Rhino Entertainment Original
Editor of the Fat Department of | | Xia Tian
The Cannes Film Festival, which began on July 6, has once again become the focus of attention of filmmakers around the world.
The first feature film written and directed by young Chinese director Nagazo, "Street Baby", was shortlisted for the "One Kind of Attention" unit, and it is also the only Chinese mainland film shortlisted this year. Set against the backdrop of a wave of migration from the north to Guangzhou, the story focuses on a group of young people who wanted to leave but did not leave their hometowns in the early 21st century. Many people expect that the film's executive producer is Guan Hu, who is familiar with the narrative of the life situation of the little people.
At the beginning of this month, Guan Hu's "Revolutionary" has just landed in theaters, and this non-traditional main theme film presents the last 38 hours of Li Dazhao's life and his magnificent life from multiple perspectives.
One focuses on the frustration and wandering of contemporary people, one interprets the passion and determination of revolutionaries, and handles completely different story themes with ease, which is not new to Guan Hu.
As a director who has continuously achieved good results in films such as "Old Cannon", "Eight Hundred" and "King Kong Chuan" in recent years, business and literature and art have reached a certain dissipation and balance in Guan Hu. Thirty years after the film, Guan Hu has become a well-known brand "Guan Hu" for audiences and the industry.
Thirty years, three levels
Time went back in time to 1992, and Guan Hu, a graduate of Beiying, raised 200,000 yuan to shoot "Hair Messy". At that time, he loved rock and roll and played romance, and he probably did not expect that many years later he would save the Chinese film market with a 3.1 billion box office "Eight Hundred". Over the past thirty years, Guan Hu's life and creation have been constantly moving towards a new stage.
It is advisable to divide his works into three stages to interpret: to see yourself, to meet others, and to see the country.
Guan Hu often recalls his life as a teenager, running in the alley every day and growing up in the neighborhood parents. This may be the source of his free, romantic temperament in his early works, "Hair Messed Up" about rock musicians, "Romantic Street" about the debt-faced driver and forgetful female pianist, and "Goodbye, Our 1948" by a group of gun-stealing children, all of which are unrestrained lives.
(Stills from "Hair Messed Up")
"Seeing yourself" is also a common feature of many directors when they start to create, injecting stories and pictures with personal life experience. And the fierce expression desire and realistic temperament of these works made Guan Hu one of the representatives of the "sixth generation of directors" at that time. But soon, this common division no longer represents his personal color.
Starting from the TV movie "Get on the Car, Let's Go", Guan Hu's humanistic care for the low-level characters in his early works further leads to realism. In 2005, when filming the TV series "Migrant Workers for Survival", he and several leading actors ate and lived with more than 40 migrant workers in the shed they built for two months, and then ripped off the script they had written before, because it was too "fake" and "in our hearts, the understanding of migrant workers is actually shallow."
(Stills from "Migrant Workers of Survival")
"Seeing others" means a meticulous observation of one's fate, and also represents Guan Hu's ability to express the inner conflicts between big times and small people. The "Carnival Trilogy", "Bullfighting", "Killing" and "Cook Drama Leper", which began filming in 2009, all showed a deep black humor and received higher and higher evaluations with the precipitation of time.
Guan Hu, who has already filmed high-profile dramas such as "Black Hole" and "Winter Solstice", has gained something from the days of filming: he has accumulated good technical resources and talent resources, and the style means that he has not had the opportunity to try in movies in the past have also been greatly practiced in TV dramas, and have gradually formed a mature style of personal narrative and aesthetics.
His shots not only have the realism of documentary texture, but also have a more mature narrative language in terms of color, imagery and rhythm, ready for entering the commercial stage.
In 2015, "Old Cannon" won 901 million box office, becoming a representative of Guan Hu's double-hit box office reputation, and since then he has opened his commercial success process, bringing a series of box office masterpieces such as "My Motherland and Me, Eve", "Eight Hundred", "King Kong Chuan" and so on. It was also from "Old Cannon" that he weakened the experimental color of the "carnival trilogy", told the story in an experimental narrative and a more plain lens language, and began a series of industrial attempts.
"Seeing the Home Country" is not only an in-depth interpretation of different eras of major historical themes, but also a deep grasp of the needs of the vast film audience. And Guan Hu has not lost the authorial side of the narrative, and the sensibility and delicacy are expressed with a more warm and profound feeling. The sixth master lit a cigarette for the second uncle, Lin Zhiyuan ran in Beiping on the eve of the founding of the people's republic, and "Picking the Scooter" on the stage opposite the Sihang Warehouse would always provoke the heartstrings of the viewer.
Thirty years later, Guan Hu has completed the evolution from a pioneer director to a top director brand of Chinese films, he is also the former Guan Hu, paying attention to small people, there is no shortage of romance in realism, but also incorporates more elements and more stories into his lens, realizing the tragedies and joys of small people in a big era, and how they become a member of the country's journey.
Guan Hu as a "brand":
The fusion of industrialization and personalized scenes
In recent years, Guan Hu is becoming a representative figure of film and television industrialization.
When filming "Eight Hundred", a four-element hyogo was built with reinforced concrete, a Suzhou River was dug up, and the two banks of the Suzhou River in 1937 were restored 1:1, which was rare in China.
