The 10th Beijing Film Festival screened the first batch of films online.
The 10th Beijing International Film Festival has opened on August 22, and the Beijing screening part, which has attracted the attention of film fans, was opened on August 19, and the ticket sales rate of 10 minutes reached 72%, and many popular films are difficult to find tickets.
This year, there are nearly 100 films screened in the offline screening of the Beijing Film Festival, which is lower than in previous years, but Sha Dan, a senior curator, said that this is the most satisfactory time he has been engaged in the curatorial work of the Beijing Film Festival for six years. He described the film list as "small and beautiful". In his view, the film festival is not a platform for audiences to see commercial blockbusters, but mainly new films, helping young directors and the film industry. The Beijing News reporter interviewed Sha Dan, curator of the screening unit of the Beijing International Film Festival, and talked about the operation story behind the curation of the Beijing Film Festival.
【Invitation】
This year's royalties are slightly more expensive than in previous years
This year's North Film Festival only has about 100 films screened offline, compared with the number of 200 or 300 films in previous years, the number is reduced, but this has far exceeded the initial goal set by this year's North Film Festival. In previous years, when the film festival invited films, some film copyright owners may hesitate, but this year because of the epidemic, the global film industry has been hit hard, the major film companies and copyright owners are not having a good time, they are eager to sell the film rights, "the return to the mail is very fast", Sha Dan said, this is also one of the reasons why this year's Beijing Film Festival can invite more than 100 films in such a short period of time. However, Sha Dan also said that this year's copyright fees are more expensive than in previous years.
Stills from The Matrix.
During the film invitation, the curatorial team did not encounter too much trouble. Sha Dan said that the copyright of the vast majority of movies is in the big film company or copyright agency company, as long as the price is negotiated, you can buy it. For example, last year's Palme d'Or nomination for the French film "Portrait of a Burning Woman" was negotiated through the French MK2 film company; the copyright to the "Matrix" series was licensed from Warner, "The Matrix 4" will be released in 2022, and the first three films screened this year are a warm-up for the audience; "Sherlock Holmes II" (1924) in the third batch of the North Film Festival's list was bought from Park Circus agents in the United Kingdom.
However, there are also some films whose copyrights are in the hands of some private companies, and it will be a bit troublesome to communicate. This year's North Film Festival film list includes a 4K restored film "Hugh Day" (1968), which is the representative work of South Korean hall-level director Lee Wan-hee, and the copyright of the film belongs to the mother of South Korean director Hong Sang-so, who opened a film company in the 1960s, and "Rest Day" is one of the films produced by the company. But Hong Shangxiu's mother has died, so the film is a bit tortuous in the contact process, and the curatorial team found Hong Shangxiu's big brother through personal relations, and finally Hong Shangxiu's big brother did the authorization of the film.
Stills from "Off".
The reason why Sha Dan chose "Rest Day" to be screened at the North Film Festival is the value of the film, he made some connections between the film and The Chinese director Fei Mu's "Spring in a Small Town", seeing the similarity between the two films in cultural consciousness and Oriental expression, "Although this is a 1968 film, its consciousness is beyond time and space, and it is still a brand new film when it is screened in 2020." We need to explore new modernity from such films, and lead the audience to understand a history that they do not understand through curatorial methods. ”
【Curatorial】
The film list is small and beautiful, with an internally related design
"This is the most satisfying time for me in the six years since I personally worked as a curator of the Beijing Film Festival," Sha Dan said, which is definitely not to fool the audience or to pull the box office for this year's Beijing Film Festival.
Because of the large number of film lists in the past film festivals, in order to maintain a good relationship, the planning team sometimes makes some necessary compromises, and there will be some films that can be put or not put into the final screening list. This compromise affects the purity of the whole curation. However, it is precisely the number of films curated this year that is relatively small, relatively speaking, the curatorial team of the North Film Festival has not been affected by so many external forces, and can better exert its subjective initiative, more simply to design a film list, showing a very concise and clear idea, as well as small and beautiful effects.
For this year's list of more than 100 films, Sha Dan is very satisfied, believing that it not only takes into account the fans' demands for classic films, but also forms a tacit understanding and echo with the exploration of world film art.
Stills from the epic film War and Peace.
The "Restoration Classics" section has a 4K restored Soviet film "War and Peace", more than 400 minutes, the reason why this film is selected is because this year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the film's director Sergei Bondalchuk, this film represents the latest level of restoration of Russian cinema; another super-long "giant film" "Work and Time", a total length of 520 minutes, including 5 chapters, focusing on the 14-month labor of an old Japanese woman, breaking the boundaries between documentary and feature films, and putting it on the frontier of exploring the film The "Mirror World" unit; the "Voice of Women" section includes a Korean film "Lower Daughter" (1960), which was previously restored by the Martin Scorsese Film Foundation, and Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Film, "Lower Daughter" also received great attention, because the class problems in "Parasite" and the staircase metaphor were borrowed from the film, which has a strong modernity.
The film "Parasite" contrasts with the highly metaphorical class stills in "The Next Girl" (below).
Sha Dan said that this year's North Film Festival curation has a lot of internal relevance design. For example, Hong Shangxiu's "The Power of Gangwon Road" (1998), although it was a work more than 20 years ago, has a very postmodern deconstructionism in structure, is very avant-garde in concept, and is presented in the "Mirror World" unit; Hong Shangxiu is called "Asian Houmai" by film fans, and this year's North Film Festival just happened to be Houmai's theme screening; the copyright of "Rest Day" was authorized by Hong Shangxiu's brother. "It may sound a bit far-fetched, but in practice, we still try our best to bring more good works to the audience in Beijing through the combination of dots, lines and surfaces."
【Original intention】
The festival is dominated by new films
In Sha Dan's view, film festivals are not a platform for audiences to see commercial blockbusters, and commercial films often do not need film festivals. For example, Nolan's film must be difficult to find at the film festival, but it itself relies on its strong film industry and capital power, and can make a grand premiere wherever the filmmaker wants, attracting countless audiences, and does not need a film festival platform to achieve it. His "Creed," even if it doesn't appear at any film festivals, is still one of the most high-profile commercial blockbusters of the year.
Stills from "Spring River Plumbing".
In this year's screening list, the curatorial team did not recommend some master works and restoration classics as a particularly important section, and there were only 6 HouMai works in the theme screening of "Hou Mai's Covenant". Sha Dan knows that if a film festival shows masterpieces such as Hou Mai, the box office will definitely be high, and it can also meet the audience's demands. However, in order to attract the box office or meet the audience's admiration for the master, the film festival platform can not leave the screening space to the masters who have been affirmed by the history of world cinema, but should focus on new Chinese and foreign films such as "Spring River Plumbing" and "Portrait of a Burning Woman", thinking that the film industry and filmmaker service are the most core work directions, which is the most important thing for the film festival.
Stills from "Auspicious Ruyi".
Sha Dan believes that films such as "Work and Time", "Bird Metamorphosis", "Give Me Wings", "The Last and the First Human", "Auspicious Ruyi", "Mu Ling, YiMing, Wei Ming", and "Nameless Mania" have unconventional expressions, and they need film festivals as pushers to help the development of young directors and the film industry.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
Edited by Huang Jialing Proofreader Wu Xingfa