The Surging News reporter Xu Haifeng intern Feng Rui
【Editor's Note】
Eighteen years ago, the documentary "Tiexi District" turned out to be, not only because the film lasted for nine hours, but also because it was not widely screened in public, resulting in rumors and became the film (DVD) that audiences privately circulated and communicated at that time.
"Tiexi District" is divided into three parts, in order of "Factory", "Yanfan Street" and "Railway". This super-long documentary is a serious test for the audience. This seems to be unique in the history of Chinese documentaries. Domestically, it was either snubbed or misunderstood after its production, and few seem to know that it won first place at the world's three major documentary film festivals – Marseille and Nantes in France and Yamagata in Japan.
Shenyang Tiexi District, China's largest heavy industrial base, was established during the Japanese and pseudo-Japanese periods, and after 1949, it was reshaped according to the planned economic management system and the Soviet model, becoming a huge community of state-owned enterprises. Around the new millennium, the big factories were dismantled one after another, and the old world fell apart.
This year, director Wang Bing will once again introduce the photos taken at the same time as the "Tiexi District" documentary that year to the public – 52 photographic works from the 14th Documenta kassel exhibition in 2017 were unveiled at the Shanghai Art Fair in Shanghai on November 3, 2021. Taking this as an opportunity, about the behind-the-scenes story of the creation of "Tiexi District", the creative understanding of video and still picture photography, and his own confusion about life, etc., Wang Bing was interviewed by the surging news reporter for more than 3 hours on October 22, 2021, and we will publish it in four independent chapters to share with readers.
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Director Wang Bing talks about the difference between picture and video video video video clip Yuan Yufeng Color grading Jiang Yong Interview recording collation Intern Guo Zhiyiting Zang Yinkun (03:08)
The Paper: Unless there is teamwork, it is difficult for a person to take a photo while filming video (video). How to balance and take videos and take photos, this problem plagues many people who are transitioning from photography to video. Recently, I saw some photos of you taking pictures of Tiexi District in the 90s on the Internet, which is wonderful, when did you go to take photos when you were creating, when did you take sports pictures, and how to choose? Or are you a team?
Wang Bing: As far as I am concerned, the difference between pictures and videos is an ontological difference, although it comes from images and images, but the difference between the two is very large, and you can hardly use the same thinking to work in the creative process.
I basically don't take pictures when I do video, and when I need to take photos, I specifically find time to take pictures. That was the case when I created "Iron West". Video is actually a carrier that is just emerging, and it is not controlled by the aesthetics of cinema, because in a way, it is difficult to define exactly what video is, it is constructed in time and space. And then, ontologically, I suggest that if you are engaged in two kinds of image activities at the same time, at a certain moment you need to give up the other, because the direction between the two is completely different, and for video, I think it is more important to narrate, not narrative.
"Iron West" was created by me alone.
"Tiexi District" 39-52 Shenyang Smelter Copper Smelting Workshop March 1995 Wang Bing Photography
Tiexi District, 42-52 Copper smelting workshop of Shenyang Smelter, 1995 Wang Bing Photography
The Paper: How can video be constructed as a narrative, and how does it relate to the film?
Wang Bing: So let's talk about video, for me, video is to build a narrative. You can't imitate a movie because movie is something else. In other words, it's possible to be a good video, but it doesn't come from the aesthetics of the film, it can come from a way of using it in an application area, but it can also come from a person, so video has a broader possibility of use.
I think video don't imitate movies, not to say that you can't imitate, I mean not only from there, it can also come from other places, which is very important. When you're making a video, say a movie, the movie is the drama and the story composition, that's the theme of the movie. Then video is not, although it is very similar to the movie, it also uses the same material, such as this continuous image recording, but video image I can only see it as narrative. Narrative rather than narrative. When video constitutes narrative, then video can be established as a work. Because in video you can hardly say whether the work can become a work, for example, when you shoot video, after pressing the shooting button, the machine will record continuously, this record it has motion will be generated, time will be generated, then time generation means that space will change. At the same time, there will be characters and actions, what will you narrate at this time? This becomes very, very important. I mean, while people are all willing to shoot video right now, be clear about what video is about. Once you start narrating, it's not a simple shooting, one is whether you can build such a language as video yourself, and the other is how to determine that your video can form a complete work.
