Documentary "Mortals": Dissecting "Interesting Souls" in the First Person

People's Daily - Entertainment Channel

People's Daily Beijing, March 25, 2020 The non-fiction mini-documentary drama "Mortals of Yuanben", jointly produced by Chongqing Fengming Culture Media Co., Ltd., Nanjing Daneng Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., Beijing Yunman Film and Television Culture Media Co., Ltd. and iQIYI, premiered exclusively on iQIYI in March 2020, starring Liu Zhaohong, Shan Sihan, Wu Nan, Han Bo, Zhou Xiaopeng and so on.

Spanning the four historical dynasties of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the Sui Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty, "The Mortals of the Fallen Book" takes the stories of the five rather individual emperors of the Jin Dynasty, Sima Rui, the Later Tang Zhuangzong Li Cunxun, the Sui Emperor Yang Guang, the Ming Emperor Zhu Youxian and the Ming Wuzong Zhu Houzhao as the main line, presenting historical anecdotes through contextualization, telling their unknown side, and reproducing for the audience a flesh-and-blood emperor of China thousands of years ago.

"Mortals" adopts the form of a short drama, based on history, and uses a first-person approach to dissect these "interesting souls". The protagonist in the play is no longer a narrator, no longer a high-restoration image of a glimpse. The emperors in the play live in two parallel spaces, they are both the narrators of the story and the protagonists of the story, which not only meets everyone's need for historical understanding, but also gives all viewers a visual feast of historical anecdotes.

Director Hu Tingting said that "Mortals" breaks through the traditional documentary forms of expression, "We know that the three most important forms of traditional documentaries are commentary, experts and hosts, and in the film "Mortals", these three traditional forms of expression do not exist, and we use a new means of expression to convey the content of the film more vividly, narrowing the distance with the audience. ”

Hu Tingting believes that traditional documentary narration always explains these characters in the third person like a textbook, which makes the audience unable to understand deeply, "I wonder if it is possible for historical figures to introduce themselves, confide in you their emotions, communicate with you, tell you his thoughts, and share their stories. ”

"We wanted our work to be a different documentary that would break with the same way of filming and storytelling." Hu Tingting said, "I firmly believe that the documentary genre does not have a constraint on the creation itself. ”