The village in "Out of the Mountains".
Jiao Bo, who filmed "Into the City" in Zunyi. All courtesy of respondents
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Beijing, 11 Dec (Xinhua) -- On 11 December, the Xinhua Daily Telegraph published a report entitled "'Farmer Director' Focuses on Daddy's 'Daddy': From 'Daddy's Mother' and 'China in the Countryside' to Poverty Alleviation, Documentary Filmmaker Jiao Bo Records China's Countryside and Peasants with Affection."
Jiao Bo was anxious.
The 64-year-old documentary filmmaker, who is widely regarded as the best at filming the countryside and the peasants, has been busy rushing to various "battlefields" for the past five years, using the lens to absorb the footage of a big "battle".
He felt that the time was not for me, and the age was not with me.
Anyone who knows Jiao Bo a little knows that he is the most "lavish" kind of creator who uses his time.
He spent 30 years shooting "Daddy and Lady", leaving more than 12,000 photos and more than 600 hours of images for his parents, and he also spent 10 years shooting "The River Flows Endlessly", recording the post-earthquake youth of several Wenchuan orphans. Since the beginning of February 2012, 56-year-old Jiao Bo and five young people with an average age of 21 years have lived in an ordinary northern village for 373 days, and filmed "China in the Countryside", which won more than 20 documentary awards such as the Huabiao Award, the Magnolia Award, the Golden Rooster Award, and the China Documentary Academy Award Jury Award, which was the first time he appeared in public as a documentary director rather than a photographer.
Since then, Jiao Bo has almost "disappeared" from the city. His footprints are embedded in the dirt roads of many villages in Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places.
Four-fifths of the year, he is not at home in Beijing, and the family is a little helpless about this: "I am used to it." ”
In addition to going out to the mountains to receive an award and participate in several activities, his peers are not easy to catch him. Sometimes, he bubbled up in the WeChat circle of friends after a long time, saying that it was "breathable", and when it was over, he wanted to "continue to be incognito busy with some things, neglect contact, please forgive friends."
"I just want to grab more shots, you relax a little, and the time will pass." What he wants to shoot is an unprecedented "battle" in human history - China's poverty alleviation battle.
A few years ago, a fan friend forwarded a post to Jiao Bo, saying that in 2020, tens of millions of poor people in China will walk out of the mountains, "Oh, this is the great migration!" I haven't experienced any of those big moves in history, and I must shoot them this time. I've always been interested in documenting the big events of the times, and in big events, a lot of stories happen. Jiao Bo said.
Coincidentally, after watching "China in the Countryside", the director of the Propaganda Department of the Zunyi Municipal Party Committee in Guizhou Province was deeply moved, and he contacted Jiao Bo and invited him to Zunyi to shoot the process of poverty alleviation, and Jiao Bo quickly agreed and proposed to go to extremely poor townships and towns to shoot the most difficult places. In this regard, he was unable to get out on the road to poverty alleviation.
Some people questioned whether Jiao Bo was singing praises to the government with documentaries. "I said this attitude is not right, such a big thing, such a battle is not filmed, as a documentary person is too dereliction of duty, in the future want to go to such a battlefield will be gone, including many traditional villages, will never be able to shoot again."
The village changes every day, and Jiao Bo is eager to remember history with his lens and participate in this change in the mud. "Be fast, keep up with the pace of poverty alleviation, like filming "Daddy and Mother", hurry up to shoot, to grab, to retain, and then slowly polish."
At that time, Jiao Bo's photos of his parents were concerned by readers across the country, Bai Yansong came to his home for an interview, Jiao Bo mentioned that in addition to taking pictures, he also wanted to shoot some videos for his elderly parents, Bai Yansong said, "You hurry up and shoot, and if you don't shoot, it will be gone", which prompted Jiao Bo to borrow money to buy the first digital video camera.
At the end of 2020, at the end of the battle against poverty, Jiao Bo reviewed the shooting in the circle of friends for 5 years, and there were 9 documentary films directly related to poverty alleviation: "Out of the Mountains", "Into the City", "Planting Melons", "Taobao Village", "Mass Village", "Nectarine Sister", "Old Nest", "Big Song", and "The Water of the Yellow River Comes up in the sky". "Documentary films help poverty alleviation, we participate, we experience, we harvest, we have no regrets."
