Author| Mia
"The film takes the daily life of Beijingers as the starting point, turning the charm of Beijing into small details, simple and complex, and telling life and the meaning of life through simple stories."
On April 29, the closing ceremony and award ceremony of the 13th Beijing International Film Festival was held, and the major awards of the main competition "Temple of Heaven Award" were announced. Focusing the camera on Beijing, the Chinese film "Light of the White Tower" shot by director Zhang Lu became the biggest winner, winning five awards in one fell swoop: Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Artistic Contribution. The movie "Punishment" won Best Picture, and the movie "Totem" won Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Music. The Organizing Committee of the Beijing Film Festival specially awarded Zhang Yimou the Lifetime Achievement Award.
For Beijing film fans, the screening session is still a feast of light and shadow, and many fans posted social media essays on the closing day, recalling their own highlights of the Beijing Film Festival. The ticket grabbing battle was staged again, "Tragic City" sold out in 6 seconds, and "If there is love" was sold out in 8 seconds.
For practitioners, a grand event for industry exchanges, recognition, and future direction is crucial. This year, with a total box office of more than 6.7 billion, it entered the Spring Festival file of "the second in Chinese film history", injecting more confidence into the recovery of the industry.
The Beijing Film Festival is a "world map" that takes the audience to appreciate exotic scenery; It is the ladder of progress for creators, awarding medals to young filmmakers and opening up a way for them to rise; At the same time, it is also a bridge, playing an increasingly important role in connecting the industry and the market and helping the construction of a film power through multiple thematic forums.
Intersection and Connection: What kind of Chinese story is needed in the new era?
As the most important media carrier, film can not only witness and record social changes and major events, but also shape the audience's heart and values.
The film of the new era is ushering in changes in all aspects, injecting new vitality into this form, which requires the intersection of cross-border and cross-border, as well as the opening up within the industry, and more importantly, it needs to return to the creative position and conquer the audience with good content. To this end, the Beijing Planning and Theme Forum specially planned three film power forums from the three levels of industry, international cooperation and creation.
To become a strong film country, it is first necessary to open up all links of the industrial chain and "tell Chinese stories well in film language". This is also the theme of the Film Power Industry Forum held on April 23.
"The film is deeply integrated into the real world, career and life, love and hate and resentment, good times and adversity, existence and death, dreams and expectations... All aspects of human life can be reflected and inspired in film, and film has become a world language. Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive, said in his speech that revealed the power of film to break all racial boundaries.
Yuyasu Ando, chairman of the Tokyo International Film Festival, talked about the charm of oriental culture, and affirmed that films or film festivals and exhibitions have a very important responsibility for cultural exchange in the 80s, the climax of Sino-Japanese film exchanges.
Yu Dong, chairman of Bona, said that one thing that needs to be done in the move of a film country to a film power is that the international distribution capacity, export capacity and radiation capacity of Chinese films need to be enhanced, which can be divided into three steps: the first step is to cultivate international buyers and let global buyers come to China to watch and select films. The second step is to actively participate in international co-production, and everyone jointly shows their own market issuance capabilities, pre-sales, investment first, and bundled issuance and interests in advance. The third step is to create a mature international schedule. In addition, it is necessary to establish a good intellectual property protection system related to overseas films, so that Chinese films can go faster, wider and longer.
China Film Fu Ruoqing also shared the experience of overseas distribution of "The Wandering Earth 2", saying that by choosing an overseas professional distribution company, the long-term online release of the film was fully guaranteed.
Senior producer Jiang Zhiqiang emphasized the importance of "scripts", "I have always believed in scripts when making movies, and when the script is done, half of the good movies will come out." American documentary filmmaker and producer Jin Guowei said, "Some stories seem less easy for most people to understand." But as long as you find humanity in it, it can transcend all obstacles. ”
In the collision of ideas and exchanges and learning, film technology has progressed, and a strong film country requires an international vision. Therefore, we set our sights on the "Forum for International Cooperation of Film Powerhouses" held on April 24.
