On October 27th, the "China Zibo Tianjin Bay Image Collection" was launched in Tianjin Bay West Village, Boshan District, Zibo City, Shandong Province. Wang Jixin Filming Production
Beijing News (reporter Geng Ziye) On October 27, the "China Zibo Tianjin Bay Video Collection" was opened in Tianjin Bay West Village, Boshan District, Zibo City, Shandong Province. "Catching up with the market is a demand, a memory, or an expectation," Gao Feng, former deputy director of CCTV and president of the Central New Film Group, said at the opening ceremony, and many video artists used the lens to record rural life and reproduce a thick local memory. When introducing the significance and purpose of the film festival, Jiao Bo, a famous photographer and documentary filmmaker, said that the video collection is "to write history for the countryside, to establish a biography for farmers, and to help rural revitalization through culture." During the film festival, the guests and villagers participated in an open-air "persimmon forest forum" in the mountain persimmon forest at the foot of Yueyang Mountain.
The forum is set up in a persimmon grove halfway up the mountain. Photo by Wang Jixin
Tianjin Wanxi Village in early winter has already shown fatigue after a year of hard work. Burnt corn stalks stand bare in the fields, and large areas of kiwi forest are turned into dry vine leaves due to an early frost. Only a small piece of cabbage and shallots sown in front of the house and behind the house are still green, revealing the stubbornness of the land.
A video exhibition in front of the villagers' homes. Photo by Wang Jixin
It is in this land that Jiao Bo completed the filming of the work "Daddy and Lady" after 30 years, and in 2019, in the "Commemoration of the 180th Anniversary of the Birth of Photography", he was named "one of the 180 people in the 180th year of the birth of photography", and it is precisely because of the success of the video work that Jiao Bo came up with the idea of holding an image collection in his homeland, and after 3 years of preparation, it was successfully held this year.
Jiao Bo, a famous photographer and documentary filmmaker, introduced the mental journey of holding a video collection on the ancient opera stage. Photo by Wang Jixin
On the opening day of the market, a 409-meter-long red silk snaked on the village road, and the whole village held red silk together to cut the ribbon for the big set. The booth of the film and television works is the entire village, starting from the path into the village of Tianjin Bay West Village, and the photographic works reflecting rural life are arranged on the fence and the courtyard wall.
The fields and fence walls of Tianjin Wanxi Village became the booths of film and television works. Photo by Wang Jixin
The whole village, young and old, jointly cut the ribbon for the large collection of images. Photo by Wang Jixin
Villagers are looking for themselves in the photo, and a lady surnamed Wang pointed to a black-and-white photo and told reporters that when she took this photo, she was only fifteen or sixteen years old. The caption of the photo reads "Commemoration of the Completion of a Youth Reservoir in Tianjin Bay, Guozhuang Commune", marking the date of May 4, 1966. "It's not the same as I am now." Speaking with a thick Boshan accent, the old man said with emotion.
The eldest lady surnamed Wang pointed to the black-and-white photo and told reporters that when she took this photo, she was only fifteen or sixteen years old. Photo by Wang Jixin
When the frozen image and the characters and scenes in the image changed by time appear in front of the viewer at the same time, the impact of such an exhibition on the viewer has gone beyond simply "watching" and aroused people's deep thinking.
At the organizers' elaborate open-air "Persimmon Forest Forum", photographers and documentary filmmakers from all over the country expressed their views on the "Tianjin Bay Image Collection". Some scholars have proposed that the rural image collection should further expand the role of the film festival, through the system design, with industrial thinking to develop rural cultural tourism products, and effectively stimulate the vitality of the countryside.
Beijing News reporter Geng Ziye Wang Jixin (media person)
Edited by Tang Zheng Proofreader Wang Xin