On November 23, Guizhou Province announced that the last nine remaining counties were withdrawn from the list of poor counties. So far, all 832 poverty-stricken counties in China have been lifted out of poverty.
At the same moment, Jiao Bo's team nestled in Laowo Village, Lanping County, Nujiang Prefecture, Yunnan Province, busy finishing the documentary "Laowo".
(Subtitle) From shooting Daddy to Filming Daddy's "Daddy"
I don't know when Jiao Bo has the title of "Farmer Director".
On the one hand, it is because 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 a peasant, even if he has lived in the city for decades, he will say that he is a farmer, "and I feel more and more so."
He quite likes the title, saying that it is "Ya number" and "laurel", to cherish it forever, and to insist on planting stories in the soil - no matter which film is filmed, The Jiaobo team has someone to shoot locally for at least a year, just like farmers planting crops in the soil.
Jiao Bo himself grew out of the dirt.
He was born in Zibo, Shandong Province, in a village called Tianjin Bay. The father is a carpenter in the village, after reading 4 years of private school, the Analects are like a stream, and he will tell his son the truth of life, for example, "sawing one saw and one saw pulling", it is easy to pull a big saw, but learning carpenters must first pull a big saw for 3 years, in order to use 3 years to grind a solid character. Another example is, "water bubbles down the wall", which is the popular saying of water droplet stone wear.
The mother is only 1 meter 41 tall, wrapped in small feet, but can push the stone grinding that can be pushed by the two or three children in the family, and grind the pancake noodles before dawn so that the children can sleep more. Jiao Bo asked his mother, how did you finish pushing alone? What were you thinking when you pushed? The mother said that she didn't think about anything, just holding the grinding stick and moving forward hard, and taking one step is not one step less.
"The wise are in the folk. The peasants are not as ignorant as some people think, and their thinking on the land is not the same as what we think in the office, but it is very vivid and vivid. I love the countryside, and I especially want to give the peasants a monument to tell everyone what contemporary farmers are like. Jiao Bo said, "I think some of the spirit of Chinese farmers is exactly what the times need." ”
In 1988, Jiao Bo worked as a reporter in Zibo Daily, and for the first time, he took a picture story about a seriously water-scarce mountain village called Shangqueyu, where ordinary people for many years slept by the spring every night in order to wait for water.
After the report was published, with the help of all parties, the village finally opened the well, Jiao Bo went to shoot the villagers grunting and drinking water, laughing around the well, and there was an old lady in her 80s, trembling weiwei, who came to thank him and said: "Jiao reporter, when you retire, we will support you." ”
"She's in her 80s, I'm in my 30s, who feeds whom?" But the simplicity in the words, the kind of heart... She wasn't saying 'Hello, thank you', she was saying 'We feed you', and I wanted to shed tears when I said that. Jiao Bo said, "I am like this, my feelings for the land, the countryside, and the people are getting thicker and thicker." ”
Later, Jiao Bo was transferred to Beijing and entered the People's Daily. With a higher stage, his creative vision is still precipitating downwards, from the "folk diplomats" in the hutongs to the last generation of dung workers in Beijing, he shoots a large number of stories of the people, and at the same time, he continues to shoot "Daddy and Lady".
"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." This group of photographs has brought him various awards and attentions at home and abroad.
Years later, when Daddy was gone, Jiao Bo began photographing Daddy's "Daddy", the Chinese countryside.
In 2012, he received a "propositional essay" from Zhang Hongsen, then deputy director of the Film Bureau of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Feeling the impact of farming culture and the disappearance of the countryside, Zhang Hongsen hopes that someone can go to the countryside for a year and make a rural documentary film that can enter the theater, which is the later "China in the Countryside".
Given the cost, difficulty of operation, and commercial value, the project was shelved for several years before Jiao Bo took over, and it was also asserted that it was impossible to complete. "We think of Jiao Bo and think he's the only one who can do it." Producer Gao Feng said that although Jiao Bo was still a photo photographer with little experience in making documentaries at the time.
Starting from the village of his hometown, Jiao Bo photographed more and more villages, and he found that "Daddy will finish filming, but Daddy's 'Daddy' will never finish shooting, the countryside is each of our daddies, is the root of the Chinese nation." ”
In the village, he can always shoot the "plot" that the screenwriters can't imagine, shoot the characters that the old drama bones can't play, and shoot the words that people have never heard but hit people's hearts.
