What is youth?
Is it love? Is it rock? Or do you know that you are tired and still won't stop the yearning?
Maybe everyone has a different definition of youth, or maybe many people still don't know how to explain "youth", but we will always remember those who can't talk and get tired of watching.
Recently, a program about "Youth" was broadcast on Youku, "Remembering Youth", which took us to regain our memories of youth.
And this "youth no more" youth leader is our protagonist today.
Zhang Aijia
Born in 1953, she is now 68 years old, but she is still young.
Using "endless flow" to summarize her debut for nearly fifty years, the most appropriate thing is that she began to "toss" when she was a teenager, and she has not stopped today.
In 1972, 19-year-old Zhang Aijia returned from the United States and joined the famous Hong Kong performance company "Jiahe", and in the same year she starred in her first film, "Dragon Tiger King Kong" (1973) directed by Luo Wei.
The 1970s and 1980s were the era when martial arts films were popular.
The protagonists in the film are always men who can fight and kick, and the women who are bound by the traditional concepts of "quietness" and "elegance" can only serve as a background board in the movie.
From the first play, Zhang Aijia, as a newcomer, knew that if she wanted to get ahead in such a big environment, she had to learn more knowledge (including some fist and foot kung fu).
In 1976, Zhang Aijia starred with Lin Fengjiao and Qin Han in Li Xing's "Biyuntian", which won the 13th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards Outstanding Feature Film Award, and Zhang Aijia herself won the Best Supporting Actress.
In 1977, she partnered with Lin Qingxia and co-starred in Li Hanxiang's Huangmei opera film "Dream of the Red Chamber".
In the production tidbits, director Li Hanxiang once said: It was originally Zhang Aijia who played Jia Baoyu in reverse, but after the two leading actors came to the set, the director found that Lin Qingxia was one head higher than Zhang Aijia, and finally Zhang Aijia turned to play the role of Lin Daiyu.
This seemingly inadvertent act has made another good story.
Lin Daiyu, a brave young girl who dared to pursue individual liberation and love freedom in the feudal era, is coinciding with Zhang Aijia, who lived in the 70s, but went her own way and loved freedom.
In 1981, Zhang Aijia starred in the movie "My Grandfather", and won the Best Actress Award at the 18th Golden Horse Awards for the role of Xu Yizhen.
In 1989, Zhang Aijia and Zhou Runfa starred in the film "The Story of Ah Lang" directed by Du Qifeng.
In "The Story of Ah Lang", "BoBo" played by Zhang Aijia and "Ah Lang" played by Zhou Runfa re-resolve to love each other and face life together after experiencing changes in the world, but Ah Lang died unexpectedly.
The film is full of sadness and warmth, attracting a large number of audiences to watch, and finally the film broke the record of the 1989 Hong Kong literary and art film with a box office of 30 million.
Subsequently, she moved the focus of her career back to Taiwan, and successively discovered and starred in some classic films, such as Yang Dechang's "A Day on the Beach", Ang Lee's "Eating Men and Women" and so on.
She herself has also received the highest recognition of Chinese film awards in the acting industry , namely best actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards and best actress at the Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards.
On the road of actors, in addition to talent, Zhang Aijia relies on the never-ending youthful vitality.
In 1983, yang Dechang directed "A Day on the Beach", Zhang Aijia played the role of Lin Jiali
The shooting of one movie after another has given her a deeper understanding of the show business circle, and she has also found many unsatisfactory places.
For example, most of the directors who dominated the society at that time were men, and the female characters in the films of male directors were mostly watched through the male perspective, and it was very rare to truly understand and care for women from the female perspective.
So she decided to try to become a director herself.
Many people have described the actor Zhang Aijia as follows: "Debut is the peak, never stepped off the altar."
In the first few years of her debut, she had already cooperated with the best film directors in Hong Kong and Taiwan at that time: Li Hanxiang, Hu Jinquan, Li Xing and others.
In Jiao Xiongping's talk show "Focus", Zhang Aijia mentioned that from them, she learned not only the techniques of film shooting, but more importantly, she obtained a spirit of loving movies and dedicating herself to movies from them.
At the same time, she also learned how to be a good director.
For example, she believes that when director Bai Jingrui teaches actors to act, he usually talks to the actors carefully and will give out all the things he wants to convey.
Zhang Aijia believes that such a way of directing plays is actually a restriction for actors, so later when she directs plays, she usually leaves more room for actors to play freely.
In 1987, Zhang Aijia was nominated for Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards and Best Director at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan for her self-written and self-directed "The Favourite", the first time she was nominated for the Golden Horse Awards as a director.
The film mainly tells the story of two old friends, who have been in love with each other for more than twenty years, but because of men and secretly calculated, in the film, Zhang Aijia put Bai Yun's uncontrollable love for her friend's husband, but out of various restrictions and could not be fulfilled, the hidden tolerance showed just right.
