Hou Baolin is one of the giants filmed in "A Hundred Years of Great Masters and Opera". "100 Years of Masters - Hou Baolin" was supported by the 2020 Project Fund of the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund - Script Project, and was shortlisted for the 4th Beijing Documentary Video Week Proposal Conference.
Hou Baolin (1917-1993), born in Tianjin, is a famous cross-talk performance artist in mainland China. Good at imitating various dialects, city sounds, and dramatic performances. He took "bringing laughter and joy to the people" as his goal and was deeply loved by the people of the whole country. After the founding of New China, it devoted itself to the reform of cross-talk. He also pays attention to the cultivation of young actors, and many of the famous artists currently active in the cross-talk stage are his students. There is a saying in the cross-talk industry that "Hou Baolin has merit for cross-talk". He created a generation of "Hou-style humor" and also made xiangsheng on the most brilliant stage of qu art. It has played a role in the development of cross-talk art in inheriting the past and opening up the future.
In 1940, before Hou Baolin arrived in Tianjin, he "swept the ground" in the area of Beijing Tianqiao and Gulou, and he was still an unknown youngster, and he also returned fruitlessly after breaking through Shenyang in the northeast. However, before the Dragon Boat Festival, he performed at the Tianjin Yanle Theater, and only with a "Empty City Plan" during the day and a "Change of Career" in the evening, he became a hit and won the welcome of the Tianjin Defenders.
Hou Baolin said: It was the people of this place who fulfilled him with kindness and eyesight.
This is also true, this modern city of "five parties living in mixed quarters" has always adopted a tolerant and open attitude towards art, called: "As long as it is good, as long as it is good." But this is by no means a "silly and generous way" without standards, but a "wise eye" with extremely shrewd and even foreseeable knowledge.
Hou Baolin's "talking and singing" in Beijing is still only at the level of skill, and according to the saying in the industry, even "missing arms and short legs" is not strong and comprehensive enough.
But his "billet" is good: he has a good voice like a well-learned, has the basic skills of opera in three winters and two summers, and more importantly, he has a self-respect and self-respecting "self-respecting heart" of "to treat himself as an adult, to treat crosstalk as an art".
Tianjin Insider saw his potential: on "singing" he was in place at a glance, and on "doing" he was a hand and a full throw.
And programs like "Change of Career", in his words, are: before he came into this world, he was already abused by the previous generations of artists.
"Change of Profession", also known as "Eight Great Changes", depicts the story of the emperor's death and "breaking the filial piety of the country", "eight sounds to curb secrets" forbid entertainment, and artists helpless to change to small business. There are as many as eight (or even a dozen) artists simulated.
This kind of "miscellaneous singing" used to be "crooked singing" and "ugly singing" to find fun for artists who "changed their professions", and the theory was: "The reason is not crooked, and the jokes are not coming." But Hou Baolin believes that those artists are not only worthy of sympathy and have long admired, and he can't bear to have fun with them, he has to "sing" and "sing" to convey their charm.
And this is exactly what the slightly cultured public audience agrees with.
At that time, it was the era when "Hanabu Random Bomb" grew up and matured, and the famous students became well-known.
Hou Baolin first touched the hot spots of the art trend, conveyed the social emotions of universal resonance, and greatly expanded and enriched the tone of cross-talk, how can it not be popular? So he cited one after another and continuously processed and innovated a series of singing programs such as "Learning to Comment on Drama", "Learning to Drum", "Learning to Drink", "Selling Cloth Heads" and so on.
The audience welcomed him not only because he learned to sing authentically, but also because he integrated life and human feelings into the show, improved his style, and increased the discussion.
He knew that although his "learning to sing" was a strong point, "talking and teasing" was still not hot, so he continued to "practice whips behind the mountain" at any time to "steal art" from other masters to supplement his basic skills of "missing arms and short legs".
Hou Baolin and Guo Qiru
In the future, masterpieces such as "Drama Miscellaneous Talks" and "Drama and Dialects" were added to the "Miscellaneous Talks", and he personally became a "taste critic" who went in and out to appreciate the elegant customs and customs.
Hou Baolin's innovation is not without a head of empty wind, not a whim without dependence, no, he pays close attention to the various hot spots in life, and can find that behind the so-called "fashion" and "fashion", he can find that there is a deep undercurrent of life.
For example, from his "Learn English" and "Learn Drama", he has a premonition that the artistic trend is surging from tradition to modernity, from old school to new wave. Although he has acted in dramas and has the talent for theatrical performances, he has not left the cross-talk that made him start, and he has not turned cross-talk into a different kind of style.
