The original intention and mission of the historical documentary "Forbidden City"

The eye of art The beauty of culture The soul of the nation

——The original intention and mission of the historical documentary "Forbidden City"

Stills from the historical documentary "The Forbidden City"

The large-scale historical documentary "Forbidden City", jointly produced by Beijing Radio and Television Station and the Palace Museum, has gained good reputation since it was broadcast on October 22, 2021. The film has a total of 12 episodes, through the way of "looking at history with the city and telling the city with history", connecting the history of China's nearly 600 years of ups and downs, and presenting the Forbidden City from the unique perspective of big history for the first time. While characterizing cultural self-confidence and building a national community, the film actively "breaks the circle", so that the thick history will go to the public with a fresh and flexible appearance, bring nutritious and interesting spiritual and cultural supplies to the audience, and set an example for the creation and dissemination of literary and artistic works in the new era.

"Forbidden City" pays attention to the texture of audiovisual expression, and its film-like exquisite image language bids farewell to the rough and simple style of traditional historical documentaries, and the charm of audiovisual art is superimposed with the documentary sense of documentary images, making the film become "ice cream for the eyes to eat, sofa chair for the soul to sit on", giving people a beautiful enjoyment. After the snow Taoran Pavilion, the corner tower of the Forbidden City, the red wall of the white snow branches and other pictures, symmetrical proportions, deliberately left white, full of oriental aesthetics contained in the beauty. For example, in the first episode of "Jiye" and the third episode of "Long Road", when telling the stories of "rise and fall" and "the stagnation of Daming's maritime career", the tense rhythm is expressed by the rainstorm-like lens, the picture of closing the city gate is used to imply the failure of maritime trade, and the ideographic imagery of the empty mirror is intriguing. In addition, the magnificent aerial lens, the time-lapse photography full of light and shadow charm, and the use of a wide-angle lens beyond the scope of the naked eye also increase the film's exquisite sense of expression in terms of image language expression.

Compared with other documentaries focusing on the theme of the Forbidden City, the cultural significance and cultural pattern of "Forbidden City" are more lofty. The film breaks the boundaries of time and space, taking the "Forbidden City" as the eye to observe the changes in Chinese history over the past 600 years. At the spatial level, starting from the Forbidden City, radiating the Land of China around objects or events related to the Forbidden City, and finally returning to the Forbidden City through the telling of historical stories, the expansion of space has brought about the richness of narrative and made the expression of its cultural meaning more layered. On the time level, "Forbidden City" also skillfully deals with the relationship between ancient and modern: on the one hand, the 12-episode "Forbidden City" presents the history of the change of the Forbidden City and the feudal dynasty according to the time sequence, with a linear timeline as the main line; on the other hand, in the telling of each episode of historical stories, the observation of ancient and modern is throughout, for example, when telling the story of the revision of the Yongle Canon, the former part talks about the development of literature and art in the Ming Dynasty, and then transfers to the Yongle Canon, which is now treasured in the National Library. The original and related texts, history and the present immediately echo. As the storyteller, the host Tan Jianghai leads the audience to continuously cross the long river of history, which has played a role in connecting the ancient and modern and leading the audience to think about the relationship between history and the present.

The "light" dissemination of thick history, with a young voice and a fresh and flexible attitude, is close to the audience in the new media era, which is the innovation of "Forbidden City" in the way of communication. The film makes proper use of the strong publicity power contained in the "fan" culture, and Beijing Radio and Television Station, the Palace Museum and the Taihe Music Group jointly created the "Forbidden City" theme music album, with 12 theme songs corresponding to the theme of the 12 episodes of the documentary, telling the changes in the Forbidden City over the past 600 years. The theme song has a variety of styles and styles, including pop, rock, rap and other new trend music elements, while taking into account the traditional cultural content such as Peking Opera and opera, the perfect integration of classical and modern, and countless "circle fans". This kind of promotion method of cross-border integration of popular culture resources and historical and cultural documentaries is not only a full use of the "fan" promotion resources contained in popular culture, but also a good attempt to lead the trend of popular culture with high-quality documentary content. Positively guiding the "fan" culture in the context of pan-entertainment is a strategy to help the lightweight dissemination of historical documentaries.

Actively deploying the communication matrix on the new media platform, so that the thick history and a wide range of audiences can meet in the "cloud", is where the experience of "Forbidden City" to enhance its communication power and influence, show the soul of the nation, and build a sense of national identity lies. In addition to being broadcast on Beijing Satellite TV, the film was simultaneously launched on Tencent Video, Bilibili and Migu Video. Among them, after the launch of the Bilibili platform, the number of views reached 448,000, and netizens said through the bullet screen that they had "come back hundreds of millions of times", "proud to be a Chinese", "found treasures", "to increase knowledge" and so on. After the launch of Tencent Video and Migu Video, it also triggered netizens to leave messages such as "a new history online class is coming", "Our Forbidden City is too beautiful", "I like this elaboration". At the same time, the official Weibo account "Beijing Satellite TV" opened a topic of "#Large-scale Documentary Forbidden City#" on Weibo that was read by 98.89 million people and discussed by 217,000 people. "Forbidden City" actively seizes the communication space of new media platforms, breaks into the active public opinion position of the audience in the new media era, narrows the distance between the thick historical themes and the online audience, and becomes a spiritual and cultural supply for the younger generation to obtain historical and cultural knowledge and enhance the sense of national identity.

Conveying the beauty of culture with the eyes of art and condensing the soul of the nation with the beauty of culture can be said to be the original intention and mission of the documentary "Forbidden City".

Co-organizer: China Art Newspaper, Beijing Municipal Radio and Television Bureau

Author: Zhao Tian

Source: China Art News