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China's first large-scale documentary about Suzhou gardens has indeed been made into a masterpiece, which has not been surpassed so far, which has also become the pinnacle of the TV prose style cultural feature film of the last century.
I am surprised that not many people have seen this film now, and simply make a "Six Chronicles of Su Garden".
The production lineup of this film is luxurious and simple - speaking of luxury, there are many masters, the inscription calligraphy is I.M. Pei, the son of the Suzhou Laodizi family, and also a celebrity in the modern world; consultant Lu Wenfu, Suzhou symbol, single-handedly re-opened Suzhou style and elegance in the era of reopening. The two broadcasters are also at the level of the gods, both of them are Chinese childhood memories, the gold medal of the Central Radio Department, the male commentator Fang Ming, the director of the Central Broadcasting Department, and the seniority of the National Day parade that has repeatedly gone to the Tiananmen Tower to broadcast the National Day parade; the female commentator Lin Ru, "A Xin", "Shenzhou Style" and many national-level feature films. Although the Suzhou Propaganda Department vigorously supports it, it is basically the strength of the station itself, led by the station director Cui Zhaohong, Gu Qiang, director Qian Xisheng, etc., all of whom are people with ideas. Later, Qian Xisheng went to Soochow University to become a professor of classical literature, which is also a jiangnan literati tradition.
The most important figure here is that Suzhou Tai was transferred from Zhejiang Tai. Suzhou and Hangzhou have been fighting each other since ancient times, and Suzhou Tai is also humble. This character is The Chief Editor and Writer Liu Lang, the master of the older generation of television commentary.
The origin of this Suzhou garden documentary is that in December 1997, the four classical gardens of Suzhou represented by the Humble Administrator's Garden, the Lingering Garden, the Master of Nets Garden, and the Huanxiu Mountain Villa were included in the UNESCO "World Heritage List", and the garden application was successful, and Suzhou found that there was no TV film that systematically introduced the gardens of Suzhou, which was not OK. At that time, Suzhou Cable TV station was ambitious to shoot one, first found Lu Wenfu, Lu Wenfu did not write, recommended Liu Lang of Zhejiang Station. Liu made a feature film "A Writer and a City" that year, and Suzhou filmed Lu Wenfu, which was quite appreciated by Lu. Suzhou Tai is also a hundred rivers, and Liu Lang was immediately seconded to prepare for the later film to become a classic.
After the broadcast of "Six Chronicles of Su Garden", it immediately became popular in the north and south, becoming the best TV media communicator in Suzhou Gardens, winning many awards, becoming a representative work of Chinese documentaries in the 1990s, and even making Suzhou host the 28th World Heritage Conference in 2004.
Looking at this film more than 20 years later, I do have a sense of the times. Later, the criticism of this film mainly focused on "too many commentaries, too full of lenses, and the proportion of commentaries and the quality of the picture art is out of balance", and even Lu Wenfu euphemistically said: "Liu Lang is a little difficult to control himself when using the commentary, and at the same time that the big pearls and small beads fall on the jade plate, he forgets that silence is better than sound at this time." But "The Six Ages of SuYuan" does achieve the "academic art or the academicization of art" pursued by the main creator Liu Lang.
Liu Lang does have thoughts in the field of cultural and artistic films, just "to make a good Suzhou garden film, in addition to mastering some of the essential contents of Wu culture, we must also study the historical materials of Ming and Qing scholars", this sentence determines the realm. From the idea, structure and explanatory words of the film, Liu Lang led the team to achieve to the point, kind and elegant, especially the explanatory words to achieve a weightless weight, in the lexicon, colloquial and phonological rhymes are in modern vernacular to pursue the Ming and Qing sketches. Although it is not in the middle, it is not far away.
This style is not easy to grasp. Sixteen years later, CCTV's giant "Garden" comprehensively surpassed "Six Memories of Su Garden" in terms of image technology, but the commentary fell into the lyrical void and floated on the surface of the garden. Liu Lang's explanatory words, praises and lyrics of Suzhou gardens, are essential and in-depth. Later, he reviewed the creative process, read all the books on Suzhou gardens at that time and in the second place, more deeply, he really realized that behind the seclusion, the atmosphere of the times since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the scholars and doctors "could not be obedient", the roots of the garden, the rich and elegant flower, are bitter. This determines that the pen can fly out and get it back.
Of course, there must also be this kind of pen power, which has to be a little talented.
The title of the film was derived from "Six Records of Floating Life", at that time the book was not red, it was natural to borrow the old essence of Suzhou Shen Sanbai, a group of people said that this Suzhou garden originated from the water of shen sanbai's vicissitudes. At that time, it was the first day of the meeting of the creators, sitting in the painting boat, boating on the stone lake, which was the place where Fan Dacheng wrote "Sixty Songs of the Four-Hour Pastoral Miscellaneous", "there was also some Wind of the Song Dynasty on the surface of the water."
Meetings are very literati, and writing is also very old literati.
Liu Lang talked about his experience, when he wrote the "Six Records of Su Garden", he touched the "virtual realm" of the garden: three old suzhou ink paintings on the wall. "The author is a little bit of a little bit of a good collection. It just so happened that when I lived in the west in the past, I got a very broken inkblot of several Suzhou characters, which is an excerpt from the "Book Genealogy" of the Qing Dynasty Champion Pan Shien, Weng Tonghe's "But Chasing Fan Nian in the Five Lakes", and Chen's "Self is a person above the Xi Emperor", the latter two are all downlinks, fortunately the payment is still there. The author has passed away, but a wisp of cultural cigarettes is still swirling, and the reason why they are not scattered is that there is still a bit of aura on these three pieces of paper. "Writing suzhou gardens in the posters of Suzhou literati, this kind of classical literary popularity, can really do it, there are very few."
Interestingly, the garden is most prosperous in Jiangnan, the cultural context is flourishing, and the last person to write this classic text is a northwesterner: Liu Lang grew up in Qinghai, a typical northerner.
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Text | Cluster two
Images are from the web
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