Photo/ Reporter Wei Yi
At what stage a person reaches, he will shoot what story, so that he can understand the object of your shooting
"In terms of personal career, places like Mount Everest, I've been up there. I know, it's just a little bit higher."
This article was first published in Southern People Weekly
Text | Wei Yi, a reporter for this magazine, sent from Wuhan
Edit | Yang Jingru [email protected]
The full text is about 14,098 words, and it takes about 30 minutes to read carefully
farewell
On August 11, 2020, the documentary "City Dream" premiered in Wuhan. Chen Weijun, a director in the United States, said in a short video shot by his mobile phone that this is the last film of his nearly 20-year documentary career, and he said goodbye to the audience: "Friends who like my films, goodbye here, goodbye." ”
Cheng Chunlin, as Chen Weijun's apprentice, was at the premiere scene at this time, and like the audience, he also knew that his master was going to say goodbye. "I had no idea, he didn't tell me before." Zhao Hua, Chen Weijun's photographic partner for 20 years, did not show up. He had never been interested in attending ceremonies. "He (Chen Weijun) didn't go, so what am I going to do?" Zhao Hua said.
Chen Weijun has lived in the United States for several years, and he is seriously ill, and his body is no longer able to support his documentary career. He cut off most of his contact with the outside world. Many people could not find him, including his colleagues at Wuhan TELEVISION.
Chen Weijun's farewell video on the screen was spread by many people. A colleague from Wuhan TV asked Zhao Hua, who felt that this was probably the second time that Chen Weijun had been thinking about saying goodbye to the documentary for many years — they had been trapped by "reality". Zhao Hua sent Chen Weijun a WeChat message: "'Truth' is a double-edged sword, often hurting innocent people, which is our experience in filming documentaries." If there are any perfect things in the world, as long as we do not change our original intentions and do something for the sake of truth, goodness and beauty, God will forgive us. It is worth it for people to live for such a little time, such a little opportunity, such a little ability, and to do something profitable. ”
Chen Weijun did not reply to Zhao Hua. Four days later, Chen Weijun called Zhao Hua once, and he persuaded Zhao Hua to accept my interview. This is the first time in decades that Zhao Hua has given a long interview. We chatted in Wuhan for two days.
Zhao Hua looked out the window at the familiar streets of Wuhan
It took Zhao Hua a long time to find his original film with Chen Weijun from his computer, "My Philosophy is My Life.". Chen Weijun will see this ten-minute film as the beginning of his documentary creation ideas. "A lot of my idea of making documentaries was formed here from the very beginning." Chen Weijun told me about the film 8 years ago in a tea house by the East Lake. However, he himself did not have reservations, and I did not see it at the time.
After 8 years, I finally saw this short film. In the grainy film, the protagonists are Deng Xiaomang, then professor of philosophy at Wuhan University, and Xiao Ping, an engineer at Wuhan Meat Factory. They are juxtaposed on the same timeline, living in parallel with each other, connected by attitudes and thoughts about life. Zhao Hua didn't watch the film, so he told me that he remembered Deng Xiaomang talking about purity to his students, about the cost of his lectures, and about his attitude towards his daughter.
My Philosophy Is My Life (1994)
Chen Weijun admired Deng Xiaomang very much. He felt that the book that had the greatest influence on him in his life was Deng Xiaomang's "Dance of the Spirit". He said it 8 years ago, but I didn't ask why. This time, I asked Chen Weijun on WeChat. "This book is about our life like peeling an onion, preparing to get nothing in the end." Chen Weijun said.
The example Deng Xiaoman gives in the book is the daffodil bulb, which is slightly different from the onion that Chen Weijun said, but it is not a big problem. "Man seems to have been 'preparing for life', laying the foundation for the future 'formal' life', and in old age, laying the foundation for the life of the next generation, but he has never lived well himself, and he is always too late to experience life." In this busyness and rush, people carelessly discard and lose the scales of their lives one by one, until they lose their lives themselves. ”
This is a philosophical book published in the 90s, deng Xiaomang has been known since then, he is like a young mentor.
Chen Weijun graduated from Rizhao No. 1 Middle School in Shandong Province in 1988 and was admitted to the Department of Journalism of Sichuan University. The first time he sat on the train, he made several transfers, stood for dozens of hours, and when he was most crowded, he could only hang his feet in the air, and it took a lot of trouble to come to the big city of Chengdu. His family was poor and needed work-study. His job was to send messages to the girls' dormitories—boys were not allowed to enter the girls' dormitories at that time, and something was being communicated through the communication room downstairs. During a conversation for a girl, he had an affair with a dorm girl. The girls in the dormitory blamed him, with one exception — the mild-mannered girl who later became his first love, his current wife.
Chen Weijun smoked a cigarette in the courtyard of his American home and told me about the past through WeChat, just like yesterday. Eight years ago, at the East Lake, Mrs. Chen also sat next to him and listened to his interview. In the interview, Chen Weijun will ask his wife for advice, which should be said and which should not be said. At this moment, Chen Weijun did not want to talk about his illness, nor did he want to talk about his city, he did not want to be disturbed. It's just so separated by virtual space, which is good.
This reminds me of Ma Shenyi. He is the protagonist of Chen Weijun's world-known documentary "Better to Die Than to Live". Because of this documentary, this magazine has visited Ma Shenyi's family for many years in a row. It was not discontinued until recent years, because, his children grew up.