From Sino-foreign co-production to cross-strait cooperation, over the years, film has witnessed countless deep and extensive collisions and blending of values, and film has never been only a commodity or cultural artwork, but also a deeply bound city business card, accelerating mutual exchanges and cultural messengers.
As Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association, said, in the post-epidemic era, human beings may face more international disputes and conflicts, and the more this time, the more the need for film to become a bridge for mutual learning between civilizations. "On the one hand, the film allows people to see the differences in life, culture and values of various countries, but it will also express common topics such as freedom, equality, and care for the disadvantaged groups at the bottom, and these commonalities are the driving force for the future development of human civilization."
Yang Xianghua, President of iQIYI Film and Overseas Business Group, mentioned that iQIYI's layout in this regard has gone through three stages: bringing in excellent foreign films, going out, and shooting internationally. "Since 2019, iQIYI has established sites in Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and North America, and now more than 190 countries can download the iQIYI APP, which has many Chinese movies." In reality, the Internet can become a channel for Chinese films to go overseas. "We deeply feel that foreign audiences are becoming more and more interested in Chinese films, and they are very curious about China's traditional culture and why China has developed so rapidly over the years. We thought that all the overseas users of iQIYI were Chinese, but we found that the vast majority were foreigners, for example, in the United States, 90% of iQIYI's audience is English-speaking. ”
At the forum, Chen Sicheng, the director of the "Detective Chinatown" series and the "Manslaughter" series of international co-productions, shared the creative experience of the "Detective Chinatown" series. Therefore, the new work "Detective Chinatown 4" may have a major adjustment, "I want to shoot a 1900 'Tang Detective'. As for "Manslaughter 3", Chen Sicheng said that he is still considering filming in Thailand.
At the forum, Zhao Fangzhao, President of Warner Bros. Discovery Group China, shared Warner's previous success stories in Sino-US co-productions: "The most typical one is "Megalodon", which achieved a box office of one billion yuan when released in China, achieving a double harvest of word-of-mouth box office, which was difficult to imagine before. At the same time, Ms. Zhao Fang also shared Warner's valuable experience in releasing the film "Detective Chinatown 2" in North America in 2018, and she emphasized that in the future, Warner will continue to strengthen content cooperation with the Chinese film industry, continue to explore new ways of international cooperation, and revealed that "Megalodon 2" has now completed filming and is expected to be released globally this summer.
Wang Zhonglei, CEO of Huayi Brothers, said that it is advisable to learn from and copy past successful experiences, and cooperate with neighboring countries, neighbors and countries along the "Belt and Road" to open a new round of cultural mutual learning.
Creation is supreme, and streaming media and AIGC return to its original intention
In a film powerhouse, creation is the root and source, and realism has become a banner raised in creation in recent years. Practitioners no longer set their sights on the ethereal, but bowed to the pawns of peddlers and pulp sellers. A vegetable and a meal, the fireworks of the world, hide the deepest context of the times.
Singaporean director Tan Cheol-yi, who has filmed "Tropical Rain" and "Mom and Dad Are Not Home", believes that creators should not repeat the themes expressed before, but should constantly challenge new possibilities. From the plot tension and form changes, how to interpret people's posture, emotions and states is interpreted. "Good filmmakers should always be humble." Observing the details of chance encounters in life is more conducive to creative inspiration, and creators can only make the film characters fuller by adhering to the "human"-oriented creative method.
Director Dapeng (Dong Chengpeng) talked about his starting point with comedy, combined with his own personal experience, from "Auspicious Ruyi" to the recently released "Keep You Safe", which originated from the news that a girl was plagued by rumors. These films are all civilian perspectives, but they are deeply concerned with reality and have their own emotional temperature, and he explains why he creates around small people: he has a variety of identity roles, from media workers to film practitioners, and has witnessed the various faces of practitioners in different industries, so he pays special attention to the ordinary people around him.