In the late 1940s, crosstalk began to slump.
"Meat strips" and "yellow strips" and obscene passages that are interesting from the relationship between physiology and ethics are constantly heard, and crosstalk is beginning to decay like the old China that is about to perish. Therefore, at the beginning of the founding of New China, Hou Baolin was determined to innovate under the impetus of the "Crosstalk Improvement Group".
First of all, it starts with "dirty words" and "unblessed people serve people", and then cooperates with Lao She, Luo Changpei and other literati and scholars to compile and perform new passages.
His famous works such as "Marriage and Superstition" can be said to be the representative works of "New Xiangsheng", and he himself has naturally become the founder of "New Xiangsheng". But its "new" is not a political term, a pompous slogan, but a deep and true historical feeling.
First, the change of social status, the agitated life inspired him, and he had a real sense of "being liberated".
Second, he only naturally discovered in "a pleasant farewell to yesterday" that "today is and yesterday is not" -- his "praise" is not a word, not a "false big void" as was popular in the later extreme "Left" period, and his praise of "new life" is carried out on the basis of criticizing the "old world", and the burden is both the condensation of historical feelings and the result of the contrast between the old and the new. The ironic function of crosstalk is still the same.
Then, in the 1960s, when the "left" became more and more serious, he went to the coal mines to live in depth, showing the bones of the working class, and he was never burned by such rhetoric as "the working class roared, and the earth should tremble three times", but only described how the miners "loved the mine like home" and advised them how to "safety first".
He said with emotion: "As long as you go to the mine next time, you will understand the preciousness of life in the sun!" ”
His "innovation" is not in the fancy of form, but only in the true depth and vividness of emotion.
Source| "Chinese CrossTalk"
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Producer | Hou Xuan
Art Editing | Magical conch
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The large-scale cultural project "Centennial Masters" is China's first large-scale series of biographical documentaries focusing on the masters and masters who made outstanding contributions to Chinese civilization in the 20th century, and is jointly produced by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Central Radio and Television Corporation, the China Academy of Arts, the Central New Film Group, the China Literature and Art Foundation, and the Centennial Masters (Beijing) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd.
"Centennial Masters" is the "Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Inheritance and Development Project" of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, the General Office of the State Council and the Central Propaganda Department, which has been selected for two consecutive years as the "Record China" communication project of the Propaganda Department (Information Office of the State Council), the key topic planning project of the "14th Five-Year Plan" documentary of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the key documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party, the "Recording the New Era" documentary boutique project and the key documentary project (2018), and the major theme main line publicity and key topic selection project of CCTV. It is also funded by the National Arts Fund, the China Literature and Art Foundation, the China Art and Culture Foundation, the Beijing Municipal Government Cultural Innovation and Development Fund, the Beijing Culture and Art Fund, the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund, and the Beijing Xicheng District Cultural and Art Creation Support Special Fund. It has won 12 documentary awards.
From 2013 to 2017, the filming of 43 masters in the first season of "100 Years of Masters" has been completed, which is divided into art, calligraphy, Peking Opera, drama, music and literature. The filming of 57 masters in the second season of "100 Years of Masters" has been launched in 2018, adding science and technology, education, traditional Chinese studies, architecture, traditional Chinese medicine, opera and movies, and will carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture with the documentary "100 Years, 100 People, 100 Episodes", "100 Masters Special Exhibition" and "100 Books Publishing".
The completed documentary "100 Years of Masters" has been broadcast on CCTV (one set, three sets, four sets, nine sets, ten sets, fifteen sets, discovery channels, international channels), China Education Television, provincial satellite television, overseas television stations and other 155 TV stations at home and abroad, which have been widely praised and repeatedly set a new high in the ratings of similar documentaries. "100 Years of Masters (International Edition)" is broadcast worldwide in 8 languages.
CCTV Market Research Co., Ltd. (CTR) in July 2020 According to the statistical results of CSM National Measuring Instrument, "Centennial Masters" reached a total of 10.2 billion people.
The series of books "100 Years of Masters" has been distributed to nearly 1,000 colleges and universities across the country for three consecutive years by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the Ministry of Finance as a "High Art entering the campus" study book.
"Centennial Masters" has become one of the most high-end phenomenon-level brands in the field of culture, and with its unique advantages, it has built an important platform for disseminating China's excellent traditional culture, interpreting and displaying cultural self-confidence, and practicing the core values of socialism.