The first time he met Jiao Bo, Li Guangtian, a fellow villager in Shandong, his poem "Son of the Earth" came to the reporter's mind. "This earth, my mother, I have a deep affection for her as the Son of Man. I love the sandy soil on the ground, the wet and soft, my swaddling, and even more the green velvet fields, the weeds, the arms of the nanny. ”
As the creator of the photographic work "Daddy and Lady" that caused a sensation in the country that year, there are many labels about Jiao Bo. Journalist, photographer, director, and he recognizes the title of "farmer director" and is deeply proud: "Farmers grow crops in the land, we grow stories in the land." The people's grain harvest has been harvested, and our films have also been harvested. ”
In the photography industry, there was once a criticism that "Jiao Bo has eaten the bowl of rice of 'Daddy' all his life". The first time he saw him, the reporter could feel that there was a twist on him. In addition to "Daddy and Lady", what has Jiao Bo done in recent years? Perhaps no one can fully tell.
After in-depth exchanges, it was learned that in recent years, Jiao Bo "wants to photograph as many different places as possible to see the process of villages of different nationalities, different lifestyles, and different conditions getting out of difficulties." "The countryside is changing day by day, and Jiao Bo has replaced the camera with a camera, leaving a precious image archive for the historical development of China's rural areas.
Writing "Chronicles" for Peasants
"The countryside is the root of my life and the root of my art, and at all times, my lens will always be aimed at the most respectable and lovely peasants. I want to write a history for the countryside, a biography for the peasants, and leave a video history for the peasants." Jiao Bo summed up his record of dedication to the rural world in this way.
No matter how the countryside changes in the face of external forces, Jiao Bo always walks on the rural land and always pays great attention to the rural world, and he faithfully records the complex relationship between farmers and land at present with the lens.
In the rural world that Jiao Bo freezes with his lens, in the face of the huge impact of urban development on the countryside, there are both rebels who strive to inject fresh blood into the ancient countryside, people who eagerly flee the countryside and cut off relations with the land, and even more people who persist in staying on the land. Focusing the camera on these characters and the rural world shows both his concerns about the decline of the countryside and his reflections on the possibilities of a way out of the countryside.
Du Shenzhong is one of the protagonists of the documentary "China in the Countryside". For decades, he had been obsessed with his dreams: about literature, the pipa, a life of beauty and contemplation.
The people in the village taunted him for his foolish dreams and not doing his job. He also tried to run away, going to Beijing to "engage in literary creation without knowing the height of the sky", and worked hard in various parts of Shandong to make a living, but he collapsed again and again.
Are you saying he's an ordinary farmer? No. Jiao Bo said that this is the image of the farmer I want to show. Instead of facing the loess all day with his back to the sky, he has cultural pursuits and ideal pursuits. This is the direction of peasant development.
The first time I saw Du Shenzhong, the sunlight crossed the broken wooden threshold and squeezed into the dark room, casting a long bright light on the cement floor. Jiao Bo saw Du Shenzhong crouching in the shadows, holding a plastic basin filled with water in his left hand and a brush in his right hand, practicing calligraphy with water dipped in water in the open space paved with light. They exchanged, "Teacher Jiao, this light and shadow that penetrates the door frame is a very good piece of rice paper in my eyes." ”
In the traditional artistic narrative, the peasant is forced to add backward, ignorant, and insensitive symbols or labels, and the peasants in front of them are "too sensitive to the sense of beauty." After this meeting, Jiao Bo immediately decided to set up a foothold in Yuyu Village to complete the title "China in the Countryside" assigned to him by the National Film Administration.
On February 4, 2012, during the Lunar New Year, the film crew rented a small courtyard in the village and filming officially began.
In the documentary, "the mind is not in the apple field." He didn't want to take care of the orchard" "He is a talented person in our village." It's that Apples manage less than others. Du Shenzhong and his wife Zhang Zhaozhen's argument runs through the whole process, and the two are also dubbed by the audience as "China's most quarrelsome couple". Jiao Bo recalled that when asked how Zhang Zhaozhen had lived in this life, she said: "Don't mention it, we are both a war movie in this life."