The fact that Ma Shenyi's family can survive until now is an inspiration for Chen Weijun. "Many people can't live because they think too much, while Ma Shenyi lives simply and doesn't want anything."
As a documentary filmmaker, Chen Weijun can't think about nothing. "Truth" is a heavy word that will always weigh on its seekers. In fact, in an interview 8 years ago, he proposed to say goodbye to the documentary, but after saying goodbye again and again, this time, perhaps the last goodbye.
Wuhan
"Wuhan is my hometown, and most of my works are filmed by Wuhan people, telling the story of Wuhan." In the short video, Chen Weijun, a native of Shandong, says that Wuhan is his hometown. Treat yourself as a Wuhan native, which is how many outsiders in Wuhan will feel. "Wuhan is a very inclusive city."
When he graduated from college, Chen Weijun almost returned to Shandong. When Chen Weijun and his wife fell in love at university, they were always opposed by his wife's family. In 1992, the two graduated from college, and this situation has not changed. They had planned to "elope" to Shandong. But the old man had only this one girlfriend, and he was soft and agreed to their request to be together. His wife is from Hubei, and Chen Weijun came to Wuhan with her.
Chen Weijun is familiar with the history of Wuhan. He told me about Hankou, which had no city walls in history, and about huai salt gathering and distributing here, leading to the ancient tea horse road. Speaking of the autonomy of the Chamber of Commerce, I talk about people who "hit the docks" from outside. "You can look at Wang Tiancheng's family, and they will call themselves Wuhan people."
Wang Tiancheng is the protagonist of "City Dream", a stubborn old man. At the end of the summer, I met him at the Happy Fruit Shop next to Wuhan Minzu Avenue. He used to be the king of the stalls in this area. He would show me his burned arm because of a fight with "evil people" on the streets of Wuhan.
In the cool grove behind the fruit shop, he pulled his striped T-shirt to his chest, it was too hot. He changed the way he smoked, no longer the Stalinist pipes that appeared in the documentary, but the Chinese-style cigarette bags. He spoke in Henan dialect. From Henan to Wuhan, from the countryside to the city, he spent twenty years to build a dock - how can he survive in Wuhan without fighting. It was his philosophy of life.
He was next to the fruit shop, watching his son and daughter-in-law weigh melons and cut fruits to customers, and he no longer cared about the things in the pavilion. He tried to talk as little as possible, but always had to say. He and his son get into arguments, just like in the documentary.
Last year, Wang Tiancheng found someone to arrange for his little grandson to study in primary school in Wuhan, and he felt that the last big thing in his life was completed, even if he died now, there was no problem. Like many old men, he used to talk about the international situation on the street, talk about Trump, talk about the US presidential election, talk about voting.
Chen Weijun accepted an invitation from the World Bank that year to make a documentary about the class election of elementary school students, "Please Vote for Me.". This film can be found on major domestic websites.
In the age of bullet screens, there would be many comments skimming over the video footage. For example, when one of the main characters in "Please Vote for Me" appears, there will be a barrage such as "Old Trump", and so on.
When I met Cheng Cheng in Wuhan, I didn't recognize him for a moment - he changed from a small fat man to a thin guy of 1 meter 82. When he spoke, his slightly hoarse voice was very similar to the original.
He did not become a civil servant, and he is now a vocal singing student at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. "Maybe those who commented on me see the way I am now and will disappoint them very much." Into a joke.
Cheng Cheng is no longer the little fat man in "Please Vote for Me" Photo/Reporter Wei Yi of this magazine
Cheng Cheng works part-time as a host at Wuhan TELEVISION Station. He looks more mature than his peers. His classmates called him "Uncle Cheng." He was older than his classmates around him because he was later than all of them went to college. At the age of 17, he began working as a part-time presenter for Wuhan TELEVISION. He wanted to go the way of broadcast hosting. He once ranked third in the national examination for broadcast hosting professional courses at the Communication University of China, but his culture class was still three points short that year, and he did not reach the admission line. The next year, when he and his mother came to Beijing to prepare for the re-examination, his father died of a sudden heart attack in Wuhan, and he and his mother rushed back to Wuhan overnight, and the day of his father's burial was the date of the re-examination. He felt that he was not suitable to leave Wuhan at this time. "My mother is from Shandong and has no relatives in Wuhan." He decided to stay in Wuhan to study and was admitted to the Wuhan Conservatory of Music.
He remembered that he was selected by Chen Weijun as a subject for filming at a New Year's dinner at Wuhan TELEVISION. Her mother and Chen Weijun are colleagues on the TV station.
After "Please Vote for Me" came out, many documentary fans will talk about the little fat man in this famous documentary. When Cheng Cheng was in high school, he went to Hong Kong with the school to exchange, and at the University of hong Kong Chinese, someone came up to him and asked him if he was Cheng Cheng in the documentary. In domestic colleges and universities, most of the film and television students have seen this documentary.
Now Cheng Cheng likes to watch brain-burning movies, and when he went to the cinema to see Nolan's "Creed", he was 6 minutes late, and he bought a ticket again to enter the movie theater. He didn't feel understood. And the re-release of "Inception", he watched it again, this time he figured out whether the gyro finally stopped or not. He likes to go back in time.
Zhao Hua sat by the window, remembering some clips from when he and Chen Weijun went to shoot "Please Vote for Me". He said that Chen Weijun is a comfortable person, and he doesn't have to think too much about it himself, "He is a person who does things, and he does things beautifully." ”
In 2008, "Please Vote for Me" was shortlisted for the top 10 Oscars for Best Documentary, Chinese documentary has never gone this far before at the Oscars.