The famous actor Tan Zhuo talked about how he created characters closer to reality in "Mr. Hello Tree" and "I Am Not the God of Medicine", and incarnated as this character, director Lu Yang combined his "Embroidered Spring Knife" and "Assassination of a Novelist" to point out that excellent film works need the sincere attitude of the creator: "We are clear about the difficulty of creating excellent film works, and we must have a reverence for movies. ”
It seems appropriate for the Beijing Film Festival to organize and discuss where young people's creations should go, and the film "Look at the Bridge" shortlisted for the main competition unit is from the past Beijing Film Festival venture capital, and director Gu Xiaogang, who won the "Special Award" of the 8th Beijing Film Festival Project with "Spring River Plumbing", returns to the Beijing Film Festival as a venture capital jury this time. This year's Beijing Film Festival theme short film "Spring Day Big Order" was recently released, directed by young director Xu Lei, and his first theatrical feature film "Sherlock on the Plain" was incubated by the Beijing Film Festival venture capital project. The "return" in the Beijing Film Festival is not only the performance of the achievements of the Beijing Film Festival and the directors and the feedback of the creators, but also the expression of the continuous growth of the Beijing Film Festival and the attraction and aggregation of young creative forces.
The sharing of famous directors in the master class also confirms the power of civilian perspective, realism and national inheritance. Zhang Yimou, chairman of this year's jury, brought a "Manjiang Red" with a box office of 4.544 billion in the Spring Festival file. As a costume film, the film still has strong emotions that inspire patriotic feelings at the moment. With the suspense genre as the shell and cultural inheritance as the inside, the protagonist is no longer a big hero, but a few small soldiers, desperate for a poem. In addition, the insistence on using brush font titles, adopting chapter narratives, and adding Yu opera music in film creation highlights Zhang Yimou's concept of emphasizing that film creation should highlight his own cultural characteristics, which makes the film "have a special Chinese cultural feeling from an international point of view" in cross-cultural communication.
In several other master class sharing, German director Donas Marck started from the set, screenwriting, performance, lines, etc., defining the director's work as a "walking detective", whose main job is to carefully observe the process and scene, like a lie detector, always detect whether the entire film creation process maintains sufficient authenticity. Hong Kong director Yang Fan shared his life experience, and the experience of artistic creation was condensed into the adherence to "truthfulness, goodness and beauty": "To be a person must be true, the vision must be beautiful, and the heart must be good." ”
From the voices of the above-mentioned forums from all parties, it is not difficult to interpret the true power of "film power": from the perspective of civilians, taking national cultural inheritance as the core, with an international vision, using realistic creative techniques to promote the "rise of Chinese films" and enhance cultural self-confidence. The Beijing Film Festival is a stage where the above ideas meet, and it also reflects many of the latest creative trends.
Of course, the "seventh art" is also facing the impact from streaming media, the competition for entertainment time and viewing habits from short videos, and the challenge from artificial intelligence.
On April 27, director Ceylon spoke about the impact of the streaming era at the Beijing International Film Festival master class: "Movies still have to go to the cinema, it allows the audience to see themselves in this lonely experience... While digital screens are evolving rapidly, cinema is a stand-alone existence that will continue. Now it seems that directors all over the world have to make digital screen productions (i.e. streaming film and TV productions), but I still insist on creating films for theater viewing environments, which I will not give up. ”
In the face of the impact of films in the AIGC era, the substitution of industrial chain jobs, the possible infringement disputes and ethical issues caused by fragmented collage, Zhang Yimou said that he could not give a definite answer, "In the long run, I am optimistic; But from the stage point of view, it is difficult to say. ”
It has been more than 100 years since its birth, and film continues to absorb the advantages and grow from other art categories, but also inspires other arts, and all challenges also contain new opportunities. As Zhang Yimou, chairman of the jury of the 13th Beijing International Film Festival "Temple of Heaven Award", said: "Film practitioners do not have to worry too much about the future prospects, each of us do our best, love movies wholeheartedly, when everyone thinks like this, everyone does this, the market trend will be great, the future will be bright." ”