Writer Cheng Shaowu feels that the people's nature that has been implemented throughout Jiao Bo's works is reminiscent of Du Fu, "From Du Fu's poems, we can see the changes in society and the sufferings of the people, so we call his poems 'poetry history', and Jiao Bo is like Du Fu in the image world." ”
It is not easy to get out of the mountains, and it is even more difficult to enter the city
"I'm not satisfied! I know the level of each of you, I have always said that the poverty alleviation has reached the most arduous time, and our film has also reached the most arduous time, how many times can life be beaten? We are fortunate to participate in the battlefield of poverty alleviation, just like Dong Cunrui blew up the bunker and Huang Jiguang blocked the gun hole! ”
This is what Jiao Bo said when summarizing the progress of work with several team members in the middle of filming "Old Nest", which sounds like wartime mobilization, and he does regard filming poverty alleviation as a hard battle.
Laowo Village, a Lisu village, is located on Laowo Mountain at an altitude of more than 4,300 meters, with extremely closed traffic and frequent mudslides during the rainy season. This is a "straight over the nationality" village, that is, after the founding of New China, directly from the primitive society across several social forms to the socialist society of the national village, the villagers here still maintain a isolated quaint way of life and national culture.
In the fall of 2019, the film crew went into the village to shoot. This summer, the villagers collectively relocated to Laowo New Village, which became one of the last traditional villages in China to disappear.
Jiao Bo entered the old nest and crawled into the ground with a rolling belt. Fellow young people photographed him walking into the mountain for two hours, stopping with a wooden cane, against his sweat-soaked wet hair, desperately gasping for breath. At that time, his interstitial pneumonia did not get better for a long time, and at high altitudes, his chest always felt stuffy. In the face of mudslides, large stones rolled down, he and the post-80s and post-90s partners in the team shouted to each other to go fast and go fast, and he was vaguely worried that he would "die in Laowoshan".
After entering the village, Jiao Bo looked at the material every night, combed the story line, often saw one or two o'clock in the morning, got up at six or seven o'clock in the morning, continued to fight, and counted down every day, "The village is about to be demolished, I must confirm as soon as possible what content is missing, and shoot it back before it completely disappears." ”
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 ethnic song inheritance site in Guizhou. "In the 5 years of poverty alleviation, I want to photograph as many different places as possible to see the different poverty alleviation processes of different ethnic groups, different lifestyles, and different villages under different conditions." Jiao Bo said.
He photographed Dinglou Village, a "Taobao village" in Heze, Shandong Province, to see how a group of ordinary farmers in a once poor village rode the waves of the Internet. "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.
He photographed the volkswagen village in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, and also embarked on the road of developing e-commerce, which was seriously polluted in the past, and almost the whole village was doing the business of processing, storing and transporting waste plastics.
In Zunyi, Guizhou, he photographed the villagers of Daqi Village in Shichao Township, Wuchuan Gelao and Miao Autonomous County, calling it "Out of the Mountains", and also photographed how a group of farmers who had moved into the city through relocation to the city in the happy community of Xinzhong Street in Zunyi New District were slowly integrated into the city, called "Entering the City".
It is not easy to get out of the mountains, and it is even more difficult to go into the city. Jiao Bo did not shy away from the conflicts in the process, and the ordinary people and grass-roots cadres did not shy away from laughing, crying, quarreling and even moving under his lens.
Jiao Bo said that although the fight against poverty did not have the ups and downs of the story on the battlefield of gun smoke, it made him experience the various tastes that emanated from the battlefield of people's hearts.
"Don't shy away from poverty, don't shy away from contradictions, because this is a battle." You are not poor, how to call poverty alleviation? It's not difficult, how to call it a tough attack? There are some problems, some people can't think about it for a while, they are normal, and if there is a problem, they will solve the problem, what can be without a problem? Jiao Bo said.
Some people commented that Jiao Bo's documentary is like a mirror, figurativeizing abstract terms such as poverty alleviation, precision poverty alleviation, industrial development, and relocation, bringing the audience to the front line and seeing the living people and their lives behind the numbers and nouns.