Stills from "Please Vote for Me" (2007)
teacher
Also in 2008, Cheng Chunlin, who was studying at Wuhan University, often organized some film salons because he loved movies. He felt that he should ask the best director in Wuhan to share it with everyone. He invited Chen Weijun and played Chen Weijun's "Better to Die Than to Live" in a café. Chen Weijun told him that in so many years in Wuhan, no one had ever let go of his film, and this was the first time. This surprised Cheng Chunlin. He was majoring in IT at Wu University, but he didn't want to be a programmer, he wanted to do things related to film and television, and he told Chen Weijun that he wanted to be his apprentice and learn from him.
At the end of 2009, Cheng Chunlin received a call from Chen Weijun saying that a film ("Mountain Judge") was filmed in Enshi and asked him if he would like to join. "Of course I'm very happy." One morning in the winter, Chen Weijun drove to pick up Cheng Chunlin, and then picked up Zhao Hua at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. "I thought Teacher Zhao was really a teacher." Since then, the team has had three people. Zhao Hua has been living in the school, he was a staff member of the school, and later transferred to wuhan tv station.
Cheng Chunlin is waiting for his next film to be released Photo/Reporter Wei Yi
Cheng Chunlin drove me on the campus of Wuhan University, he still rented on campus, he liked the environment. When he passed the kindergarten, he said that Teacher Zhao said that he was studying in this kindergarten, and he always felt that this was a wonderful thing. Zhao Hua's father worked at Wuhan University. Zhao Hua's daughter and granddaughter were both born at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where he filmed "Shengmen".
"Chen Weijun said that after filming the story of birth, he also wanted to shoot the story of death." Zhao Hua said. But this filming plan for hospice has been delayed and may not be completed now.
Chen Weijun has always said that when people reach what stage, they can shoot what stories, so that they can understand the object of your shooting.
I am reminded of Deng Xiaomang's poem in "The Dance of the Spirit" mentioning Hölderlin:
Who sinks into it
That boundless "deep",
Will love
This most vivid "raw"
In Deng Xiaomang's understanding, the person who strives to break through between "deep" and "life" is the creator of life. "Not only is he the creator of life, but he is also the artist of life." Not only is it an artist of life, but also the most authentic, direct and artistic artist of all artists - a performance artist. ”
Is life a show? -- This is the question raised by Deng Xiaomang.
"As the experience deepens, when one looks back, one finds that all experiences are experiences of experience, just as a child experiences himself as a daffodil (or daffodil as himself), and an artist or appreciator experiences the characters, images, and characters in the work as his own soul. The experience itself has a performative structure. Spirit is performance. Life is acting. "This is Deng Xiaomang's interpretation," a hermeneutic cycle. ”
Chen Weijun has always hoped that his works have a certain ultimateity that is not limited to reality. He would go to the philosophical level to seek answers.
In the middle of the call, probably the atmosphere rendered by the night, it will make people feel cold, I think of Chen Weijun's previous shots of people facing difficulties with fear, linked to his serious illness, I asked: "Will you feel afraid?" Chen Weijun said "of course there is" a few times in a row, and then asked rhetorically: "When there is fear, don't you think this is also a good way?" ”
fear
The months that begin in 2020 are moments of fear for the people of Wuhan. Chen Weijun was far away in the United States, brushing wuhan messages from his mobile phone. Wuhan had just announced the lockdown, and Cheng Chunlin drove back to Wuhan from his hometown of Hong'an, Hubei. He hoped to record the moment in Wuhan, but he knew that there was not much he could do. He ended up making some short films about medical care and courier brothers. There is also the long late stage of "City Dream".
Meanwhile, as the host of the TV station, Cheng Cheng learned of the lockdown in Wuhan an hour earlier than the average citizen, and one of his friends will leave Han in the morning, but there is no public transportation. He drove his friend out of the city at a rapid pace, and returned to Wuhan before the passage into the city was locked. Together with many Wuhan people, he experienced three months of life without leaving home.
During the epidemic, Wang Tiancheng's family was not in Wuhan, they returned to their hometown in Henan. Wuhan was unsealed, and Wang Tiancheng returned. "I'm not going to stay in my hometown, I'm going back to Wuhan anyway." Hu Yifeng, who had already been transferred to another Chengguan squadron, sent Wang Tiancheng a mask and some items. This person who was slapped at the beginning now maintains a good contact with the Wang family. "He called me 1,000 yuan on the QR code before he left." Wang Tiancheng said.
At the height of the epidemic, Hu Yifeng lived in the office of the Chengguan Squadron. Where they need to manage, they are often exposed to places where the virus may be raging. He came back every night and drank a few sips of liquor before going to sleep. The hotel near his Chengguan Squadron was requisitioned as an isolation hotel.
Hu Yifeng working on the streets of Wuhan Photo/Reporter Wei Yi
I met Hu Yifeng in the Chengguan Squadron, and at this time, on the Internet, a video of him being slapped was widely circulated. On his desk in his office was a copy of the National Development and Reform Commission's "Internal References to Reform," which contained articles he had written. He wrote: "There is a 'nail household' in the jurisdiction of the author who has occupied the road for 14 years, and successive chengguan captains have tried to solve this problem, but have not been successful. After becoming a squadron leader in 2014, the author found a new stall for him based on the principle of 'combination of dredging and blocking', and it took 8 months to finally persuade him to leave the original stall. ”
This is talking about Wang Tiancheng's family. They are lucky, and there are not many stall families that can get such placements. "Most importantly, their family was identified as a poor household." Zhao Hua, who has been photographing the family for 7 months, said.
