The red carpet of the closing ceremony of the 5th Pingyao International Film Festival. (Southern Weekend reporter Wang Huazhen/photo)
Pingyao Ancient City Station is farther from Pingyao Ancient City than Pingyao Station. People who have just arrived in Pingyao will always encounter this tongue twister-like "railway station paradox". There are many things like this that are confusing in Pingyao, such as the Hunan rice noodle shop next door to the Film Palace, and in the first two days after the opening of the fifth Pingyao International Film, a bowl of ordinary beef rice noodles sold for 79 yuan and rib rice noodles for 69 yuan. Amid the complaints of the crowd, the price was cut on the third day, and beef rice noodles and rib rice noodles dropped to 45 yuan and 35 yuan respectively - rice noodle shop owners inevitably overestimated the spending power of the new generation of directors and fans who came to Pingyao.
This rice noodle shop is newly opened in 2021. When Jia Zhangke tearfully declared at the 4th Pingyao Film Festival, everyone knew that the film festival team would change hands, and Pingyao would no longer be the most Cannes-like festival in China. But on June 1, 2021, Jia Zhangke shared a photo of himself inside the Pingyao Film Palace on Weibo — he walked with his back to the camera, walking in the empty movie palace, with a large portrait of Fei Mu hanging from the camera staring at the viewer outside the camera. This is a clear signal that Jia Zhangke has returned to Pingyao.
The Fifth Pingyao International Film Festival finally opened. Before the Beijing International Film Festival was postponed for a few months, and then there was an indefinite postponement of the Hainan Island International Film Festival, which made people have to sweat for Pingyao. Insiders said that after the cooperation between Jia Zhangke's team and the Pingyao County Government ended last year, the Pingyao Film Festival was once in danger. But Jia Zhangke's team found the support of the Shanxi Provincial Government this year and finally made the Fifth Film Festival. In this year's film festival press release, it is also clearly mentioned that "this year's Pingyao International Film Festival ... Upgraded from a mechanism to a provincial project".
The most important things, such as the curatorial team and the screening unit, have not changed, and for fans, it can be said that it is the best result. At the opening ceremony on the evening of October 12, Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao were still standing in the foyer of the Movie Palace, welcoming their friends as they had last year. Late at night, Bundy also returned, accompanied by Renke's lazy voice, Xie Fei was invited to the stage, following the young man's dance steps, he danced selflessly, a silver hair that looked particularly dazzling in the light.
Torrential rains have scarred the ancient city, and the film has rejuvenated the ancient city in its own way. Much more young faces than in previous years gathered in Pingyao, making the bleak ancient city catering industry after the rainstorm improve. After asking, I learned that this year, a traffic star served as the "curator" of the film exhibition, and many fans came from all over the country. A female reporter said that two fans once asked her how much the media card was asked for in order to blend in with an event. As a result, the screams of fans on the opening red carpet became the most enthusiastic opening declaration of the Pingyao Film Exhibition.
Stills from the movie Amparo (2021). (Infographic/Figure)
After watching the competition unit of foreign films, "Crouching Tiger", you know that the tastes of the Pingyao film selection team have not changed - the story of the third world, the plight of women and the symptoms of the post-colonial era. Regardless of the genre, women's fate bears the greatest "drama pressure" in the film.
The opening film "The Long Confession" is a Chinese-language film directed again by director Zhang Lu many years later, and ni Ni's character "Yanagawa" has become the object of pursuit of several men in the film, while her own character and motivation are lost, as if she has no other length than to become an object of male desire. Lacking a real story and idea, the film can only revolve around the emotions of the characters and the scenery on location, and the various Japanese symbols conveyed by the Japanese location are as cheesy as this love triangle story - the director tells a story of disease-free moaning in the most mysterious way.
In contrast, the Bangladesh film Rihanna gives a slightly clumsy but heavy blow. The whole film closely follows the ups and downs of the characters' fate. But the development of the story is like throwing the characters into the set up anti-sexual harassment program, and gradually completing various prescribed actions, even the camera language is like a programmed, holding a large close-up to show the oppressed and manic heart of the heroine. This conventional video language weakens the sharp theme of the film, and the only bright spot may be the blackening of the heroine Rihanna at the end, from a victim of violence to an abuser...
The women on the big screen in Pingyao all seem to be in a world where men are absent. The Colombian film "Amparo" and the Russian film "Mom, I'm Back" tell similar stories - the fate of a single mother looking for a son lost in the war is very different; the little girls in the Mexican film "Night of Fire" have no father, and they grow up in a small town controlled by drug lords; the woman in the Egyptian film "Feathers", which won the top prize in the "Crouching Tiger" unit, bizarrely lost her husband, and her husband-hunting journey finally impressed the judges.