A rare moment of harmony between the couple occurred at the Spring Festival Gala in the village. At the end of the film, Du Shenzhong plays the pipa, Zhang Zhaozhen sings, and reluctantly cooperates in an uncoordinated tune with a song called "Yimeng Mountain Minor". The song finally dispersed, and Du Shenzhong remained on the stage to continue plucking the strings.
"Come down, come down!" It wasn't until he heard the noise of the villagers that Du Shenzhong woke up like a dream, carried the little horse, and left awkwardly. Jiao Bo told reporters that at the end he had such a thought, this stage is Du Shenzhong's stage is also the stage of Chinese farmers, Du Shenzhong went down, what will happen in the follow-up, he left blank.
Du Shenzhong, as the representative of the rebels standing on the land, had complex feelings about the land. He was a thoughtful peasant, walking on the ridges of the fields and thinking about the development of the countryside and the peasants. Jiao Bo also showed in the documentary the confusion and way out of young farmers.
"Out of the Mountain" is literally just a symbolic action, the title of "Out of the Mountain" reflects the grand history of social change in rural China, and Jiao Bo gives the profound meaning of the unprecedented historical process of "out of the mountain".
"A group of villagers on a cliff called Quanli, in order to witness the process of building the road, we walked along the foot-wide path for an hour or two to arrive, we went 28 times, I fell 12 times, and finally witnessed the road being built to this village." In 2016, in order to shoot "Out of the Mountains", Jiao Bo led his team to live in Daqi Village, Shichao Township, Wuchuan Gelao and Miao Autonomous County, Zunyi City, one of the 20 extremely poor townships in Guizhou Province.
"Out of the Mountain" shows the excitement and longing of the Shen Xuewang family moving to the county town after arguing, hesitating, worrying, and anxious. It is a narrative of historical progress, and despite its difficulties, farmers have benefited and seen a more promising future, and the country's existing urban-rural binary structure gives full legitimacy to this choice.
In the film, the darkness of the villagers' old houses and the barrenness of life are in stark contrast with the openness of the new urban homes and the industrial areas, schools, gymnasiums and other urban public cultural service facilities in the external environment, and everyone is full of expectations for life after relocation. Of course, the future is a long way off, and getting out of the mountains is far from the end of this process.
It is not easy to get out of the mountains, and it is even more difficult to go into the city. In 2018, Jiao Bo's team came to the resettlement site in Xinpu New District of Zunyi City to shoot "Entering the City". When picking characters, Jiao Bo hopes to have a young man, young, sunny, self-motivated, and has the feeling of starting a new life, and finally found Qin Meng in the material of "Out of the Mountain". "He was drawn by lot and said happily, 'As I wish.'" My eyes lit up. This plot became the first act of "Into the City". Jiao Bo said.
In "Into the City", the young Qin Meng rode an electric car at night and sang with open arms. "I don't regret being born into such a family, and I believe I can change my fate later." I just don't want to be ordinary, I told myself, Qin Meng, you are either a myth or a joke. ”
After the filming of "Into the City", Qin Meng followed Jiao Bo to learn professional aerial photography, and filmed Laowo Village in Yunnan with the team, changing from a relocator to a recorder. In this interview, the reporter met Qin Meng for the first time, when he was editing the film.
It is difficult to enter the city, and it is not easy to move the nest. In "Old Nest", middle school student Deng Zhihua wanted to quit school to work, saying: "How could God arrange for me to be born in such a place, why didn't he let me be born outside?" ”
Located at an altitude of more than 4,300 meters above sea level, Laowo Village, a Lisu village, is a "straight-through ethnic" village, which has directly transitioned from primitive society across several social forms to socialist society after the founding of New China. Later, the villagers moved collectively to Laowo New Village.