In order to identify this family as a "poor household", Hu Yifeng specially went to Wang Tiancheng's hometown of Zhenping, Henan. This was his first business trip in so many years as a city manager. "Chengguan is in charge of things in the city, and they don't have to travel on business." Hu Yifeng said.
On the wall of the Chengguan Squadron's office hung a map of Wuhan, and Hu Yifeng pointed to the map and told me that a certain district of Wuhan was his birthplace. When he graduated from Central South University of Political Science and Law, when he took the chengguan examination, he especially avoided the area where he was born. He felt that Chengguan had a bad reputation. He was terrified of the profession at the time.
way out
Wuhan has a huge number of college students, and at this time, most of them are trapped on campus. Chen Weijun made a film called "The Way Out", which is about "why poor" and about education. Like Chengcheng, Wang Zhenxiang, the teacher who appeared in the documentary to "flicker" everywhere and "fooled" students who had fallen off the list to "go to college", is now often recognized by friends on the Internet.
Unlike Chengcheng, Wang Zhenxiang took the initiative to find Cheng Chunlin and Chen Weijun, hoping to expose the "flickering" behavior of his training institution. "I was ready to leave, but I wanted to let you know something."
Chen Weijun felt that this theme was exactly the same as the question he was thinking about, "Why poor?" "There is a connection, Wang Zhenxiang became his subject. The photography was mainly done by Cheng Chunlin, who followed the enrollment as Wang Zhenxiang's cousin. If others knew that it was to be a documentary, "I guess I called the police at that time." Wang Zhenxiang said.
After leaving work at 7 p.m., Wang Zhenxiang told me about the past not far from their home. He was a little shy, and he didn't have the freedom to speak on the podium in the documentary. "Those are all trained." Wang Zhenxiang said, "I am actually a very introverted person. ”
In the documentary, Wang Zhenxiang told a "Jewish story": Jews rubbed honey on the Bible, so that students felt that reading was sweet. The story was provided by the training institution he worked for at the time, and he looked it up, and it was not at all.
In this way, he took a similar story to the vast countryside to perform his "performance". He was reluctant to communicate with students and parents, and he knew he was "fooling around."
As soon as the documentary "The Way Out" was finished, he left the training institution. After the documentary spread, the head of the agency talked to him and wanted to know what was going on. "The agency was dying, so they didn't bother me."
Leaving that training institution, Wang Zhenxiang found a lot of ways out, and now he "works" for the company he opened for his wife. This is an e-commerce company, and he is responsible for the promotion and shooting of the product. In the streets of Wuhan at midnight, he adjusted the aperture and shutter speed of the camera he brought for me, and I took a picture of him.
On another night, I was at Wang Zhaoyang's Happy Fruit Shop, and they talked about their daughter, who was studying for a college, about to continue her studies or join the army. This is the "way out" problem she faces.
Wang Tiancheng (left), Wang Zhaoyang (center) and Zhang Ruihua (second from right) at the Happy Fruit Shop Photo/Reporter Wei Yi
They also talk about their daughters talking about boyfriends, thinking it's time, but they don't want their daughters to find a particularly rich family, "rich people will look down on families like us." ”
As far away as the United States, Chen Weijun also talked about his daughter in WeChat. He wouldn't discuss documentaries with his daughter. My daughter, who has seen his documentary, now works at an agency in the United States that helps newcomers. Chen Weijun felt that his daughter's education was successful. He felt that her ability to think and live independently was the most important thing.
Zhao Hua's busiest thing now is to bring his granddaughter. The granddaughter was born in Lee Ka Fook's department. Many doctors in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Central South Hospital are known for this film, especially Dr. Li Jiafu. These days, Zhao Hua found several photos of Li Jiafu taken on his mobile phone and sent them to him. During the epidemic, an important task of Li Jiafu was to take charge of the birth of pregnant women infected with the new crown virus.
During the production of "Shengmen", the producer changed. Dai Nianwen became the new producer. It was the first documentary he pitched, and it unexpectedly brought him tens of millions of dollars in profit. "City Dream" is his second film with Chen Weijun's team.
Chen Weijun recalled meeting a leader of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television with Dai Nianwen at a dinner party. At the suggestion of this leader, they decided to make this film related to chengguan. "In fact, many times we don't know how society works, and chengguan is a cut in our understanding of society." Chen Weijun said.
The filming of "Shengmen" is a kind of torture for Chen Weijun, but from the other side, it is not. In 2014, when I was passing through Wuhan, he excitedly opened his laptop and showed me the material. I saw footage of Xia Jinju, whose heart stopped twice, finally being rescued. The thrilling scene came from the filming of Zhao Hua, who spent seven hours in the operating room. He is known as the "Needle of the Sea God".
On a rainy day in Wuhan, Zhao Hua found me a fertility story that he and Chen Weijun had originally filmed, "Production". It was the early 1990s, when Chen Weijun's daughter had just been born, and he was interested in the subject.
