"High threshold" and "burning money" are the public's long-standing stereotypes of ice hockey.
Director Liu Hanxiang had a similar preset before filming "Ice Moments," but when he actually raised the camera and touched the subject, he found that in Beijing, "there were so many children playing hockey." ”
Not long ago, we interviewed Liu Hanxiang, the director of "Ice Moments". The documentary traces the family of three children playing hockey for four years, shooting in China, Russia, Canada and Sweden. In the process of tracking and shooting, Liu Hanxiang's original preset was constantly pushed down.
For example, are urban children "pampered" because of their material superiority; is ice hockey "either rich or expensive" in a family that can play it? But in fact, he found that many children who played hockey were born into ordinary families, and their parents also faced the difficulties of life and the pressure of "inner volume". But because of the advent of ice hockey or because children love to play ice hockey, the fate and choices of children and the whole family have undergone some kind of great changes.
"Parents love their children, and they have far-reaching plans." In the face of the positive and negative coin of children's love and pressure to go to school, parents' confusion and hesitation, anxiety, indecision, and struggle to lift are vividly reflected in this film.
Starting with the boy Zhai Zinan, like other children in middle-class families, Zhai Zinan has attended many interest classes since he was a child, until he encountered ice hockey, and other interest classes were "let go" little by little.
Zhai Zinan likes to play ice hockey, insisting on ice almost every day for 365 days, and every time he goes to ice, his parents will find him the best coaching resources, and other parents describe it as "This is a spelling daddy." ”
There is a peculiar phenomenon in the "ice hockey circle" that children who still insist on playing ice hockey in junior high school will be called "elderly" figures.
Many children play hockey in elementary school or even younger, but in junior high school, due to busy academics or distraction, many children give up halfway.
Liu Hanxiang told us that although the children in the documentary are very young, only eight or nine years old, their parents are very anxious and anxious, because the whole family is facing a major choice in the future: whether to send their children to study abroad, whether to take the professional route.
Like many sports, in order to access the top coaching resources and make it easier to participate in international competitions, in the past two years, more and more Chinese families have relocated overseas.
To sum up the phenomenon observed by Liu Hanxiang, once parents decide to take the career route, they will send their children out as soon as possible, "It is too late to go abroad in high school." ”
Today, Yingrudi, who is preparing for the Beijing Winter Olympics, is a typical example. In 2007, at the age of nine, he moved to Chicago with his mother, Liang Huan. The story behind many people is that in order to support Yingrudi to play, her mother Liang Huan gave up a very good job in China at that time, while her father Yingda stayed in China alone to work to earn money to pay for the family's expenses and bills.
Zhai Zinan's trajectory is similar to that of Ying Rudi.
Zhai Zinan not only likes, but also has a talent for playing ice hockey, and at a young age, he said that he wanted to enter the NHL (equivalent to the NBA in the basketball world, and the difficulty of being selected is no less than that of Kao Qingbei). In order to support her son's dream, in the second half of the film, Zhai Zinan's mother simply quit her lawyer job and moved to Canada with her son, while his father stayed in China to work.
Liu Hanxiang said that Zhai Zinan is not a minority case. Before Zhai Zinan, there were many Chinese children who went to Canada or the United States to learn to play ice hockey, but these parents were not desperate, they must force their children to play professionally in the future, "betting on this is very irresponsible to the children." These children are usually caught overseas both academically and by playing ball.
In China, many people have this impression of professional routes and athletes: ignoring cultural achievements or just "developing limbs". But in fact, in Western countries, many political leaders and CEO companies have sports expertise or even athletes themselves, and the top universities in Europe and the United States are particularly inclined to admit students with sports expertise. Data show that nearly 80% of the new students admitted to harvard and Oxford and other world famous universities have very rich experience in sports training.
Therefore, we can see in the film that Zhai Zinan still can't escape the fate of "being chickened" after attending a private primary school in Canada, and one shot is that he collapsed and cried while doing homework at his desk.
In the film, the most story tension is qu Ruichen's family.
Qu Ruichen is the youngest of three children, and when the director first met him, he was only seven years old.
At the beginning, Qu Ruichen's mother did not want to take the professional route, only because her son's cultural achievements were not particularly outstanding, and it was usually a "small transparent" existence in the group, but Qu's mother observed that her son had talent in playing ice hockey, and also let her son find a little confidence, so there was the "chicken baby" story of Qu Mother later.
Unlike Zhai Zinan, Qu Ruichen actually did not have so much momentum and ambition for ice hockey in the first half of the film. At the table, Qu Ruichen complained to his mother with a sad face, "Is it your eight-year-old hard work or my eight-year-old hard work." ”
In the face of children's future, adults will also have moments of entanglement and uncertainty. Until once Qu Ruichen's mother took Qu Ruichen to watch a professional competition, Qu Ruichen suddenly said to his mother, "I also want to become a professional athlete in the future."
At that time, Mother Qu asked him, "As soon as people come up, their legs are lame and their faces are injured, aren't you afraid?" ”
Immediately, there was the most innocent and touching passage in the film. Qu Ruichen replied a little shyly, "Just like the mother likes the child, no matter how you scold him and beat him, the child will still like the mother." ”
Qu Ruichen originally attended a public school, but in order to better adapt to study and play, he later transferred to an international school. But Mother Qu understands that taking the professional route and playing abroad is the best way out.