At the same time, another team of several people in Jiao Bo's team is filming how to inherit the big song in the village, how to develop rural tourism, and help rural revitalization in a Dong nationality big song inheritance site in Guizhou.
"Taobao Village" refers to a village with a unique number of online merchants in China that reaches more than 10% of the number of local households and has an e-commerce transaction scale of more than 10 million yuan. Jiao Bo also photographed Dinglou Village, a "Taobao Village" in Heze, Shandong Province, to record how farmers in poor villages in the past rode the wind and waves in the wave of the Internet.
He recorded the gorgeous turnaround of the public village in Suqian, Jiangsu Province. In the past, almost all the villagers in The village were engaged in the business of processing, storing and transporting waste plastics, and the pollution was serious. Later, it embarked on the path of developing e-commerce.
"I am both a enjoyer and a warrior of the fruits of battle. Carrying luggage out of the mountain, and carrying the machine into the mountain. Jiao Bo said that as a documentarian, it is a dereliction of duty not to focus the camera on the countryside at this time.
He believes that the history books should not only be emperors and generals, talents and beautiful people, and China's history books should leave a strong mark on the peasants. From poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation to rural revitalization, in this process, the relationship between cities and villages has also undergone a tortuous development. In Jiao Bo's lens, Chinese farmers are undergoing a shift in consciousness from "material survival" to "spiritual entry into the city."
Jiao Bo's footage documents the way out for generations of peasants, perhaps rural rebels standing on the land, or new farmers fleeing the land.
Why Jiaobo?
"Jiao Bo is the best and wisest of the peasants, and his documentaries and the materials accumulated outside the documentaries pay attention to the reality of contemporary China and record the most real life, which is to be deeply excavated and studied from the perspective of anthropology, sociology and folklore," said yang Lang, a cultural scholar, who once made such an evaluation of Jiao Bo.
In these more than a dozen rural documentaries, Jiao Bo witnesses the ideological changes of Chinese farmers with the lens, he records the various changes in the land, the farmers harvest grain on the land, and Jiao Bo uses the lens to harvest the story on the land. In this series of documentaries, through the small mountain villages, the audience can see the shadow of the changes in the whole of China.
Jiao Bo photographed the peasants, paying attention to the sorrows and joys of the little people, and it seemed that everything had a trace.
Jiao Bo's keen eyes focus on the worldly life and joys and sorrows of the little people, but like water droplets refracting the sun, it is his worries about the living conditions, his compassion for human nature, and his reflection on the process of human civilization.
Since I was a journalist, I have loved to run to the countryside, and I have been making documentaries in the countryside. I don't know when Jiao Bo has the title of "Farmer Director". On the one hand, his lens is always facing the local China, to the story of the peasants; on the other hand, it is also because he is the son of the peasants. He was born into one of the most ordinary peasant families in the countryside, and he farmed at home for several years, still retaining the habits of farmers. Lovers call Jiao Bo "urban farmer".
In 1988, when Jiao Bo was a reporter at Zibo Daily, he and his colleagues rode bicycles to start a border inspection of Zibo. In a village called Shangqueyu, Jiao Bo found his muse who took the picture story.
Shangqueyu is a mountain village with severe water shortages. In the interview, he recalled an elderly old lady. She suffers from high blood pressure, but still has to carry a pot for more than a dozen miles a day to fetch water. The old branch secretary of the village took the villagers to find water for more than 30 years, and he was ashamed until his death. For many years, in order to wait for water, ordinary people have been holding quilts and buckets every night and sleeping by the spring.
Water! water! After the report on "Shangqueyu in The Call" was published, with the help of all parties, the village finally drilled a well. Jiao Bo went to photograph the villagers drinking water and smiling around the well. He followed Lao Zhishu's family to his grave. In the fluttering snowflakes, he tearfully took a photo of his family comforting the old branch with spring water, which was named "Water! water! Drunk on the Bird Yu".
