In the era of repo, why do young people watch old movies in theaters?
@文/Reporter Han Dongyi" opened, and someone shook a flashlight to find a seat. The slope of the venue is not high, and it looks like a longing figure. It seems to have a wonderful interaction with the big screen, with white birds, flying houses and heavy rain, exiled wanderers...... The old site was messed up for a while, and it was like a dream. ”
The classic film "Song of the Wanderer" is a popular film at this year's Beijing Film Festival, and fan Xiaoyu took the lead in grabbing a copy of "Song of the Wanderer". In fact, since the opening of tickets in mid-April, the special screening section of the Beijing Screening Screening, "Retrospective of the Works of Emile Kusturica", has attracted many buyers, especially "Song of the Wanderer".
"The Song of the Wanderer has two souls of Kudao – Shakespeare and Chekhov. The former is like "Underground", and the latter is like "Dad Goes on a Business Trip". At the film master class forum, Yu Hua, an old acquaintance and guest speaker of Kusturica, said: "The vast world is hidden behind that old, ruin-like small door that passers-by are familiar with. ”
Contemporary film master Kusturica revisits the Beijing Film Festival or the Beijing Film Archive, and the audience is really familiar with the contemporary film master Kusturica. This time, as a judge of the "Temple of Heaven Award" of the 14th Beijing Film Festival, he revisited Beijing and caused fans to boil again. "I'm not wearing my shoes here, we're relaxed and peaceful." "Seven years later, the trees on the street seem to have grown taller. "Beijing in April is a beautiful day.
A total of more than 250 films were screened in Beijing, 16 screening units, the 14th Beijing International Film Festival "Beijing Screening", more than 250 films, across 16 screening units, and 27 theaters. In recent years, the duration of the screening has been reduced from two weeks to more than one week, and fans are always buzzing. According to data from Maoyan Films, 61% of them are young viewers between the ages of 20 and 29.
"This year's Beijing Film Festival is in a hurry, how long is your 'commuting time'?" On social media, some fans asked. "Ten hours of commuting in three days, I dare not count the taxi money", "13 games in four days, I will arrive home at 10 o'clock in the evening at the earliest", "the subway cost almost 100 yuan", "a total of 30 kilometers of cycling"......
The fans are "rushing" and immersing themselves in the "rush", and they are inevitably tired when they are drunk. "Watching three or four movies a day, can you mentally digest it?" Some people were puzzled, but there was no response. Of course, there is nothing that is not allowed to be missed, but the young man with a beautiful film list in his hand can't help but be a little "greedy and stubborn", so the "transition marathon" tacitly acknowledged.
Compared with many prestigious film festivals with the Palace of Cinema as the centerpiece, urban film festivals are too easy to dilute the immersion of "elsewhere". However, there are always moments that are unforgettable. "One day, I was running with a few strangers in the subway and found out that I was going to the same theater and watching the same movie." Some fans are talking about it. In the magnificent and complex city, it is like a flowing microstar.
Classic: Shadow as a method What is the "greatest common divisor" of the film list of young people's Beijing Film Festival?
In fact, despite variables such as the number of screenings, venues, and the number of films, the vast majority of popular films in Beijing were sold out within three days of ticket opening.
At the Beijing Film Festival, classic films are still hard to find, and film history classics are the most popular. Such as "Song of the Wanderer", "Pulp Fiction (New 4K Restored Version)", "Black Cat and White Cat", "Once Upon a Time in America (Director's Cut Extended Version)", "Blade Runner 2049 (IMAX3D Version)", "Dream of Arizona", "The House of the Unhemp", "Bad Blood", Chinese films include "Back to Back, Face to Face", "Qiu Ju Lawsuit", "Garden Dream" and so on.
Of course, there is no shortage of new films that sell out quickly. For example, Japanese director Miyake sings "Everything at Dawn", Ryusuke Hamaguchi's new film "Evil Does Not Exist", and "Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry" and "Sweet East" in the Director's Fortnight Unit of the Cannes Film Festival; Among the Chinese films are "Killing Violet", "East Forty Articles", "Easy · Travel", the documentary "Mei's Day and Night"; The shortlisted films in the main competition of the "Temple of Heaven Award" include "Out of Season", "Substitute Teacher", "Top Secret Formula", etc., and the overall popularity of the unit has also risen.
