In interviews with social workers and even chats with ordinary people, when "how do you know social workers", most of the answers were "Hong Kong film and television dramas". This is because of the popularity of social workers in Hong Kong, but also to illustrate the influence of film and television communication.
With the vigorous development of Social Workers in China, there have been micro-films and documentaries on social work themes, and the first social work-themed feature film "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" in the mainland is also being filmed intensively in Yunnan, and it is expected to meet the audience on the big screen in 2017. What kind of image will the social worker appear in this film?
The producer of this film is Liu Jing, vice president and secretary general of the China Federation of Social Work, dean of the School of Social Work of the National Open University, and president of philanthropic times. Recently, this reporter followed the president to Cangyuan County, Yunnan Province, where the filming was filmed, to visit the class, and chat with the director, screenwriter, and social worker prototype in the play about this social work film and the social workers in Yunnan.
Stills from "The Taste of Rice Blossoms"
The story of a left-behind child and his mother
The background of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is a situation familiar to public welfare people and staged in countless places: Ye Nan, a young mother who has worked outside for many years, decided to temporarily quit her job and return to her hometown to make up for the lack of maternal love because her 12-year-old daughter, who has not been seen in her hometown for two years, has no supervision and many problems. The film focuses on women's choices between work and family, the spiritual growth of left-behind children, and the conflict between traditional culture and the new era, while social workers explore ways out of these problems with villagers.
"'The Taste of Rice Blossoms' is a story of left-behind children and mothers, mothers who return home from work have not seen each other for too long, there is no communication, this separation between mothers and daughters, in the process of reshaping the relationship between mother and daughter, there is also the help of social workers." Director Peng Fei shows the need for social workers in the countryside in the film.
"It's a multi-ethnic area, each with its own culture and traditions, and sometimes social workers have difficulties, hoping to solve problems in a scientific way on the one hand, and respecting local traditions on the other. For example, when a social worker rescues a sick girl, she launches a fundraiser on the one hand, contacts medical resources on the other hand, and is also resisted, and the people in the village think that they must first perform a traditional ceremony, and the two sides will have contradictions in this regard. This contradiction is very interesting to me. The clash of tradition and modernity is part of the story. "This true story was also written into the movie.
"The Taste of Rice Blossoms" filming location: Mengjiao Township Mengka Laozhai Natural Village
Cangyuan County is inhabited by ethnic minorities such as wa and Dai, and the film is set in a pristine Dai village, and the story is also taken from the local area. Director Peng Fei lived in Cangyuan for a year before the filming began, during which he met social workers with Xiang Rong, director of the Institute of Social Work of the School of Public Administration of Yunnan University, visited villages and schools with social workers, and learned about the living customs and culture of villagers. While sending a little girl home, I found this beautiful Dai village.
Except for the heroine Yingze, the characters in the film are all played by indigenous people from the local ethnic minorities. In the main role, Wang Yiting and Wang Lan are both 13-year-old Wa girls in Cangyuan, and Cha Ai Nan is a local musician in Cangyuan.
A social worker in the eyes of directors and screenwriters
"To speak bluntly about what social workers do, it may not be so contagious, and I hope to put the difficulties encountered in social workers' work, including their own contradictions and entanglements, in the story." Pengfei said. On the recommendation of Teacher Xiang Rong, he came to the social work station of yunnan Lianxin Community Care Service Center in Cangyuan, listened to the social workers, experienced with them, and usually lived in his hometown.
Director Peng Fei
"During the time I was dealing with social workers, I learned that they had been misunderstood by their families for a long time, and the people in the village didn't understand them, and people didn't know what they were doing, and sometimes they felt that they were nosy. But the social worker is genuinely serving the people in the village. We have seen the process of slowly accepting social workers from the local people. ”
"I understand that social workers, while helping people, are also a process of finding themselves." After living in the local area for a year, Pengfei's understanding of social work has been very deep. Even in the process of preparing the film, he also worked with social workers to pass on the local culture.
"Many young people in the local area are listening to hip-hop music, rap, rock and roll, and I asked a very famous musician in Lincang, saying that because of filming, I wanted to find someone who could play gourd silk or play elephant foot drums, and he said, 'I can play African drums.'" Pengfei felt very sorry, but did not give up, "Later I worked with the social worker with him, and finally when he combined traditional music with rock and roll, an extraordinary charm appeared." ”
The film's heroine, Hidezawa, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is the only non-local among the main actors. Yingze, who had just completed a philosophy course at Harvard University in the summer of 2016, returned to China and came directly to Cangyuan to experience life. The role of left-behind child mothers is a challenge for Yingze, who spent his childhood in Beijing, Hong Kong, and went to study in the UK at the age of 15. She lived in the local area for more than 3 months, contacting the villagers and learning the local dialect at the same time to achieve the whole dialect performance.