Later, the water in the village was recognized as high-quality mineral water, and a water plant was built, and Jiao Bo wrote "Water! water! Rich on the Quiyu" news report. He still remembers an old lady in her 80s who came up to him trembling and said, "Reporter Jiao, when you retire, we will support you." Jiao Bo smiled and said, "She is in her 80s, I am in my 30s, who feeds whom?" But the simplicity in the words, the kind of heart... Speaking of this, I want to shed tears. ”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jiao Bo was transferred to Beijing and joined the People's Daily. At that time, in order to complete a group of plans to tell the stories of grassroots people, he began to ride a bicycle through the streets and alleys, and determined to shoot the stories of 100 groups of ordinary people. Later, whether it was the cheongsam craftsmen in the hutongs or the last generation of dung diggers in Beijing, his lens recorded more and more stories about the common people.
With a higher stage, Jiao Bo's creative vision is still precipitating downwards. In his opinion, his parents are also the epitome of vivid stories of the people, and during this period he took a large number of photos included in "Daddy and Mother". "At the beginning, it was a very narrow idea, taking more pictures, using the camera to keep my father and mother who are getting old day by day, I didn't want to win awards, I didn't want to be famous, I didn't expect this group of films to finally make me." Jiao Bo said.
Bai Yansong said that there are many Chinese documentaries, but a head-up angle like Jiao Bo is rare, which allows the filmed person to ignore the camera to show the real life normal, which is the skill. It is difficult for professional directors and cameras from the city to integrate into these "lower riba people" and to be accepted by farmers from the heart. Jiao Bo is different, he is a farmer himself, a farmer with ideals, culture and emotions, from the beginning of "Daddy and Mother", his works have been fully integrated with the countryside and villagers, and have never been separated.
Jiao Bo spent 30 years filming "Daddy and Lady", and 10 years filming earthquake orphans. Daddy has left, but Daddy's "Daddy", the Chinese countryside, will always exist. He said: "Maybe one day I will fall on the ground and I will stop my creation." ”
After the Wenchuan earthquake, Jiao Bo took 6 apprentices. "Now I've basically raised them to adulthood, some of them are admitted to the ideal university, and some are still making documentaries with me."
Jiao Bo had always believed that artistic edification was easier to help them complete their psychological construction than reasoning, and he hung the camera on the children's necks, and at that moment, he found that the children let down their guard. After that, Jiao Bo gave them enough tenderness and sincerity. He taught them photography, wanting them to get out of the shadows and open up their world as quickly as possible.
For 10 years, Jiao Bo took a picture of his six children every year. The first year ran from the ruins, the second year the ruins turned into new houses... The word "Chuan" in the title "Endless Streams" refers to Both Sichuan and Wenchuan and Beichuan. According to the pictographic interpretation of the Chinese character, the river has the meaning of water flow and river, which represents the vigorous convergence and endless life of great love.
When Jiao Bo returned to Beijing, he was rare, almost all in the countryside, and his family was used to it. He sometimes split the team in two and made two villages at the same time, and for each film, he would take root in the local area for a year or more. "In my eyes, all ordinary people are so cute, the old people are like my parents, the middle-aged people are like brothers and sisters, and the young people are like my children."
When filming "China in the Countryside", Jiao Bo hung his rented house on No. 168 (a total of 167 households in the village), and ate and lived and worked with the villagers. "Out of the Mountains" and "Into the City" were filmed for four years. Jiao Fluctuating said, "How many four years does a person have in this life?" Suppose one day I am gone, please scatter my ashes to the place where I made the documentary."
A documentary is a subject that is done by both the filmmaker and the filmee. Because of mutual trust, the work was finally achieved.
Children of the Earth
"If one cannot love the land in which one lives, then one's words about loving the country and the like may also be empty – and therefore false." Muir, the founder of American natural literature, once made such a statement, and Jiao Bo put it into practice.
