Jiao Bo and His Father are together
Jobo and his rural image
In a village called "Tianjin Bay" in Zibo, Shandong Province, the "China Tianjin Bay Rural Image Collection" recently opened. Hundreds of meters of red silk flutter along the main road in the village, bustling with tourists, and the peaceful village is particularly lively. Old photographs on the walls lining the main roads in the village, as dazzling as the goods of the rural market town, attract people to stop and appreciate, and make people dizzying. These photographs are the photographs of top domestic photographers focusing on contemporary Chinese rural life. At the opening ceremony of the old opera stage in the village, the opening song and dance of the unique Dong nationality song attracted people from outside the village to catch the market. The elaborate cultural gathering has finally begun, and Tianjin Bay will be built into a future image town. The founder of tianjin bay rural video collection is the documentary filmmaker Jiao Bo. This village called Tianjin Bay is where Jiao Bo filmed "Daddy and Lady". With the unique tenacity of a farmer, Jiao Bo followed and photographed his parents for 30 years, and later produced the documentary "Daddy and Mother" until the death of his parents. At this time, Jiao Bo built his own emotional structure and cultural foundation by leaving images for his parents. Later, his perspective shifted from his father and mother to the boundless rural land, and then paid attention to the rural social changes that occurred on the rural land, especially the cultural changes in the rural social changes. This process hides the cultural code of "the unity of home and country".
In 2012, Jiao Bo's "China in the Countryside" was a theatrical documentary with great social influence. Jiao Bo lived for a year in a village near his hometown, documenting the state and changes of the village. This creative method is the current fashionable film and television anthropology shooting method. But at that time, Jiao Bo entered this village not by the discipline of anthropology, but by a heavy affection for the land and hometown. The title of the film contains a precursor to cultural self-consciousness, allowing people to see the long-lost scene of rural China in the theater. Ordinary Chinese rural narratives unexpectedly converge into a thick nostalgia, conveying a subtle and moving Chinese expression, which seems to have the power of ten thousand jun. The sentiment of being pro-farmer and loving farmers not only conveys the traditional Chinese "farming" idea at the image level, but also reflects a new "Chinese view" brewing in a mainstream culture. Du Shenzhong, a character in the documentary, is deeply favored by Jiao Bo, who makes this seemingly long-lived rural cultural person a visual center, and the image of the peasant reflects the unique texture and brilliance given by the land. This image is likely to be a portrayal of Jiao Bo's own identity. Jiao Bo pays attention to the still water and deep currents in rural culture, believing that it is related to the more lasting and stable people's hearts in the big era, and is a more decisive source of culture for China's future.
Jiao Bo's documentary is sensitive to reality, and he listens to the call of the times. In the long-term creation of rural images, Jiao Bo gradually formed his own cultural identity as a "farmer director": "Farmers grow crops in the land, we plant stories in the land".
In recent years, the image of rural areas has gradually got rid of the marginal status determined by the path of industrialization and urbanization development, and the policy propositions on rural development such as "socialist new countryside", "beautiful countryside", "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains", "remembering homesickness" have been continuously explained in depth, rewriting the social and cultural image of rural areas, until the rural revitalization strategy is proposed and formally implemented, the rural cultural image has been fundamentally changed, and the countryside has the potential to face the future. Therefore, for some time, rural writing has become a way of healing the shortcomings of modernization, and the images of rural cultural heritage themes have been supplied and sold for a while. Rural revitalization and its cultural construction are increasingly of significance in the choice of national paths, and how to carry out cultural revitalization in rural revitalization has quickly become a common concern of the whole society. In this context, rural images have a different social significance and cultural function.
Jiao Bo's documentary "Out of the Mountains", a documentary on the main theme of the poverty alleviation in Wuchuan And Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou, was released in 2018. This is the first work created by Jiao Bo on poverty alleviation and rural revitalization to be released in theaters. "Out of the Mountains" records the development and change of a rural area in western China within one year, which has enlightening significance for showing the social changes in rural China, and shows that rural images have begun to regain the function of carrying the core concerns of society. In the past rural images, sometimes see the image of foolish, poor, weak and selfish Chinese peasants, Jiao Bo shows his consciousness of rural cultural construction in this film. Through the recording of two villager families, the film truly explains the "people-based policies" in targeted poverty alleviation, and also shows two completely different concepts of rural development. The director seems to be more fond of sticking to the path of the land in "Out of the Mountains", because the land of the ancestors has reserved more possibilities for cultural inheritance. Jiao Bo used a considerable amount of ink to show how peasant families who were not eligible for relocation adapted to the times and achieved rapid development under policy support, and the surrounding cultural environment was also improved. When the road was opened, the son who worked outside the home returned to his hometown and brought back his daughter-in-law. The prosperity of the family suddenly makes the protagonist sweep away his sadness and anger. At the old father's birthday feast, he invited the master to dance; at his son's wedding, he was sincerely grateful to the leader. Grassroots organizations have helped the poor under the guidance of policies, which has not only improved the lives of farmers, but also enabled rural culture to be unexpectedly repaired. At this time, the countryside was no longer isolated from the outside world, and it formed a good economic and cultural interaction relationship with contemporary urban life. The cultivation of rural culture and ecology is as important as the policy of rural social development. In rural China, the restoration and return of this cultural ecology requires the presence of the state.