In the following ten years, Zhang Aijia's works continued to increase and were widely praised by the public.
When she was young, Zhang Aijia was particularly keen to photograph love, and she hoped to retain the purest love of this era with images.
With this in mind, in 1999, Zhang Aijia filmed "Heartbeat", a pure love film that won her the Best Screenplay Award at the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards.
In "Heartbeat", Haojun, played by Jin Chengwu, and Xiao Rou, played by Liang Yongqi, staged a love affair spanning decades.
In addition to her dedication to love shooting, Zhang Aijia is also particularly persistent about casting.
After the script was written, the only male protagonist in her mind was Jin Chengwu, if Jin Chengwu did not have a schedule, she also had to wait until he had a schedule, if he did not have a schedule after ten years, then the film would not be made.
It is this dedication to the story and casting that "Heartbeat" is still a name that people will think of when they mention romance films.
With the experience of the years, Zhang Aijia herself has also experienced life changes such as marriage, divorce, and remarriage, and her vision of filming has gradually changed from love to family affection.
In 2016, Zhang Aijia went north to Henan to shoot "Love and Affection", which she believes is more grounded than any film, and can better reflect the real survival dilemma faced by people at that time.
In "Love and Affection", Zhang Aijia and Tian Zhuangzhuang play a middle-aged couple who are facing problems at their respective stages of life.
The English name of "Love and Affection" is "love education", that is, "love education", the transformation from love to family affection, which is a compulsory course for everyone's life, and it is a necessary cultivation at different ages.
In addition to the actor and director, Zhang Aijia also hides another more surprising identity - the filmmaker.
From producer to producer to producer, to the chairman of the Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards, Zhang Aijia's identity is ever-changing, and almost all the best directors, actors, and filmmakers of that era have cooperated with her.
She is discerning and happy to provide opportunities for newcomer directors.
As early as 1979, she participated in the production of Director Hui Anhua's debut film "Crazy Robbery", which won the first place in the "Top Ten Chinese Films of 1979" and was regarded as one of the pioneers and masterpieces of the new wave of Hong Kong cinema.
Seeing that Hong Kong cinema has undergone revolutionary changes, Zhang Aijia began to expect taiwanese films to gain new vitality as well.
In 1983, Zhang Aijia became the director of the Taiwan branch of New Art City Film in Hong Kong, trying to promote the policy of literary and artistic films and change the prevailing business atmosphere at that time.
The film was too expensive to shoot, so she decided to experiment with the policy of cinematography, starting with short tv films.
One day by chance, Zhang Aijia flipped through a book called "Eleven Women" in the bookstore, and she immediately thought of using this as a base point to start the implementation of TV cinematography.
So she mobilized all the film resources at that time and sought a group of cutting-edge film directors such as Yang Dechang and Ke Yizheng to shoot different short films of this TV series.
In this way, this TV series later deeply influenced the unit drama of Taiwanese films, so that a group of workers who advocated film and television all saw the possibility of making new films in Taiwan, and a large number of filmmakers began to devote themselves to the creation of new films.
In 1982, "The Story of Time" came out, and this platter-style film directed by Yang Dechang, Ke Yizheng, Tao Dechen and Zhang Yi was regarded as the beginning of a new Taiwanese film.
Subsequently, films such as "A Day on the Beach" and "Love Wind and Dust" were born one after another, and these films are still the peak of Taiwanese films.
Unconsciously, the name Zhang Aijia has been engraved in the genes of Hong Kong and Taiwan films for nearly forty years, and even those filmmakers in the golden age of Hong Kong cinema that we are familiar with, such as Andy Lau, Li Ming, and Wang Zuxian, are her juniors.
But she has never been abandoned by the times, she can always walk ahead of the times and cooperate with the best filmmakers of this era.
Today, she is no longer the rebellious girl who walks the streets of the United States, wearing a miniskirt and marching with hippies.
On her face, there is more of a precipitate of years, but she is still the adventurer who can communicate with young people without boundaries and is keen on new things.
In the premiere of "Nian Nian Youth" on July 28, she was called "Sister Zhang", who was intellectually generous and willing to listen to the different interpretations of her youth by young people, and at the same time, she could calmly face her own youth that had quietly passed away.
Some people think that people of their generation have been on the stage long enough, but Zhang Aijia, 68, thinks that she is far from enough.
When it comes to retirement, she pulls out a small pile of cardboards from a drawer filled with inspirations that she flashes at any moment.
"There are so many precious memory fragments that have not been revealed, and I have more possibilities to explore in the future."
Smiling innocently, she said so.
Zhang Aijia, who always has love in this way, is perfectly interpreting what is the real "youth".
*Author: L