Without fathers, husbands, sons, what will women encounter on this thorny road as they move toward independence as never before in history? Movies can't give answers, but movies are records and testimonies. With hundreds of thousands of deaths dead over more than 50 years of civil war in Colombia (and a succession of clashes following the 2016 peace deal), Amparo recreates the Colombian civil war of the 1990s through the perspective of a mother looking for a son. The film is technically well-shot, and the imagery from the Romanian New Wave is perfectly reproduced in South American cities, but overall the film lacks a refreshing aura.
Also a story of child hunting, the Russian absurd story "Mom, I'm Back" is even more undefinable. A paranoid and crazy mother, unable to accept her son's death, decides to flee in an attempt to find an answer, but Russia responds by assigning a fake son to her home — in fact, a soldier who monitors and manipulates her life. When an avatar appears in the camera and stares at the off-camera audience, the Russian mother's fear and anger seem to be felt. Compared to another neat Hollywood child-hunting movie, "Three Billboards", "Mom, I'm Back" is crazy and neurotic in terms of script and camera language, which is obviously more interesting.
Compared with most of the shortlisted foreign films that choose to face the major real problems of today's world (although this direct face is also another cliché in today's international film industry), the domestic films participating in the exhibition in 2021 seem to be more private image writing. Of course, individual small love can also make first-class works, but unfortunately this year there is none. Roughly calculated, 6 of the 11 films shortlisted for the Hidden Dragon Unit used dialects, of which "Little Sonata", "Street Baby", "Day and Night River" and "Goodbye, Paradise" are full dialect dialogues, and the dialects in "Yong'an Town Story Collection" and "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department" are also very important for the development of the plot. The Yong'an Town Story Collection and Goodbye, Paradise use the Xiang dialect, and the other 4 are all Southwest Mandarin dialects.
Dialect movies are getting more and more. After Ning Hao's "Crazy Stone" in 2006 excavated the comedic potential of southwest Mandarin, various dialects appeared more and more frequently in movies. The historically strong Northeast dialect and the Southwest Mandarin Dialect Sichuan-Chongqing film are regular guests in the film; Jia Zhangke let various Jin dialects such as Taiyuan dialect, Datong dialect, Fenyang dialect take turns in his works; another Guizhou dialect of Southwest Mandarin made a big splash at the end of 2018, and three Guizhou dialect films seemed to call for the arrival of the "Guizhou New Wave"; even Wu, which has been unknown in the film industry (perhaps because other Wu languages other than Shanghai dialect are difficult to understand), also appeared in the best film "Above the Clouds" at the 2021 Beijing International Film Festival. village.
If the dialect in the movie is used properly, it can make the dialogue lively and enhance the realism of the movie - this truth is known to everyone, but it is easier said than done. Whenever a movie's dialogue is in a certain dialect, the native speaker of the dialect will prick up their ears and become extremely harsh. There are many examples of "playing" in dialects for native speakers, such as after the release of "Baby", which speaks Nanjing dialect, some netizens questioned Yang Mi's Nanjing accent, "A Beijing big girl, speaking a crappy Nanjing dialect..." Such embarrassment also appeared at this Pingyao Film Exhibition.
Instead of using dialects, it naturally makes the film local. The protagonist of Street Baby is a small in a small town in the southwest, a typical story of small town youth who is confused and looking for a way out. The license plate that appears in the movie is "Yu", but the attentive audience can hear that the protagonist's words have a distinct Chengdu accent. Huang Miyi and Sha Baoliang, two actors, can't speak the local dialect, so the script arranges for their characters to be exiled from other places to this place - such a setting is difficult not to doubt the original intention of the script. The rhythm of the second half of the film is somewhat out of touch with the first half, but according to friends who have seen another version, the exhibition version has cut a lot, resulting in inconsistencies in the front and back.
A more serious problem appeared in Goodbye, Paradise. The director filmed the three most important women of his life in three segments—grandma, mother, and girlfriend—so that their dialects were pronounced as voiceovers in three paragraphs. The film's graphics are quite static, basically unable to convey effective information, relying on the changde narration of the three women to support the narrative. Once the sound and picture space between the narrator and the picture cannot form a related interaction, the film will become a "ppt movie" that the audience ridicules. The three women's dialect narration, if not to the level of pretentiousness, is completely lifeless, and has basically declared the film's expression invalid.
A positive example comes from Rivers of Day and Night. This is not a typical film festival film, with a strong 1980s and 1990s old studio temperament, in fact, it is produced by Emei Film Studio, the actor team is basically from Sichuan, telling the story of Sichuan boatmen. Sichuan dialect has a very solid and life-oriented presentation in the film, which is fundamentally different from those "art films" that attempt to achieve comedic effects or so-called personal expression under the pretext of dialects.