They filmed the attitude of the Wuhan family towards a new life. Some family members hope that the newborn baby will become an official in the future and affect the world, and it is recommended to take the name "Liang", and other family members hope that the baby will become rich in the future, and it is recommended to take the name "Fa". I don't know where this baby is now, whether it is "bright" and "hairy", which is like a miniature version of "Shengmen". On many weekends in the 1990s, Chen Weijun and Zhao Hua spent a morning show on Wuhan TV, hoping to truly express themselves from these ten-minute films. This small space seems like their way out.
day and night
"Why Chen Weijun?" Zhao Hua had been thinking about this question all these years. He felt that the two of them could get along, although Chen was more than ten years younger than him. Zhao is a person with a high heart, who is not accustomed to many things, and he cannot look at many directors. But whatever Chen Weijun said, he would listen, cooperate with him, he was assured.
Zhao Hua after 50 is an old Wuhan native. He sat on the hotel couch, chatted with me, and could casually point out the window where he had photographed.
"Has Wuhan changed in recent years?" I asked him.
He thought for a moment, "Nothing has changed except for the tall buildings. ”
The documentaries he and Chen Weijun collaborated on have gained a huge reputation internationally, but perhaps many of their colleagues are less aware of what they do.
In Wuhan, in many cities, there are parallel spaces that Chen Weijun is keen to express that do not intersect. In these spaces, some people have more people and some people have fewer people. Chen Weijun, Zhao Hua and Cheng Chunlin all chose places with few people. They have a group of three, but they rarely talk. Just like Chen Weijun's farewell before the start of the movie, his two closest partners do not know.
Chen Weijun said, "Everything I want to say is in the work. ”
Cheng Chunlin found Chen Weijun's "Sunrise and Sunset" for NHK from the hard disk. Not many people in China have seen this film, and there are no resources on today's omnipotent network.
Sunrise and Sunset (2012)
Chen Weijun tries to express his attitude towards life through the young people of Shibuya and the elderly of the nest crows. You know, all the old people were once young people, and they were not separated, but interconnected. At this time, Chen Weijun, who is in middle age, uses himself to connect the two ends of the thinking, he likes this film the most, and feels that he will be used all his life.
It's been a long time since sunset, and Wang Zhenxiang took me through the streets of Wuhan to find a lively beef noodle shop. The supper stalls here have the fresh breath of Wuhan. I remembered cheng cheng saying that he loved wuhan supper.
In "The Way Out," Wang Zhenxiang talks about his dissatisfaction with the school and the education industry at a supper stall. He had just bought a house, and the house prices in Wuhan were not expensive at that time. Now, he lives in an apartment with more than fifty floors and can see the vast night view of Wuhan.
Wang Zhenxiang on the streets of Wuhan at midnight Photo/ Photo by Wei Yi, a reporter of this magazine
At this time, it was approaching the Mid-Autumn Festival, and those twinkling multicolored lights gradually covered the city. Many of Chen Weijun's films have pictures of the Mid-Autumn Festival or near the Mid-Autumn Festival. If you look closely, you'll find out.
At 11 p.m., Wang Tiancheng's family closed the door of the happy fruit shop and returned home. The surrounding schools are still unblocked, and better business will have to wait.
Also at 11 p.m., Hu Yifeng was also ready to leave work after drinking a can of vitamin functional drinks. He walks to the back of the office, changes into civilian clothes, and you will find that he is dressed in a very fashionable way, and he is still a young man after 80. While packing up his things, he said that his daughter recently liked to watch "Dream of the Red Chamber".
At another 11 o'clock, I waited on the other end of WeChat to talk to Chen Weijun on the other end of the United States. The last time Chen Weijun was interviewed, he had not yet entered the WeChat era.
On rainy nights, the Western-style buildings along the river in Hankou glow in the humidity. At the door of a bank, I saw a homeless man under the eaves, covered with a blanket, asleep. Not far away is the dock, and the "dockers" no longer need to go ashore.
After completing the interview in Wuhan, I left Wuhan by high-speed rail on a morning with a huge red sun hanging, and I remembered Chen Weijun's "Sunrise and Sunset", remembered the Wuhan he shot, remembered "Dance of the Spirit", and gradually unfolded like an onion.
I "hate" the life of filmmaking
——Dialogue with Chen Weijun
Chen Weijun at rizhao seashore
What is a documentary?
People Weekly: How do you understand "documentary"?
Chen Weijun: I started doing documentaries in 1994. I graduated from the Department of Journalism at Sichuan University, but I don't know if there is a "documentary" saying. At that time, the TV station had a special feature department and made feature films. My earliest enlightenment was two films, one was "Dragon's Back" and the other was "Looking at the Great Wall". The shooting of "Looking at the Great Wall" is something that everyone has never seen, and the sound of the same period can be heard as the host's breathing, and there is a sense of hair, documentary things.
People Weekly: What are some of your habits of making documentaries?
Chen Weijun: I will say to young people, if you do a documentary, you must strive to talk about friends getting married and having children, your life is incomplete, you have to face the topic, or face the subject, your feelings are incomplete. Improper families do not know chai mi gui, do not serve the wife do not know how difficult it is for women to serve, do not take a child do not know how difficult it is to take a child. Documentaries are very humanistic things, lack of life experience, it is difficult to feel others. My works are like trees, wherever they grow, the shade covers everywhere.
People Weekly: What does making a documentary bring you?
Chen Weijun: Because of making documentaries, I have experienced many more lives than others, which made me think about certain issues.
For example, when I was filming "Better to Die Than to Live", I didn't know independent films at the time, I saw Ma Shenyi's children at Professor Gui Xi'en's house, they were about the same age as my children, and the idea in my heart at that time was that I felt unfair, for my children, she could not leave our sight before entering kindergarten.
