He failed the college entrance examination, went to college at the age of 23, and made his debut feature film at the age of 27, known as the "light of hope for Asian cinema". At the age of 45, he has won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and is the first Chinese director to receive this award.
He is Jia Zhangke, known as "Chief Jia Ke", his lens is always aimed at the most humble individuals, and the reality he shoots has shocked and shed tears for countless people. He famously said, "Just because the whole country is running forward, you can't ignore those who have been knocked down." ”
On September 19, 2021, Director Jia Zhangke's latest work "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" was officially released nationwide. On the day of its release, the film held a theme forum in the seaside community of Aranya, "How does the sea turn blue?" From literature to film" and special screenings "all the way to Aranya".
"Swim until the sea turns blue" takes three writers born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong, as the most important narrators, who, together with Duan Huifang, the daughter of the late writer Ma Feng, re-look at individuals and families in social change, divided into 18 chapters such as eating, hunger, and love, and tell the hearts of the Chinese people over the past 70 years and the Chinese past.
The film shows the growth process of the four writers in different ways: the daughter and the villagers remember Mr. Ma Feng, look back at the blue wisps of the road when they came, and care for the current Guotai Min'an; Jia Pingwa starts from his personal life and tells a personal history, which is also a local history; Yu Hua humorously and open-mindedly reviews the fiery 80s and recalls how individuals move forward in the torrent of the social era; Liang Hong focuses on the internal emotions of the family... Together, their stories form a literary symphony, through the moving melody of 18 chapters, showing the inevitable life course and emotional bondage that everyone will experience.
"Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" uses the memories of the four writers as an emotional index, leading the audience into the spiritual world of Chinese. As a writer, Qiu Huadong was deeply touched by the narration of the three peers in the film, "The three writers appeared on the screen as the protagonists of the film, and there were many details that touched me. "Dong Qiang analyzed the real power in the film from an international perspective." Jia Zhangke's film was made for our Chinese. "The real representation of rural life in the film, and the narration of each writer who embarks on his creative process, are the most touching things to me in recent years." He also said, "Non-fiction is not simply to record, non-fiction is the real means of artistic creation." I think this exploration is a new way of injecting life into the film. ”
Indeed, for him, the film is made for Chinese to watch, and he wants to record the small people who live at the bottom of society, and in-depth exploration is a new means of injecting vitality into the film.
Talking about the original intention of shooting, director Jia Zhangke said, "This film is not only about the countryside, not only about literature, I hope this film is like an index, so that everyone can recall some past events." ”
At the Wuhan premiere on September 14, a "post-00s" audience member said that he resonated with the part told by Yu Hua and Liang Hong, but the part that went further was very strange to her. "Our generation is getting farther and farther away from that era, and it is this kind of film that can bring us back to that era and let us touch the original things of China."
Director Jia Zhangke likens the private memories of the four writers in the film to an "emotional index" that can enter different historical stages, and reveals that "we can follow this thread and ultimately swim into each of us's own emotional sea." On the same day, many college teachers in Wuhan also came to the scene to watch the film, saying that this is a film that is very suitable for students to watch. Ouyang Jianghe also commented on the spot that "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" as a film with "exemplary effect", and praised Jia Zhangke's "This shooting method is the first in the world." ”
Jia Zhangke was born on May 24, 1970 in Fenyang City, Shanxi Province, and is currently a Chinese film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor, writer, and dean of the Vancouver Film School of Shanghai University.
Graduated from the Literature Department of the Beijing Film Academy, he set up the "Youth Experimental Film Group" in college and began to make films. In his sophomore year, he won an award in Hong Kong for his short film "Little Mountain Home".
The year he graduated from film school at the age of 29, Jia Zhangke's film "Xiao wu" won 8 international film awards. The French "Film Handbook" praised Jia Zhangke as "the light of hope for Asian films", and he also made a profit of 5 million yuan.
In 1999, the right to make film and television dramas was suspended due to some political problems, and it was not until 2004 that he resumed his role as a director.
In 2005, Jia Zhangke and Liu Xiaodong went to the Three Gorges to take a picture of one person and one person to paint, leaving an image of the Three Gorges before the water level rose.
The local people's living conditions are very poor, but they are very active in life, happy to earn one dollar, and happy to earn two dollars. After returning from the Three Gorges, many people in the crew did not like Beijing as much as before, and felt that big cities were vain places. I used to have a lot of fun going to the bar, but now I feel bored, and the confidence of the material to support happiness is shaken. The film was produced and called "The Good Man of the Three Gorges".