Because of their special intonation and easy to understand, Southwest Mandarin and Northeast Dialect are often used in movies to create gimmicks or as a condiment. Such a use will inevitably appear in commercial films in the future, and for literary films, if it is not a creation that is really rooted in the local area, then please let go of the dialect.
Stills from the movie Feathers (2021). (Infographic/Figure)
The dreary film show schedule was shattered by the last Chinese-language film, Cosmic Exploration Editorial Board. At the cocktail party on the evening before the premiere, in the noisy music, director Kong Dashan was led by a producer and introduced to the people present one by one: "This is Kong Dashan, you have seen his short film "When the Future of the Legal System", which is very popular at station B. Kong Dashan smiled, his head hidden in the hood of his coat, looking shy.
"Cosmic Exploration Editorial Board", like "The Future of the Legal System", takes the form of a pseudo-documentary, telling the story of a "folk science" (internet term, short for folk science enthusiasts, slightly pejorative or self-deprecating) who stubbornly searches for aliens. In fact, only a handful of "folks" are paranoids like Don Sr. in the movie who have real convictions, and the fanaticism and resolute action that they want to break through the shackles of the flesh make me think that if they are better educated, they may be the next Kepler. But the film lets people know that knowledge is sometimes not so important, the movie is the collapse of the red star, the dissolution of the newsroom, the sparrows flying on the rocks, the donkey walking in the mountain stream - everything is interconnected and meaningful, all because of the little love and paranoia of human beings. Many sages have said this, and this movie is told again in a proper and humorous way, making the audience at the premiere laugh and cry. It will undoubtedly become a film in the history of Chinese science fiction films that will be remembered by people.
It is said to be science fiction, but most of the time in "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department" does not have many science fiction elements, but the structure of the play is applied to "Journey to the West", and the journey to find aliens borrows the spiritual core of the four Tang monks and apprentices traveling west to learn the scriptures, and becomes a road movie with a magical nature.
Also magical may be the "Crouching Tiger" unit of "What Do We See When We Look Up at the Sky" and "Feathers". What We See When We Look Up at the Sky is a magic film inherited from the silent film era, and a love letter to the film and the Georgian city of Kutaisi. All kinds of whimsical plots land on the love of the male and female protagonists, making their love cursed, but finally being cursed by the development of film. In a city where even dogs love football and movies, how can there be no antidote to the curse of love? This film can be regarded as the most relaxed and lively one of this year's Pingyao Film Festival, and the director's playful pre-screening guide also makes everyone smile, without this movie, this year's "Crouching Tiger" unit will be another year of "bitter revenge".
When Wei Shujun came to Pingyao in 2020 with "Wild Horse Mane", someone commented on the Internet: "After watching it, you will know how these bad films in Pingyao were filmed." "Pingyao does have a lot of bad films, and many bad films are cultivated by Pingyao itself, such as the "Little Sonata" that was disliked by almost all audiences in 2021, which is the best director of last year's WIP (Developing Film Project); "Goodbye, Paradise" is the best director of the previous year's WIP, and this year's finished product is not satisfactory. Half of the work is shot, who could have predicted that it would be a bad film after shooting? Last year, I gave people the best director of the wip, can I not let it enter the main competition after shooting this year? Such a situation tests the artistic courage of the Pingyao film selection team.
Wei Shujun brought "Yong'an Town Story Collection" to Pingyao this year, still self-deprecatingly focusing on the slightly magical "broken things" that filmmakers make movies. "I also have the script concept for the fifth feature film." He told a reporter privately. Now Wei Shujun is undoubtedly creative, and there are mockeries and self-deprecations in "Yong'an Town Story Collection", and it is not inevitable to regard the Beijing director who loves hip-hop in the movie as himself, after all, he has been listening to this kind of "arrogant" music since high school. He also understands all the literary and artistic diseases, but tries to dissolve them with images and then actively dances with them again- this is what makes him interesting.
Cinema is perhaps the most narcissistic art. Few composers write a piece about composition, and it's hard to see a painting about painting, but movies with the theme of making movies abound. A film like this would be as tiresome as a Sonata, and at the same time raise questions about the legitimacy of the film itself— a film, on what basis? But even Dai Jinhua, who has always emphasized the public nature of the film, softened in a short film in Pingyao, saying: "Almost all art is narcissistic." In Pingyao, the film temporarily enjoys this narcissism.
Stills from the short film The Last Director on Earth (2021). (Infographic/Figure)
The closing short film "The Last Director of The Earth" inherits and teases this narcissism. In the science fiction scene of 2065, the film has become an intangible cultural heritage, and Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao have become non-hereditary people. The last two directors of the world found perhaps the only remaining cinema on the beach at the end of the world and watched the first movie in human history, "The Train Comes In". If that was the last film screening on Earth, was Earth's last film exhibition in Pingyao?
Southern Weekend reporter Wang Huazhen