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?" ”
In "Out of the Mountains", the father of the peasant Shen Xuewang went to the supermarket after entering the city, could not understand the price tag, treated 2 yuan as 20 yuan, when he and his wife discussed that they wanted to raise chickens on the roof, when the old house was demolished, some villagers wiped their tears and said that I knew that this was a good thing, but it was not easy to repair this house, when the village party secretary Shen Xiujun went door to door to do relocation mobilization, was scolded and even beaten, after returning home, he was complained by his wife, and his brother was "targeted" by the villagers because he was the village party secretary, and he met the conditions but failed to enjoy the preferential policies for poverty alleviation, and he had a big fight... ...
In "Into the City", the young Qin Meng rode an electric car at night, singing with open arms, and he would also say: "What the government has given me is not only a set of houses in the city, but also a platform... I don't regret being born in such a family, and I believe I can change my future destiny. I just don't want to be ordinary, I told myself, Qin Meng, you are either a myth or a joke. ”
Pulling his 8-year-old son, Yang Duoyan, who took care of his 70-year-old father, was dismissed by the boss in the city because of vision problems, squatted alone on the side of the road to smoke, and leaned on the hospital stool alone to rub his face, when he was in a heavy snow, he took his son who was tired of school and playing back to his hometown, stood in front of a vacant lot, and said to his son: "Baby, this is where we used to live." Do you remember which room Grandma lived in with you? Do you know where I live? Do you know where we raise sheep and where we raise chickens? ”
He raised his finger to a different direction in the vast snow, "You remember, that place will always be a place to raise chickens and sheep!" That place is always where you live! This place will always be the place of the Yang Clan Gate Sect... The old hometown is different from now, this is the change! I hope you can change too, why don't I take all this? It is to hope that you can receive a good education, can make you receive good influence, and can make you contact society. I don't want to see you fall more depraved than I am. ”
On the way back, Yang Duoyan carried his son down the mountain, and while walking, he chanted to his son: "Hold me tight, you see, our way home is so difficult to walk, I am old you have to carry me on my back..."
Such thick, subtle, complex, and authentic emotions can arouse understanding and empathy across identity, age, and experience.
In the film, Jiao Bo presents an incomparably vivid image of peasants and a far more vivid and real image of grassroots cadres than portrayed in many media newspapers.
The peasants' lives are not easy, the work of grass-roots cadres is not easy, and it is not easy to get rid of poverty. Accompanying the characters in the film out of the mountains, it is difficult for people not to issue such an exclamation, and they also appreciate the difficulties and efforts in all aspects of the fight against poverty.
(Subtitle) "Fortunately there is a Jobo"
In late October, at the initiative of Gao Feng, former deputy director of CCTV and former chairman and president of The Central New Film Group, a Jiaobo Guangying Rural Documentary Film Seminar was jointly sponsored by the Documentary Academic Committee of the China Television Artists Association, the China Documentary Research Center, and the China Film Critics Society, which was attended by more than 80 directors, experts and scholars.
"In life, if you take a while, you should look back at the road you have walked, see if your shadow is crooked, and see if your footprints are correct." Jiao Bo said that 46 years have passed since he first picked up his camera to take pictures, and he has shot 15 films after switching from cinematography to documentary films.
Over the years, Jiao Bo has always been in a hurry to shoot more villages, and friends often urge him to stop and summarize and sort out his experience. Everyone believes that his long-term and continuous and unremitting efforts to shoot images of Chinese peasants and rural China, and to record the unique lifestyle and attitude of Chinese in the big era, have important historical value and social and cultural value.
"I always felt that Lao Jiao would become a legend." Yang Lang, a cultural scholar, said, "He has left far more topics and things for contemporary artists to think about than his works; his documentaries and the large amount of material he has not compiled into a film will definitely become the most authentic material for the study of contemporary China in a few decades, with no documents, reports to retrieve and replace." I absolutely believe that 20 or even 40 years later, what Jiao Bo has left us is enough for us to explore from the perspective of sociology, anthropology, folklore and so on. Johwa is a very interesting phenomenon. ”
Behind every 80- to 100-minute documentary that Jiao Bo shoots, there are hundreds of hours of footage and dozens of T-rays.
"Maybe many years later, we will look at these lights and shadows left by Jiao Bo and see its value even more." At that time, one might say, fortunately, there was Jobo. Jing Yidan said she hopes more people will join Jiao Bo.
In fact, under the influence of films such as "China in the Countryside", there have been many young documentary teams that have begun to learn Jiao Bo's shooting mode and take root in the countryside. Over the years, Jiao Bo has also cultivated a group of young documentary filmmakers.