Poster of "Out of the Mountains"
The story of the relocated protagonist was left to another subsequent documentary, "Into the City". The author is sensitive to this cultural migration of "pulling out turnips and bringing out the mud". The relocation of the family gives these villagers the right to change their lives again, but the adaptive transformation of culture is something they must face. Compared with the relocation that appeared in "Out of the Mountains", Jiao Bo's new film "Old Nest" tells the story of the "nearest relocation" of a Lisu village in Yunnan. The new home is government-funded and sits on a mountainside with better transportation and safer living. Because this area was once the poorest and most backward area in Yunnan and even the whole country, the ecological environment is inherently extremely fragile, the terrain in the area is strongly cut, the fault activity is dense, and the rainfall is abundant, which is a high incidence area of natural disasters such as mudslides, landslides, wind and hail, rain and snow. The topography of Laowo Village has been fully expressed in the film. For Laowo Village, although most of the villagers are looking forward to relocation, the process is a traumatic and sentimental cultural adaptation process, and the film also records a lot of anthropological and ethnological content, which constitutes another important value of the film. The film not only records the reality of poverty alleviation at present, but also preserves the historical relics that would have died silently.
Poster of "Into the City"
In Jiao Bo's works, there are group portraits of grassroots rural cadres. Zhang Zien in "China in the Countryside", Shen Xiujun, the village party secretary in "The Record of The Mountain", and Zhu Xianxing in "The Great Song", are all very down-to-earth images of grass-roots cadres, who use different strategies to publicize the policy of rural revitalization, skillfully use the country's modern discourse when mobilizing, and sometimes use family affection and nostalgia, and strive to promote economic development and change in the countryside while constantly adjusting various relations. Grassroots government cadres are not only the organizers of economic life, but also play a key role in the restoration of rural culture and ecology. Grassroots organizations also need to use the power of rural culture to promote the development and change of this land that echoes the big times. Guizhou has been at the forefront of the country in this regard, and the institutional construction of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization has formed a microclimate in Guizhou. The famous "Tangyue Road" has attracted the attention of sociologists and rural construction experts, and has provided a clear model for the development of poverty alleviation in China's vast rural areas.
"The Great Song" records how the social life of Huanggang Village, a Dong village in Guizhou, has been renewed in the context of rural revitalization. There are two important characters in "The Great Song" - Zhu Xianxing and Wu Chenglong, and the typical characters in these two typical environments are very valuable. This is a combination of the government intervention force and the endogenous force of traditional villages in rural revitalization. In fact, under the rural revitalization policy, the government has played a role in positioning and leading, the current government positioning of rural revitalization includes industry, talent, culture, ecology, organization and other "five revitalization", Zhu Xianxing's image concentrates on the "organizational revitalization" in rural revitalization, this image is of typical significance in thousands of villages in China that implement the rural revitalization strategy, and also reflects the experience of China's rural revitalization that distinguishes it from poverty alleviation in other parts of the world - institutional elements. The presence of the government is first of all to build a platform, the platform is not only economic, but also includes social relations, social interactions, social connections, etc. The more and more frequent such connections, the more conducive to the unity and benign development of rural society. "The Great Song" has not only the value of recording, but also the value of discovering and exploring the way. It is closer to the theme of rural revitalization, and the rural revitalization strategy needs to go beyond the inherent narrative framework of poverty alleviation and show China's unique development concept and path exploration in the new historical development stage. From the film, it can be seen that Huanggang Village has active social growth under the mobilization of rural revitalization policies. How the government intervention forces and the endogenous forces of traditional villages produce chemical reactions, and the process of continuous debugging and transformation of endogenous social development dynamics is very fascinating. Finally, the film presents an almost idealized form of rural social development.
The film shows the valuable social construction process of traditional villages at the national level. From the perspective of national conditions and national fortunes, the connotation of rural revitalization must be a kind of social re-construction under the situation of deep adjustment of the global pattern, which transcends the limitations of only attaching importance to market economic construction in the past, connects social construction and cultural construction with various new situations, and forms a new social texture, and various government-involved social construction forces are no longer suspended on it, but reengineering the entire society, and forming a positive and dynamic promotion of the existing mainstream society. Become a revolutionary force in China's road exploration. The cross-editing of these two key figures in "Big Song" also reveals the important position and positive function of "organizational revitalization" and "cultural revitalization" in rural revitalization, especially the latter is a difficult problem in rural revitalization.
Rural revitalization is the huangzhong dalu of the times, and it is the real "big song" in the minds of the Dong people. The significance of Huanggang Village's "out of the circle" is to prove that economic revitalization and cultural revitalization can go hand in hand in rural revitalization, and to explore the idealized model of rural revitalization. The rural revitalization strategy proposed by the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China has outlined a beautiful blueprint for rural development of "industrial prosperity, ecological livability, rural style civilization, effective governance, and affluent life", at present, "rural revitalization" has become a high-frequency word that is concerned and warmly discussed throughout the country, and Jiao Bo's rural image can be described as a timely time. For china now and in the future, rural development will have more significant political, economic and cultural impact than ever before, and in such a social environment, Jiao Bo's rural image industry will surely undertake more missions and further flourish.
(Author: Hu Puzhong, Professor, College of Literature, Capital Normal University)