At a time when information is being mass-trafficked and disseminated into dust, why are young people still watching old movies at film festivals?
After the screening, fans asked questions, "In the dark, you laugh, sigh, and be surprised with the people around you, which is completely different from the feeling of projecting the screen alone in the bedroom." It's also good to watch a movie alone at home, but watching an old movie in the theater has a feeling of emotional resonance, and the experience is also fascinating. ”
"The picture is clear after the new restoration. This time, I watched the masterpiece "Pulp Fiction", and I have seen it before, but the sensory experience in the theater is different, and I feel that the soul is still in the movie. ”
"Watching old movies is like piecing together fragments of memory, like a treasure piece being lost, familiar and fresh. It has a unique temperament that keeps talking without getting bored. "After watching "Bad Blood", many editing techniques, image information, and film language of current commercial films and literary films can still be seen in them. Reminiscing about the classics is the greatest enjoyment and expectation in the film festival. ”
"Once Upon a Time in America is a 251-minute director's cut, and the applause lasted for ten seconds after the movie, and it rained heavily when I walked out of the theater, what a time."
"Look at "Once a Skylark" from the retrospective of Master Ota Esoriani, the director who passed away at the end of last year. The style of the film is dreamy, anti-causal, and today it looks like a faded cold eye. ”
- Fans have different answers.
In short, "experience", "emotional resonance", "new film stepping on thunder", "aesthetic consumption", ...... The quality of a classic film is trustworthy, and then it is completely immersed in the story, and the human instinct is nothing more than "love to listen to a story".
As a public film festival, the Beijing Film Festival is always bustling" Compared with the Pingyao Film Festival, which focuses on professionalism, the Beijing Film Festival and the Shanghai Film Festival are more public, taking into account both venture capital and industrial sectors. At the theme salon called "Why do we need film festivals", Sha Dan, the curator of the Beijing Film Festival, said frankly. In fact, among the two, the Beijing Film Festival is smaller, and it is still known for its fascination with the public cultural life of Beijing, which is already known for serving the audience.
Immersion is one way. "We project ourselves into the film, confusing the real with the imaginary, the self with the other. Cinema is immersive art. Cultural scholar Dai Jinhua once said that in the era of narcissism, the new media is full of "selfies in a broad sense", and people need "the art of seeing others and forgetting themselves".
"Within the Reach" unit, screening the drama "My Altay"
New work: The Abyss of the Mirror World
Among the new films, in addition to the films recorded above that sold out quickly, there are also some cutting-edge films from the screening units such as "Focus on the Future", "Mirror World", "Women's Voice" and "Silk Road Asia Connection", which have gained word-of-mouth or discussion after their premieres at the Beijing Film Festival.
Post-screening activities include "The Beast" and "Windy City" at the Venice Film Festival, "My New Friend" and "Pepe" at the Berlin Film Festival, "The Golden Cocoon" and "Conan" at the Cannes Film Festival, the Thai film "Heavenly Water Path" at the Rotterdam Film Festival, "Andrea's Love" at the Tallinn Film Festival, the Japanese women-themed film "Ripple", and "Stop-and-Go" which finally won the best film at this year's "Temple of Heaven Award".
The International Film Festival Loop begins with the Festival de Cannes, i.e. the "calendar" starts in May every year. The Beijing Film Festival, which starts in April, is at the end of the previous year's cycle, so it can be regarded as a "compilation party of new works".