People Weekly: When you make a documentary, the number of people in the team is very small, and the pictures don't seem to be so exquisite.
Chen Weijun: I think as long as it is the real thing, don't be too demanding. The camera scheduling, lighting, color, and sound of the documentary are no better than a third-rate TV series. Because THE TV series is created on its own initiative. Those who engage in movies can finish in two months, finish within one month, and come up with a deadline. Documentaries are passive, unable to know what the subject will do tomorrow, and it is a wide variety of harvests. Maybe you have to shoot the soft place of other people's hearts, and others won't let you shoot. Maybe someone else let me shoot and touched the rules of society.
Chinese and foreigners watching documentaries, or two mentalities. The mainstream of foreign countries is to shoot people's stories. We still like to watch documentaries like National Geographic. Some people used to say that you were filming a documentary in Hubei, so why didn't you go to Shennongjia to shoot wild people.
The level of independent documentaries in China does not lag behind that of foreign countries. Foreign documentary filmmakers will ask me how you can make the subject ignore the presence of your lens. I told them that China has no money to do documentaries, and the team is small. When five or six people surround you, there are lights, field notes, videos, recordings, and your heart is closed. Documentarians in China are great at doing more, spending less to achieve more.
People Weekly: You seem to be doing very difficult things all the time, and many people become famous and do things that are not so risky and can make money.
Chen Weijun: After I raise the bar myself, I will not lower the bar, I will continue to insist, I eat white noodles, I am not willing to eat chaff.
The films I shoot basically have hundreds of hours of footage. I keep all this material, I have lived up to the times I experienced, I still really record these ten or twenty years.
The Way Out (2012)
Don't just dream of the city
People Weekly: In the past ten or twenty years, how have you understood the strange and familiar groups around you, such as hawkers and chengguan?
Chen Weijun: We usually walk in the city, and people who provide convenience, such as people who sell low-end clothing, small toys, and fruits, are often ignored. They go from the countryside to the city to work, which is actually the process of Urbanization in China.
When I first graduated from work, I ran the agricultural line, and the first word I learned was: scissors poor. (Note: The scissors difference refers to the difference between the price of industrial and agricultural products above the value and the price of agricultural products lower than the value) The peasant has no money in his hands and has to go out to work. Migrant workers participate in urban infrastructure construction, turn the city into the appearance of a modern city, and make China a big manufacturing country. This is an urbanization process with Chinese characteristics. As A child said, upstairs and downstairs, electric lights and telephones. Entering the city is a farmer's dream. Hundreds of millions of peasants, having just washed the mud off their legs, ran to the cities. The urban-rural dual structure has a limited flow.
When the farmers in the city, the younger ones, the training, went to companies like Foxconn, and there were construction sites. Wang Tiancheng (the subject of "City Dream"),old, weak, sick and disabled, can't go anywhere, only to the side of the road to set up stalls. After they entered the city and affected the operation of the city, they built such a team as the city management. Most of the people in the urban management team are not organized, the threshold is low, and there are not too many suitable people. In the past, the urban management team did not have its own laws and regulations, but many dirty tasks, such as sweeping roads, green maintenance, stalls, forced demolition... They all have to take care of it. These jobs are given to such a law enforcement agency that has no laws and regulations in their hands, so that they can face such a group of people who do not have money to buy a bowl of fried powder without a day's stall, and the conflict will come out.
People Weekly: What kind of dream should China's "urban dream" be?
Chen Weijun: Urbanization with Chinese characteristics, where are the characteristics, these peasants came to the city and built the edifice of China's reform and opening up, but they did not integrate into the city. They are still very marginal crowds in the city, and many things are not their share. People in the city see them as passers-by of the city, temporary workers of the city, and no one says that you are a resident of the city. If they are not given proof and given citizenship, the social contradictions caused by them cannot be resolved. We cannot let the most important group that supports China's reform and opening up always live in the urban dream. One of the things that should be done now is to guide the whole society (to realize) that people who come to the city not only dream of the city, but also make them wake up and realize that I am a member of the city.
We should do something for migrant workers who move to the cities. The labor market in the city is almost disorderly. After these migrant workers enter the city, there should be such an institution to teach them the ABC of urban life, how to obey traffic rules, how to obtain information, how to deal with neighbors, and let them enter the urban life mode. Training institutions such as night schools for migrant workers can also be set up to provide employment guidance, training and induction. Old, weak, sick and disabled like Wang Tiancheng can also let them concentrate in some places to make night markets or something. Many things need to be solved at the source. We should reflect on where the roots of social contradictions lie.
People Weekly: In 2020, Wuhan became the most concerned city in the world, you have lived here for so many years, filmed a lot of stories here, how do you feel about the city?
Chen Weijun: Indeed, Wuhan is now the most well-known in the world. I loved the city. One of the few cities in the country that is very inclusive. In many large cities, migrant workers are concentrated in a certain area, and there is no integration with the local area, just making a living. Wuhan is a dock city, outsiders come to Wuhan to play the dock, there is food to eat, there is no obvious boundary between locals and foreigners, so Wuhan is different from other places. You see Wang Tiancheng's family, they come to Wuhan from other places, they will call themselves Wuhan people.
People Weekly: In "City Dream", the conflict between the hawker and the chengguan is finally resolved through the chengguan to find a stall for the vendor. Can so many stalls in the city solve the stall problem for them?