After this grand "dream", Guan Hu stepped into another "dream": cooperating with other directors to shoot "King Kong Chuan" in two months. More than 600 special effects shots, a huge shooting team of more than 5,000 people, and four flood peaks that have not been encountered in a hundred years were finally completed.
("King Kong Chuan" work photo)
The two war films won 3.11 billion and 1.126 billion at the box office respectively, and the industrial production level was recognized by the audience.
It may be said that this is the environment in which the domestic industrial production capacity is improved, and it meets Guan Hu's style of focusing on realism and image texture. Previously, whether it was "Bullfighting" selected in more than 140 mountain village attractions in the Yimeng Mountains, or went to Taoping Qiangzhai in Aba, Sichuan Province, for "Killing", Guan Hu never relaxed his requirements for film aesthetics. The era of industrial production has allowed him to further relax his hands and feet.
("Killing" work photo)
And industrialization will not become a limitation of Guan Hu, but his tool. The "Pipe Tiger Symbol" that fans talk about will make the audience recognize "This is the Pipe Tiger" and always have surprises.
For example, Guan Hu's extremely concerned local expression, the Shandong accent in "Get on the Car, Let's Go", the farmers in "Bullfighting" farming in the mountains, and the rules of the sixth master in "Old Cannon" have all become a kind of creation rooted in the soil. In "Eight Hundred", the soldiers of the southern and northern dialects use the dialects of various places to outline a panorama called the nation; in the dream of Xiao Hubei, he is a hero named Zhao Zilong.
Animals are also an image expression that Guan Hu likes very much. The cow in "Bullfighting", the ostrich running on the road in "Old Cannon", and then the white horse galloping on the bank of suzhou river in "Eight Hundred", these surreal elements in Guan Hu movies will make realistic shots have more room for tasting.
The most prominent thing is that Guan Hu loves to open the observation of the big environment from the perspective of a small person. On the one hand, their extremely life-like details will greatly enhance the realism of the film, on the other hand, the motivations of these characters themselves are more empathetic to the audience, and the plot promoted by them is more recognized by the audience. The different fate choices in "Eight Hundred" such as the Dragon Boat Festival, the sheep abduction, and the old abacus constitute the 1937 year that contemporary people can understand in a very infectious and vital way.
How to summarize the characteristics of Guan Hu? Six generations of directors who are sharp pioneers, or the rescue directors of the film market? It seems that they are only some kind of aspect of a certain stage, and are not enough to summarize its richness.
Industrialization and personalization, in Guan Hu's film to achieve the same scene of integration, this rich texture, so that the word "Guan Hu" is becoming a domestic market and industry appeal of the film brand, can let the audience have corresponding expectations and enter the theater for this. And the temperament and value of this brand, it is not the time to define it.
Guan Hu under the triple identity:
Creator, protector, leader
Another impression given by Guan Hu in recent years is that he often appears in various youth support programs such as the Shanghai Film Festival, the FIRST Film Festival, the Green Onion Project, and the Wu Tianming Youth Film Foundation.
This year's sixth green onion plan is chaired by Guan Hu. At the venture capital conference, he recalled his first time as a director, "Technically it is really bumpy and inexperienced, but this momentum I think is a bit precious." "And Guan Hu is making more young directors go more smoothly."
In the past three decades, Guan Hu's identity has changed many times. From being a creator of directors, to being a protector of supervising producers helping young directors, to being a leader active in major young directors support programs, this triple identity shows his creativity, vitality and sense of responsibility as a filmmaker.
The former Guan Hu Studio and now Beijing 7 Impression Culture Media Co., Ltd. have become a base for young directors to grow. Young director Fei Zhenxiang, who is already a gold-medal web drama director who has filmed three "Ghost Blowing Lights" episodes, has a Douban score of 8.2 points in "Longling Labyrinth", which has become last year's hit.
In addition, the "7 Hopes Project" initiated by 7 Impressions includes a number of films produced by Guan Hu, many of which come from original content and film and television talents discovered in various youth support programs and venture capital activities.
"Street Baby" won Guan Hu's attention in the "Youth Film Project" unit of the 2017 Shanghai Film Festival, and Jiang Jiachen's "No Problem! Gao Linyang's "Reunion Again", Geng Zihan's "Little White Boat" and other popular youth works have also received support from him and Liang Jing, among which "No Problem! "Reunion" was shortlisted for this year's FIRST main competition unit, and "Reunion" was shortlisted for the Young Directors section of the Hong Kong Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. In this year's Green Onion Project, he and Liang Jing also carefully selected the two top ten works of "Pig Killing" and "Trouble".
More youth works are already being filmed and prepared. As a producer, Guan Hu not only escorts these young directors, but also further passes on their personal brands by promoting their growth. With his help, there may be more directors who break the traditional boundary between entertainment and business, look up at others and the world, and drive the future imagination of the entire industry with more domestic high-quality film and television dramas.
Multiple styles and multiple identities make it difficult for filmmakers to identify with a single label. And he himself does not want to be framed. In the next stage, more works of "Guan Hu Director" and "Guan Hu Producer" will soon meet with the audience, which is expected to be more recognized by Guan Hu himself as a brand and personality.
The brand "Guan Hu" is creating possibilities for the future of Chinese films.