In order to help Qu Ruichen find a suitable country and school, Qu's mother looked for people everywhere, investigated the situation in Canada and Russia, and once flew to the ice hockey school in Sweden with Qu Dad.
But in fact, Qu's father did not support his son to take the career route at the beginning. It is not that I do not support the child's dream, but I feel that this road is too difficult to walk.
In the film, he has several "negotiations" with Qu's mother.
"Raise a child and let him fly away."
Father Qu is not only reluctant to be separated from his child, but also worried that in the future, his child will not be able to achieve success, and he should do so in the future.
Later, after the couple finally reached a consensus, Qu's father and son had such a conversation, and Qu's father instructed his son to listen to his mother's words in the United States.
Qu Ruichen asked his father, "What about you?" ”
Qu Dad replied, "I still have a job in China, and I still have to earn money to support you." ”
At this time, the camera cut to another picture, Qu Ruichen whispered to his mother, "I don't want to go abroad", my mother asked him why, the little boy was silent, but it can be seen that he is reluctant to his father.
Coincidentally, when the mother and son were planning to leave for the United States to chase their dreams, the epidemic broke out at the end of 2019, and Qu Ruichen's way abroad was stranded.
In the documentary, another boy, Yu Lifan, was practicing hockey when his father was very strict with him and always reprimanded him.
Once, Yu Lifan came down from the court, Yu Dad reviewed with him, taught him how to play, Yu Lifan said with a look of grievance, "You can do it." ”
But when not playing, the father and son are particularly harmonious.
Yu Lifan also has a younger brother, because time is given to the eldest son, Yu's father feels very indebted to the younger son.
Yu Lifan learned a lot of things when he was a child, but gave up, leaving only ice hockey and Go in the end. Of course, Yu's father will feel sorry for his son's hard training, but he hopes that his child can find a skill. In the film, Yu's father said, "Training is very tired, I hope that the child will live a more relaxed life in the future." ”
"A happy childhood can nourish a person's life."
This is the director Liu Hanxiang's perception of childhood, he grew up in the countryside since he was a child, and his childhood was carefree.
After graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, his lens has always liked to focus on children, and in the past decade, he has made many documentaries about rural children and left-behind children.
One year, while photographing a rural child, the father of a child said to him, "Do you know Liu Dao?" If I had the money, I could also educate my children well. ”
This heartfelt question left a deep impression on Liu Hanxiang at that time, "At that time, I was also confused, is education really related to money?" ”
Liu Hanxiang wants to know how this generation lives in the big city, how highly educated parents educate their children; and whether this generation of urban children will be pampered, or whether they will learn a lot from an early age, and whether their childhood will be destroyed...
With all kinds of curiosity and confusion, this time, Liu Hanxiang turned the camera to a group of children playing hockey in Beijing.
The children Liu Hanxiang photographed were all from a very ordinary ice hockey club in Beijing. In the beginning, he followed six groups of families, and the material was more than 300 hours, but due to the limited length of time, the documentary finally presented only more than 90 minutes.
Liu Hanxiang told us that the anxiety of urban parents shown in the film is only the tip of the iceberg.
"Every parent is very powerless, and often my mother tells me that when we take our children to play, some parents around us tell us that their children have learned the Olympics again, and they have learned this and that, which actually has a great impact on them."
But what moved him was that these hockey-playing families didn't have much ambition and utilitarianism. Most of the children who persist are out of love and love, and adults hope that in the matter of ice hockey, children can find a different way out, even if it is helpful for the healthy growth of children.
Since this documentary began filming in 2018, time flies, more than four years later, these children have grown into little teenagers, are they still sticking to their original dreams?
The director told us that because of the epidemic, until now, Qu Ruichen and his mother are still in Beijing. When the epidemic eases, Qu Ruichen may go abroad to attend high school, but it will be more difficult to take the hockey career route, because the best opportunity has been missed.
Today, Qu Ruichen still insists on playing ice hockey and is still the captain of the school ice hockey team. Liu Hanxiang said that playing hockey well will be very helpful for his future study abroad, "at least he can integrate quickly and make a lot of friends." ”
As for Yu Lifan and Zhai Zinan, they are also insisting, the former was successfully selected into the Beijing Junior Ice Hockey Team to continue playing; Zhai Zinan will grow very quickly in Canada because of the denser competitions.
It is urgent that the current Chinese ice hockey team is not very competitive in the world. Liu Hanxiang said that sports events cannot all rely on state input, it needs the participation of the people and the participation of families.
It is gratifying that after the successful bid for the 2015 Winter Olympics in the mainland, the number of ice hockey courts in the mainland has been built more and more, and Liu Hanxiang saw that in the city of Beijing, ice hockey is not the existence of high and low, and the popularity is not even much different from the piano. This is, of course, good news. In addition, there are some Chinese players who have played well overseas, such as "Zhai Zinan will return to China and serve the country in the future, it is difficult not to say that he will not become the second Song Andong," Liu Hanxiang said.
Going back to the initial confusion, is education related to money? At the end of the filming, Liu Hanxiang seems to have found the answer, more important than money, in education, more important is companionship.