Chen Weijun: That's the problem. In "City Dream", the biggest driving force of the story is to reach a reconciliation between the chengguan and the vendor. Wang Zhaoyang desperately wanted to set up a stall there, and the old man had to fight with the city management to the end. It's not really a matter of their survival. Wang Tiancheng said that if it were not for his granddaughter, they would have gone back to their hometown to farm. Wang Tiancheng and his son went back to the countryside, and it was no problem to eat, but the quality of life would be poor, and there was not so much money. All they think about is their granddaughter. The granddaughter studied well, and she was carried to Wuhan shortly after she was born. She has no connection with her hometown, she is a little girl in Wuhan, and her friends are also in Wuhan. She didn't want to stay in her hometown.
Chengguan found them for their granddaughter. It turned out to be so. Chengguan told them to stay in Wuhan with peace of mind and learn to live like the people in the city. This is where the problem can be solved last. It's a matter of empathy. The government will also become soft in the face of children's problems.
Life is like peeling an onion
People Weekly: Many of the films you make have questions about children.
Chen Weijun: In the world's laws, only China regards the support of the elderly as a frame for social people. Take the support of the elderly as an obligation and put it on a person. This will lead to Chinese investing in children, and children will get ahead and their evening scenes will be better. Chinese instilling adult ideas into children. Even I can't get away with it, treating children as private property. In the Chinese family, every individual is not an individual. Talking about the story of China, we can't avoid the problem of children at all.
People Weekly: Your own child, is her problem solved?
Chen Weijun: My child is now a social worker at an organization in the United States that helps new immigrants. She may not be as successful as we Chinese say, and I think she is a very independent person. She doesn't depend on me, and I don't depend on her. She solved her own problems, and from this point of view, I think it is still very successful. I'm not going to kidnap my child to my fateless chariot and force her to do something, which I think is good.
People Weekly: 8 years ago, you said that the biggest problem for your peers was education, and you admitted that you were kidnapped by education.
Chen Weijun: Right. At that time, my children took the middle school entrance examination in China, and like many parents, I could not get out of the ordinary. Behind the widespread social contradictions in China is the problem of children. In China, many couples are strangers, but they can wait until their children go to college before divorcing.
People Weekly: Deng Xiaomang's "Dance of the Spirit" has had a great influence on you?
Chen Weijun: This book is so good, I see a lot of attitudes towards life. We have to be curious about life, but also be prepared, like peeling an onion, there is nothing in it. This has had a big impact on me in my life. Stay curious about life and be prepared for disappointment at all times.
People Weekly: There is a saying in "Dance of the Spirits" that many people seem to be sincere, but they are actually performing sincerity.
Chen Weijun: Life is actually performing, and one person plays many roles. Temporary relationships between father and son, between children, including interviews, and so on. The performance mentioned here is not a pretense, not a cover-up, but a practice.
People Weekly: Does the documentary also face such a problem, how to face the "performance" of the subjects, and judge their "performance"?
Chen Weijun: Whether the people in the documentary are "performing" or not cannot be judged. For example, in "City Dream", we see that Wang Tiancheng is crazy, and some people will think that he is performing. But in fact, before we filmed, their conflict with the chengguan was more intense. Wang Tiancheng's daughter-in-law once got into a fight with Chengguan, broke Chengguan's head with a chair, and was detained for many days. The strong and weak relationship between them is the daily life of life, and their daily life is like this.
People Weekly: You were born in the countryside, did you have a process of adapting to urban life yourself?
Chen Weijun: There is this process. I went to college in 1988 and came to the big city, and on the first night of registration, I went out for a walk, and when I got back, I got lost because the buildings looked so much that I couldn't find where my dorm was. When I went to college, I took the train for the first time, and I used the flush toilet for the first time, something I hadn't experienced in my previous ten years of life. In fact, most Chinese are farmers three generations above. China's biggest problems are all peasant problems.
People Weekly: There are a lot of documentaries about eating, and you've also made a documentary about eating, "The World's Largest Chinese Restaurant," but you're shooting restaurants to show something else.
Chen Weijun: Chinese think that the middle-class life, the first thing to do is to have a car, and the quality of the car is good or bad. You have to get it clean and pretend to know a lot about car culture. The second is to have a suite. The third is that after work in the evening, you can find a place to supper. Eat a bunch of junk stuff, smoke and fire, drink some wine. This is not the case with foreign middle-class standards. If you still take eating very seriously, it means that there is still a gap between us and others.
I was a hungry person, when I was a child, in my hometown in Shandong, I didn't have food for about two months a year. When the green and yellow are not connected, the sweet potato seeds from the dry well will be eaten, and we call the sweet potato seeds sweet potato mother and child. Break the sweet potato mother and child into pieces, like sand. When our children go to the mountain to peel the bark of the elm tree, grind it, soak in water, a layer of glue will appear, and we will use this glue and the powder of the sweet potato mother and child to knead it into a nest, and then eat it. Every time I eat these things, I can't pull out the.
When I tell you this, I actually want to say that the life we live now is actually just a matter of more than ten years. What do you want to eat, and there is a car and a house. If you think about it, a lot of the changes began in 2000, when we joined the WTO and hitched a ride on globalization.
But we don't do well in many places. For example, intellectual property protection. Let me give you an example. When I made "Raw Gate", I used an Italian monopod. This is the best company in the world to do monopods. When we bought it, it was about three thousand dollars a piece. A company in Shenzhen imitated this tripod, the mold fell, and made it. When I made "City Dream", such a tripod cost 800 yuan a piece, and the Italian company was beaten down. You say, in this case, who will innovate in the next generation?