"Tiexi District" 12-52 Xiaobai and friends in Yanfan Street, Tiexi District, Shenyang 2000 Wang Bing Photography
"Tiexi District" 27-52 Qu Jianbobo and his girlfriend in the shantytown worker's settlement of Yanfan Street, Tiexi District, Shenyang, 2000 Wang Bing Photography
The problem comes at this point, because video's narrative is very broad, it's broader than the movie. For example, you may have an intuition, a feeling, or a certain psychology, a more definite story, or a clear motive, or no clear motive, all of which may be included in the scope of the video narrative. So the meaning of video for me, facing the subject, can this video be a narrative? This narrative doesn't have to be a story— I emphasize that it's different from film, which is about story and drama. In drama and story, the film establishes the possibility of its narrative. But video is entirely a new, broader vehicle, and it's more personal, it has no limit on length, it has no logical limit, and it sometimes doesn't have a clear story, it may be a light.
A narrative of light or a certain intuition, but this kind of thing first of all I think is still human. You as an artist, what kind of narrative will you form using this material? Because it is difficult to compose a narrative, in other words, once it is not possible to constitute a narrative, this thing immediately changes. Sometimes you may shoot a whole bunch of pictures, but it doesn't constitute a narrative, so there's no way to build a video work. So, let's start with the concept of video, how to understand this material from my personal point of view. Then pictures are another case. The picture, sometimes from a visual point of view, sometimes from an emotional point of view, but in general it is static.
Screenshot of "Iron West"
I'm not saying it's not complicated, it's complicated, but the psychological factors that a static picture presents to people are very different from video, so it's not necessarily how good a photo taken in an instant is, not necessarily. Photographs don't necessarily rely on moments, as we used to say when summing up Bresson's photography as a "decisive moment", but for me, I think the so-called decisive moment in photography is very far-fetched. Because, if everything is a decisive moment, then photography becomes a moment, and although it is a momentary copy of the world, but it is static, it does not exist for the moment.
All of our art is more important than conveying an emotional eternity, an emotional float. We think about how to bring these things through images into a kind of communication of eternity. So, between a video image and a still photo, we can't do two things at the same time, because the two carriers themselves are not one thing.
So I suggest to everyone, there is no regret thing, it is just like us people, it is after all two people, there are two people's character, you can't turn it into one, they have their own personality.
"Tiexi District" 01-52 Demolition of Yanfan Street, Tiexi District, Shenyang 2001 Wang Bing Photography
"Tiexi District" 02-52 Lao Shi and Neighbors in Yanfan Street, Tiexi District, Shenyang 2000 Wang Bing Photography
The Paper: Since the beginning of the creation in the 1990s, what new insights do you have about today's films and documentaries that you can share with you?
Wang Bing: Modern movies are different from the film aesthetics of the past. An important point in the aesthetics of modern cinema is the continuous expansion of narrative and the extensibility of expanding materials.
When digital materials appear, the impact on the changes in film aesthetics is actually very large, because digital cameras are more free than film cameras, and it is easier to get close to and close to people, so that the narrative of the film will be brought to the narrative space, expanding the narrative space of the original film era.
Although these advantages of digital cameras have been diluted in many years and diluted in the film circle, I think it is more in line with my own conditions, the material itself is more in line with me, and in the process of material creation, it can also bring a new language to the film, and it can also bring an expansion to the narrative of the film. That's why I make a lot of documentaries.
At the same time, in terms of the storytelling and character shooting of the film, because the camera is closer to the person, then the story and drama are more malleable than the original film. We know that the core of the previous film was design, and there were a lot of creations in it that relied on the screenplay and text to control the development of the story and characters of the film, so now the film I think is more important than the unknown of the story - at the level of the story, at the level of the drama, its unknown, its kind of irreplicability. Documentaries are about building stories and dramas in the process of reality, so they can't be copied.
On October 22, 2021, Wang Bing was interviewed by The Paper in Shanghai. The Paper's reporter Xu Haifeng photographed
Editor-in-Charge: Gao Jianping
Proofreader: Shi Gong