When entering the distribution operation link, Jia Zhangke wanted to be released on the same day as "Full of Golden Armor", and the producer could not stop it, saying: "Jia Zhangke, you are simply martyrdom with the domestic market box office." ”
On December 14, 2006, both films were released on the same day. Jia Zhangke said: I just want to see, in such an era of worship of "gold", who still cares about "good people"? Two days later, "Three Gorges Good Man" grossed 950 yuan in Changsha cinemas, more than 500 in Wangfujing cinemas, and finally grossed 300,000 yuan. The total box office of "Golden Armor" is close to 300 million.
In the era of worship of "gold", after all, few people cared about "good people".
As Jia Dao hopes, I also hope that this phenomenon is only temporary.
The attention and expression of the low-level characters, in addition to "The Good Man of the Three Gorges", has been expressed in many works such as "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", and "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue".
Born in the 1970s, Jia Zhangke has always been very interested in the scenes of his father's life in the 50s and 70s. In his opinion, why did Chinese become what it is now, and what is the mystery of our lives? It's a question that requires someone to come back.
In a previous interview with reporters, he once said: "The reason why we have become today is a historical memory that we carry together. This memory is vague to me, and I want to find out what my parents went through, what problems they had in their lives, and how they came to get through it step by step. ”
Curiosity about tracing his roots drove him to go deep into the countryside, into poverty, into the grassroots, to understand those who were very happy to earn a dollar or two, to understand those who had a different way of life from the big cities.
History is driven not only by celebrities and successful people, but also by many unknown people, what is their life like? Their lives must also have their own wonderful, these mysteries, need someone to solve.
Jia Zhangke once said: "We hope that the audience will see more movies that reflect real life, rather than those who wear gold and silver and fly around." China's high-input, high-output blockbuster operation model has gradually lost the imagination of Chinese, and this kind of loss of thinking is very sad. At present, Chinese movies are full of entertainment and money worship. Films with very large investments are very backward in their ideological standards and still stay at the level of power worship. ”
Jia Zhangke believes that the uniqueness of his own films is that most of the films want to tell a story to the audience, and for him, they go to live a life with the audience. When you make a movie with this ideal, you can find all the details and textures that the characters in your movie need, because living a period of time is not abstract, but facing chai rice oil and salt, what car to take, what road to walk, what clothes to wear, what to say, what to eat, all of which form a tacit understanding between you and the audience.
Jia Zhangke once said: "Usually we say that a movie is particularly flavorful, and this evaluation is actually particularly high." What is particularly flavorful is judged by the senses, with your sense of hearing, smell, and touch, and a good movie is full of facial features. You shoot a road, you shoot a city and you feel like you're there, all your organ senses are at work. Relatively bad movies are relatively narrow senses, can not hear, can not see, can not smell, can not feel, such a movie is dead.
That's why we say that this movie is particularly vivid, and the vividness comes from your keen senses. This is not only a concept of cinema, but also of literature. Like Shen Congwen's novels, almost all novels are full of facial features, the description of sound, perception, perception of color, perception of weather, somatosensory, is the presentation of a three-dimensional world. If you're just telling a story and we can't perceive these things, then obviously the movie has nothing but a story. ”
Jia Zhangke pays attention to small people, and often tragic small people. He seems to have no intention of narrating the grandeur of the grandeur, but prefers to start with the small people, and through the humble small people, he will unfold to describe the dark side of the bottom layer. Through quiet and unexplained realism, he excavated the inconspicuous dark corners of society to show people. Jia Zhangke is at least a director with courage and justice, he dares to show us those hidden sides in dark corners, and he does not shy away from revealing scars.
In today's society of quick success, he does not make commercial films that everyone is happy with, nor does he go to the box office blockbusters with great fanfare, nor does he go with the flow to praise this prosperous beauty, he is like a stubborn and single-minded hermit, visiting the people at the bottom, and expressing their misery and the dark side of society without concealment, no special effects, no metaphors, no traffic stars.
Jia Zhangke is good at discovering the unusual in ordinary places and good at extending in ordinary places. In his films, we can see a kind of back to the origin of the truth, a return to the simplicity of innocence, a yearning for one after another, so there are those seemingly ordinary but heartwarming scenes. It is precisely because of this that his non-mainstream route allows the audience to return to the truth, experience the truth, feel the spiritual resonance brought by the film, and harvest a large number of audiences with the same emotions.
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