"The countryside is where our emotions begin, and our roots are in the countryside. Documenting changes in the countryside is like recording the life course of a parent. Jiao Bo kept returning to his hometown, hoping that his hometown would become better.
Images, large collections, localities, harvests, tranquility, tranquility... One keyword after another remained in Tianjin Bay on October 27, 2021. "Where to go to the big collection of images, Tianjin Bay, Zibo, China", a sentence shouted by the villagers echoed in the mountains around Tianjin Bay.
"Autumn has arrived, the leaves have yellowed, and it is time to return to my hometown." For this "image collection", Jiao Bo prepared for 13 years. In 2008, Jiao Bo returned to Tianjin Bay and spent two million yuan to contract thousands of acres of barren mountains, planting grain, flowers and fruit trees, and he wanted to green this barren mountain as a return to his hometown as a wanderer who escaped from this land.
After the Spring Festival in 2021, Jiao Bo returned to the village to build roads, dig wells, and tidy up the village, and resolutely prepared for his "big set". "Farmers grow crops in the land, we plant stories in the land." With the image base and the mass base, he felt that the time had come to hold this big gathering.
In his hometown, Jiao Bo released the documentary film "Daddy and Lady", which he has made for more than 30 years, and he wants to make his hometown a movie town. "Let the villagers cut the ribbon for my movie, this is a way for the wanderer to repay his hometown." He laughed.
At that time, 409 meters of red silk was pulled up on Center Street. Why is it so precise? Because, "4" is "yes", which is an auspicious number in the local area. "9" means long-lasting. Two numbers are linked together, which is ironclad for a long time. Jiao Bo did not expect that there would be thousands of people on the scene to participate in the ribbon cutting, waving red silk while cheering.
Fast forward to 1998. Jiao Bo fondly recalled: "That year, my father was 84 years old, my mother was 86 years old, and I had been photographing my parents for 24 years. I want to do a film festival in their lifetime, the theme is called 'Daddy and Li Niang', to be hung in China's highest art hall - the National Art Museum of China. ”
"My father said that he would also climb to Beijing, and after cutting the ribbon for me, this life would be completed." Li Niang came to Beijing with a hanging bottle, and I carried Li Niang down from the train. The next day, my father and mother cut the ribbon for me with scissors brought from home. At that time, Jiao Bo, who was in the exhibition, looked at the photos of the whole room and cried. This moment may have cut the hearts of the children of the whole country, and Jiao Bo felt that he was not acting like a father and a mother, but everyone's father.
From 1998 to 2022, another 24 years have passed, and today's Jiao Bo has completely got rid of the criticism that "Jiao Bo has eaten the bowl of 'Daddy' all his life" in the photography industry.
Two 24 years, two ribbon cutting, Jiao Bo has realized the transformation from shooting Daddy to shooting Daddy's "Daddy".
Of the nearly 900 photographs in the "Video Collection", 200 to 300 were taken by Jiao Bo, and the rest were also the works of photographers from all over the country. These photographs come from the countryside and are back in the countryside.
Here, the progress bar of time can be pulled back to the era of any photo. The video collection is two streets long, the walls are dappled with light and shadow, and the photos span 30 years from black and white to color.
From the trolley to the car, the rush to buy vegetables has become a group purchase from the supermarket, there was no telephone before, and now the elderly are playing with smart phones... The changes of farmers and the countryside are frozen in the photographs, becoming a reproduction of yesterday's history.
"I want to write a history for the countryside and a biography for the peasants." There is no doubt that Jiao Bo's camera will continue to shoot. He deeply understood the peasants represented by his father and mother, measuring the land of China with his feet, looking for answers to how a nation had become modern. He believes that when we understand the countryside, we may be able to better understand China and understand the great era in which we live and the people who are constantly struggling in this hot land.
(Original title: Weekend Character | Documentary Director who Wants to "Write a Biography of History" for Farmers)
Source Beijing Daily client Beijing number
Author of Volkswagen Daily
Process Editor Liu Weili