"Raw Gate" (2017)
People Weekly: A lot of the subjects you shoot are how people survive in extreme conditions, is this a topic that you are particularly interested in?
Chen Weijun: Documentaries should also be dramatic, and you can also say that I can also make a documentary if I shoot a random person. If you pay attention to the efficiency of shooting, the subject is not a typical person, or a state of limitation. Only when people are at their limits can they see places that are different from usual. For example, if you shoot Wang Tiancheng, you have to shoot the most intense side of the contradiction and conflict.
People Weekly: How do you balance personal expression with public acceptance?
Chen Weijun: I think that film and television works do the work of mass communication, no matter how you get it, the films you make are extremely dull and extremely personal, and no one wants to watch it, or can't watch it, so it won't be far away. If it only means something to you personally, you don't have to do a documentary. When you look at my films, you are willing to watch them, whether it is the plot, the editing, or the story itself, it is easy to enter.
People Weekly: Do you have a subject that you particularly wanted to shoot but didn't make in the end?
Chen Weijun: Yes. For example, when I was filming "Sunrise and Sunset" for NHK in Japan, I found a title that could be filmed, and finally I didn't have the opportunity to shoot it. There is a kind of class in Japanese schools, where eggs are given to students, taught them how to hatch, hatch and then raise them, and finally kill them in cooking classes and make them into food for everyone to eat. At that time, the translator told me that I thought it was a very good subject.
People Weekly: When you made "Better to Die Than to Live", you said that God is guiding you to complete this documentary.
Chen Weijun: When making documentaries, you always have this feeling. Documentaries are things that are harvested by heaven. It is impossible to have a good idea without funds, but with funds and ideas, it is possible that many opportunities have been aborted.
People Weekly: In life, will you also give yourself to heaven?
Chen Weijun: There will be such an idea. Like I said before, "Dance of the Spirit" inspired me, life is like peeling an onion, keeping curiosity, but always ready for a bamboo basket to hit the water.
City Dreams (2020)
Say goodbye to the past
People Weekly: How are you doing in the U.S. right now?
Chen Weijun: I basically see a doctor and treat patients here, and the rest is lackluster. The editing of "City Dream" is very long, and I have gone back twice in recent years, each time for a week or two, and after solving the editing problem, I returned to the United States. I'm okay now, my heart is empty, this time the movie is going to be released, I just thought about what the distant past did. I haven't really thought much about these things in the past two years.
People Weekly: Why don't you think about these things?
Chen Weijun: I was already very disgusted with the kind of life I used to have. "City Dream" is the last film. When I made "Shengmen", I said that it was the last film. I don't want to do it when I'm done. "City Dream" was finally finished. In the past life, some things in the country, usually do not think about. I rarely use WeChat. I don't know much about domestic things. Basically say goodbye to your past life.
People Weekly: For your past life, you used the word "disgust."
Chen Weijun: Before, the two of us talked, I didn't love documentaries much, and I had this feeling since "It's better to die than to live", I am a more divided person, and it is very painful to do every film. But when I encountered a new topic, plus the team had to eat, I started to do it again. For more than twenty years, it has been pushed forward step by step. Now that I have left the domestic environment, I have basically stopped thinking about it and have not thought much about making films.
People Weekly: When I interviewed you 8 years ago, you also said that you would give up on the documentary thing at any time.
Chen Weijun: Yes, there is such an opportunity now, it is very good, it is too laborious to make a documentary.
People Weekly: What do you think is important now?
Chen Weijun: There really isn't, I'm empty every day. Don't want anything. I think my past life was too complicated. Now I think the simpler the better. I am now vacating the house that used to be very full. Eat, daze, drink.
People Weekly: Are you satisfied with your current life? Or do you have to accept the state?
Chen Weijun: I think so far so satisfied, so far so good.
People Weekly: You said before that the Ma Shenyi family has survived to this day because he has lived a very simple life.
Chen Weijun: Yes, simple. That's when I realized that. I remember giving an example where a lot of people in the city get cancer and they're scared to death. The deeper a person's education, the more plug-ins, the more complicated the mind, the inability to see through life and death, and then there will be great problems. Reduced to eating and drinking Lasa, your desire to survive will be stronger.
Chen Weijun during the filming of "Mountain Judge"
People Weekly: How do you face your serious illness?
Chen Weijun: I look at it relatively lightly, otherwise I would not have the current state. Just like walking alone, I walked a lot more than many people. I made more than a dozen films, such as "Shengmen", and I filmed the birth of sixty or seventy children, which is their family story, which is equivalent to being a parent sixty or seventy times, and I have seen all kinds of things. Personally, in terms of personal career, I have also been to places like Mount Everest. I know, it's just a little higher. For so many years, many people in China have not seen the pressure, and I have also seen it. For me, I feel like I've been worth it all my life, and I've seen everything I should have seen.
People Weekly: When filming "Better to Die Than to Live", when you came back to do a blood test, you gave yourself a psychological hint, the car in front of you was double, indicating that there was no "winning bid", and if it was single number, it was "winning the bid".
Chen Weijun: Yes, this is a little skill that I have done psychological balance all my life. I either look at the license plate or turn the page. Feel free to turn a page to see what words you encounter, and you will do psychological interpretation. When I first encountered a lot of pressure, I would use these little tricks.
People Weekly: What method was used this time?
Chen Weijun: This time there was no use for any method, and it was completely emptied.
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