"My little friends are really amazing, how many young people today can stay in the countryside like them for a year?" The members of Jiao Bo's team are almost all post-85s and post-90s, many of whom are not film and television professionals, and like Jiao Bo himself, they have not taken any formal photography classes and documentary classes, but with enthusiasm, directly on the battlefield of practice, they have learned to shoot.
Qin Meng, one of the protagonists of "Into the City", has now joined the Jiao Bo team and has become a fast-growing photographer. "I am very lucky, Poverty alleviation, I am first a beneficiary, but also a recorder."
Personally feeling, and personally photographing poverty alleviation, let Qin Meng think a lot more. "In terms of going out of the mountains and entering the city, the most fortunate children who have changed their fate are the most helpless old people who can't find a job, and the hardest is the middle-aged people who have old and young people." I hope that the government can help the elderly who need more help, and young people like me can not help. ”
He resented the comments of some so-called experts who did not understand the farmers, and he believed that the shooting of their team could stand in the position of the farmers and see the problem, which was more real and more valuable. "When I made 'Old Nest', I said that in the past, when people went to the battlefield for the country, I was not yet born, but in this battlefield without smoke, I participated, which is my honor."
"He was both a enjoyer of the fruits of battle and a warrior. Carrying luggage out of the mountain, and carrying the machine into the mountain. Jiao Bo said. He is pleased with the growth of young people, "if one day I can't do it, I don't know what they will shoot."
(Subtitle) Ask yourself the flower planter, when to enjoy the flowers
Someone asked Jiao Bo, they are all people of retirement age, the award has won so much, and they are still so tired, what is the picture?
Jiao Bo admits that his age is not sparing, and his physical strength has dropped significantly, but he said that it is not easy to get tired of doing what he likes, and he "wants to enjoy shooting."
"I'm talking from the heart, and that kind of enjoyment is too much to enjoy. My family said to me, how old are you, and are you still fighting like this? I said you really don't know the enjoyment of shooting a good scene, shooting a good shot! None of you can understand or enjoy it, only I can appreciate it, and then I will convey it to the audience. ”
For the record, he liked it from the bottom of his heart, "Ordinary people know the most remote and difficult places like Laowoshan, how do people live? Who knows how they moved from there to the new village? It's just us, with a camera, to record this. ”
I have basically done everything I want to do in this life, and I will continue to do it. "Whatever I want to do, I must work hard to do it, and the blood in my whole body wants to contribute." Jiao Bo said.
He wants to tell young people that they should take advantage of their youth, make all kinds of mistakes, do what they want to do quickly, find out the path that suits them, and then persevere and go on, so that most of them can have no regrets.
It's like he chose to photograph the countryside. "China's rural areas are larger than any (country) area, And there are more Chinese farmers than anywhere, I am good at this, and I like this, especially where others are reluctant to shoot and feel bitter, I want to shoot." Although sometimes I want to try something else, it is good that everyone can do their own thing. ”
He laughed and said that he would have to shoot another 30 years of rural filming, "just see if I have 30 years."
A few years ago, Jiao Bo wrapped 1,000 acres of barren mountains in his hometown, planting pine trees, ginkgo biloba, walnuts, national locusts and other longevity trees that grew very slowly on the mountain, and he wanted to green this barren mountain as a return to his hometown as a wanderer who escaped from this land.
The older you get, the more you remember your hometown. "When I can't run, I'm going to do a rural film festival in my hometown."
"But in this life, when I can't move the machine, it may be over, maybe I will fall in the field, and it is really easy to leave like this." At the dinner table, this veteran of the image industry, who is always full of enthusiasm, picked up chopsticks to pick up vegetables and said casually.
On New Year's Day last year, Jiao Bo wrote an oil poem at the scene of Zunyi's filming of "Entering the City": "Think about this life, believe it or not, walk in an alley, and meet freely... The cliffs do not restrain the horses, and they are bitter and willing. The old come to the countryside, recognize the old and do not recognize the decline, the South Mountain makes light and shadow, and the North Mountain receives the color of the Xia. Load after load, load is infinite, ask yourself the flower planter, when will you enjoy the blossoms? ”
Seeing the various condolence messages sent by his friends, he replied in the circle of friends: "The night of life is a good day, grasp it, it is very bitter and tired and enjoyable." (End)