Hidezawa experiences local life in the village
"3 months is actually not long, and many foreign experiential actors work harder to sink into the role." Yingze is very humble. Speaking of social workers, Yingze very directly pointed out the current situation of domestic social workers: "When I was studying in the UK, I went to an institution that collected donations for cancer patients every weekend to help social workers do some fundraising and charity work, and the university also read social policy. However, I think the situation abroad is still very different from that in China, and the domestic public's understanding of social workers is still in a relatively initial stage. Therefore, our film highlights the current situation of society and the needs of society for social service work, without going too far and directly describing the work of social workers. ”
She also has her own views on ethnic minority social workers: "Ethnic minority areas have their own unique culture, if they are foreign social workers, they may not be able to understand the local needs in particular, but if they develop social workers completely locally, the way of thinking may not be broad enough, which is also a contradiction." ”
The social worker prototype in the movie is Li Xiaofei
90% of the story of "The Taste of Rice" is based on real life, and half of it comes from Li Xiaofei, a local social worker in Cangyuan. At the Cangyuan County Smile Sunshine Youth Affairs Social Work Service Center (an incubator of yunnan Lianxin Community Service and Care Center, officially registered in 2016), the reporter met the 88-year-old Wa girl and visited the Daodong Village Social Work Station where she and her colleague Chen Jianglong were stationed.
One element of the film is that Cangyuan Airport is about to open (Cangyuan Wa Shan Airport opened in December 2016), and everyone hopes to develop tourism, while social workers help villagers protect traditional culture while developing tourism. Li Xiaofei's home is near the airport.
Like most of her colleagues at the institution, Li Xiaofei did not major in social work, but studied Chinese language and literature at Yunnan Normal University. In 2013, he came to Yunnan Lianxin and gradually realized the significance of social work in doing activities with Xiang Rong. For her, social work is both an ordinary job and a way to serve her hometown.
The most obvious situation in Daodong Village is that there are more people left behind, that is, left-behind elderly people, left-behind children and left-behind women, Li Xiaofei and Chen Jianglong started with left-behind children and children in distress. "In fact, at the beginning, I didn't know how to explain social work to the villagers, so let's do it first." Li Xiaofei said, "When I first started serving in school, the children also called me teachers, and I said I wasn't. Later, through visits to the child's home, the child would tell the parents, 'She did activities for us at school, but didn't give us lessons', and I explained to the parents what social work was. ”
Li Xiaofei and Chen Jianglong's work began by serving children, connecting with parents, extending to women's recreational activities, livelihood issues, and then to a wider range of villagers. Chen Jianglong described it this way: "Doing social work in the countryside is like touching a sweet potato vine, starting to touch the tip, getting deeper and deeper into the core of the problem." At the heart of it is the economic issue. To solve this problem, we set up cooperatives. "The chicken cooperative in Daodong Village has been done, and the villagers have learned scientific breeding, have benefited, and have gradually accepted the work of social workers."
Spread the idea of social work through film
Liu Jing, vice president and secretary general of the China Federation of Social Work, is full of expectations for the release of "The Taste of Rice Flowers": "The director and the lead actor have a high degree of understanding of social workers, and the stories in the film vividly show the role of social workers. They touched me first. ”
Liu Jing believes that at present, the government attaches great importance to social workers, and there is a great demand for social workers in society, but there are still contradictions in the process of social work services landing, such as insufficient social cognition. Traditional forms of propaganda are more preachy and are not easily accepted. Film is a very good form of expression, through the film, you can subtly let everyone understand what is social work, where the demand for social work is, and infiltrate the concept of social work into all levels of society.
The production team of "Taste of Rice Blossoms"
Director Peng Fei and director of photography Liao Benrong
Director/Screenwriter: Peng Fei (post-80s director, studied film in France for eight years, and worked with internationally renowned directors Hong Shangxiu and Cai Mingliang. The director's debut "Underground Incense" won the Best Film of the European and Mediterranean Film Critics Association at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, and the Golden Hugo Award in the Chicago Film Festival's Emerging Directors Competition Section)
Lead actor/co-writer: Eizawa (Graduated from Bud Demington High School, a prestigious british girls' school, graduated from the Department of Social Policy and Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science, and received a certificate in stage performance from the Royal College of Arts, and studied philosophy postgraduate credits at Harvard University in the summer of 2016. Starred in "Underground Incense")
Director of Photography: Liao Benrong ("Outing", "Not Scattered", "Long Live Love")
Voice Direction: Du Duzhi ("Assassin Nie Yinniang", "Fancy Years", "Yiyi")
Styling Director: Wang Jiahui ("Outing", "Face")
Soundtrack: Keiichi Suzuki (Humpback City, Extremely Evil)
Film Editing: Chen Bowen ("One One")
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Author: Wang Huixian
Philanthropy Times
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