terms of emotional tone, "Spring River Plumbing" is more gentle than "Yiyi", the film begins with a birthday party and ends with a funeral, without over-rendering emotions, just like the title, Spring River Plumbing.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the soundtrack of the film is by Dou Wei, and his music and the film's cooperation is absolutely amazing.
Chunchao Director/Screenwriter: Yang Li Na Starring: Hao Lei / Jin Yanling / Qu Junxi / Li Wenbo / Huang Shanghe
In addition to the awards in the 10 main competition units, there is also a noteworthy award - audience choice honors.
The operation of the audience to choose the honor is like this, from July 20, every day by the offline voting of the moviegoers and the online support of the fans and friends, the final result is the highest number of votes of the film.
This year's audience choice honor is Yang Lina's "Spring Tide".
"Spring Tide" is more special in FIRST, it is the only film shortlisted for this film festival with the blessing of "big coffee", as the two main actors of the film, Hao Lei and Jin Yanling, two post-film level actors, once again contributed superb acting skills.
And the theme of the film, whether it is the poster or the text on the poster, undoubtedly conveys a message: this is a women's film.
"Your relationship with your mother determines your relationship with the world."
The film tells the story of newspaper reporter Guo Jianbo, mother Ji Minglan and daughter Guo Wanting living under the same roof, and the lives of three generations of grandchildren tied together by family ties, which seem calm but are actually surging with dark tides.
Although rebellion and rebellion have calmed down in silence, a silent war has secretly grown between three generations and will eventually break out...
This is a story about three generations of grandchildren, and the contradictions and rifts between them are easy to remind us of the 17-year Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film "Blood Guanyin", but its story is not so dramatic, but plain and real in the system of mother-daughter families.
Guo Jianbo and his mother Ji Minglan looked at each other, only going home to eat dinner with their daughter every day, and then leaving after dinner; his mother Ji Minglan had a strong personality and a strong desire to control the family, and the two did not compromise everywhere and could not bear to give in, and finally turned to the eve of the irreconcilable war.
Daughter Guo Wanting grew up in the gap between the two of them, and prematurely learned how to maneuver between the two, and also learned how to see through the demands and weaknesses of others.
In fact, among the many works that embody family contradictions, "Spring Tide" is not new, and what can resonate with the audience is not the same fierce contradictions and conflicts as other works, but the undercurrents in the closed space, shaping the tension between the three generations in a stoic and restrained way.
A scene in the film that should have caused a huge conflict: Ji Minglan, who is hysterical and neurotic, suddenly burns Guo Jianbo's treasured objects, and Guo Jianbo grabs the cactus with his hand and is full of blood to release his anger.
This kind of emotion that is hidden with all efforts is the key to making it easier for the audience to substitute for emotions, and it is also the surprise and thinking brought to us by "Spring Tide", which is worthy of the honorary award for the audience.
The 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival has closed, but the era of a new generation of directors continues.
Bluestone Film Editorial Office | Old Meng