In 2024, the "Focus on the Future" section of the Beijing Film Festival will open for ten years, and Wu Guanping, the artistic director of the unit, analyzed the significance of discovering "treasures and new works" at the festival: "International film festivals have units that encourage experimentation and innovation and promote new trends in film art...... It was achieved by newcomers to film. This has given a useful inspiration to the creation of Chinese newcomer films. ”
Film Festival Industry Forum "The film festival is oriented to film and academia, as well as to the industry. Sha Dan, curator of the Beijing Film Festival, said, "This year's 'Master Classics' are placed in the second half of the film list to balance the audience's attention. The main work of the film festival is to drive the film industry and creation, and the Beijing Film Festival should empower the industry in an all-round way. ”
"Distribution is not only the distribution itself, we want to discover and serve more young filmmakers and enter the larger film market." Wang Qingqiang, the Chinese selector of the Berlin International Film Festival and the director of the Film Industry Office of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, said in the forum that the film festival is the "outpost" of the industry.
And for the theme or style of the new film, does the audience have a preference? Among the hotly discussed new films, there are some eye-catching historical issues and social observations, such as "Sweet Orient", "Top Secret Formula", "Windy City", "Kitchen" and so on.
At the same time, more films look at subtle emotions and floating love. An audience joked: "Eight out of ten films talk about unhappy families and broken lives." ”
In the future generation of "The Beast", the emotional purification system is still ineffective for 0.7% of people, and emotions are still the fate of human beings; In "Andrea's Love", the stubborn girl gets a cruel confession, but is finally relieved; In "Everything at Dawn", a panic patient rides a bicycle through a stumbling city, and when dawn comes around, he can taste the sweetness of raw cream; "Evil Does Not Exist" starts with the issue of nature, commercial exploitation destroys springs and dogwoods, but the most cruel thing is still the abyss of the heart......
In the era of swiftness, personality classification labels are all the rage, "hot stalks" are gathering and scattering, and patient "vipassana" is actually luxurious. "We, as ordinary people, face all kinds of emotions in life, and this shows the fragility of human beings." At the "Temple of Heaven Award" Best Film Media Viewing Party, film sound designer and international judge David White said.
Urban Cultural Life: Comic Presence There is another type of film that has never had a shortage of fans at the Beijing Film Festival, that is, "meta-films". In this year's Beijing Film Festival, there are "Light", "Single8", "Next Shot", "Laika Cinema", etc., in the mass culture market, such content is often "not popular".
"Cinema is somewhere between art and life." "Lycra Cinema". In the landscape generation, if cultural life is about equal to consumption, and public life is always based on "punching in", we always need some kind of scene to wipe the rampant commoditization or instrumentalization. "Aesthetics reveal existence." Heidegger put it this way.
As a result, despite the growing controversy over the management or atmosphere of the Beijing Film Festival over the years—such as ticket price increases, screening accidents, screen photography, cultural and creative peripherals, and "civilized investigation" and "anti-pickiness" in movie-watching—public film festivals are still rubbing shoulders with each other. At this point, fans chatter and love it.
"We urgently need an imagination to glue reality together, and cinema is a kind of arrival." Young screenwriter Kang Chunlei said in the Beijing Film Festival forum, "Feel others and feel yourself through movies." ”
After the screening of "East 40 Articles", he talked about the popular film "East 40 Articles" screened this year, which is a "community film with nano-level investment". If the whole city is regarded as a cultural community, the pair of literary and artistic "partners" in the film are undoubtedly representative "residents". Eating melon seeds on the grass in June, getting lost in the alley in September, and treading ice in the river in December, some people say that this is the drum tower version of "Seto Inland Sea", and some people scoff at it as a "collection of jokes in the Wenqing version", "just like ordinary people who pretend to be weirdos at the entrance of the museum".
However, such ridicule is inevitably accompanied by meritocratic meanness. After all, people have the right to choose how they present their existence, whether it's "raiders", improvisational, or dreamy.
"People sit down and talk about their ideals, but they don't really know what each other does. It's like a caricature box by frame. In the post-screening event, the creator of "East Forty Articles" talked about "Beijing within the Second Ring Road", "I met on the road, communicated, I don't know if I can meet him next winter." In the cultural life of the city, "young people are wild," they laughed, "in the Drum Tower, Dance Still." ”
At Lang Yuan Station, open-air screenings and event sites
Producer: Pi Jun Final Review: Chen Min Reviewer: Liu Xiao Liu Bowen Editor: Miao Jiaxin (intern)