◎ Zhang Hailu
After the rainstorm, the two Pingyao inside and outside the Movie Palace
The fifth Pingyao International Film Festival, fortunately after the end of the heavy rainstorm in Shanxi, was successfully held in the face of almost the whole sun, like the last-minute rescue scenes in classic Hollywood movies, because of floods, epidemics and more reasons, until the first night of the opening, fans who came from afar finally knew the screening and exchange activities.
The damage of the rainstorm to the ancient city, only to the southwest section of the 6-kilometer long city wall, will see the local wall slipping after the rain cloth, and the rammed earth wall collapse of some dangerous houses, and this situation occurs every year, but this year is more serious. However, fans and industry people who are busy brushing up on film exhibitions and negotiating, at most, only ask the operators of shops and inns near the Film Palace about the disaster or two, and after hearing the city's not serious answers, they continue to return to the fictional world of images. Even the Shuanglin Temple, which has the most famous ancient sculpture of Wei Da, on the edge of the city, was closed for three days on October 6, 7 and 8. The villages that destroyed the crops along the really serious river embankments and ditches are unlikely to be visited even by documentary filmmakers participating in the film festival.
Inside and outside the Film Palace, there are two pingyao parallels. The embarrassing reality outside of this year's film festival is naturally the affected villages. In the face of the flood disaster in Shanxi, the film festival set an example early, and the chief partner of the long-standing zhiwen group held a donation ceremony at the opening site, donating another 10 million yuan. On the last day of the festival, there was a very expensive screening, starring Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao, a 39-minute short film "The Last Director on Earth". Each event ticket has a minimum donation amount of 300 yuan and no upper limit, and the donation is collected by the Pingyao County Red Cross Society for flood relief in the county.
Jia Zhangke retreated behind the scenes, became an actor and shot advertisements
After announcing his retirement at last year's film festival, Jia Zhangke is now at ease behind the scenes, no longer doing everything himself as in previous years, and standing for all the films and academic exchanges. At that time, watching his presence on various occasions, it would be very curious: how does this extremely intelligent director manage his time?
Now, after busy with his own roadshow of "Swim All the Way to the Sea Turns Blue", Jia Zhangke returned to Pingyao, took Teacher Xie Fei at the opening ceremony, and danced in the disco rhythm of "The Little Girl Under the Street Lamp" adapted by Wu tiaoren; halfway with Xu Ke had a good chat about the movie, talked about each other's complex for Hitchcock's work, and elaborated on the technique of "Telephone Murder"; at the closing ceremony, he brought the audience a short film of himself and Ning Hao transforming into an actor, arguing about who is more qualified to serve as the inheritor if the film becomes an intangible cultural relic. At the same time, Jia Zhangke also pretended to be busy and sadly "abused" by Party A, and starred in a creative advertisement for the "Double Eleven" promotion of a coffee brand.
Perhaps, swimming until the water turns blue, you can really easily cope with everything about the movie.
After leaving Jia Zhangke's leadership, the Pingyao Film Festival has also ushered in some new changes. The thick Chinese and English film festival manuals have become a daily update of light and thin daily newspapers. The layout is well designed, and the content is basically the daily activity agenda, the team's main brain profile, the introduction of the jury, the screening information, the statement against screen shooting and piracy, the map of the Film Palace, and many pages of sponsor advertisements. Although all this information can be seen on the official public account, in today's decline of print media, such a sense of ceremonial operation that seems to respect the film has been recognized by too many audiences and guests.
In addition to the previous development plan (W.I.P.) and venture capital for the completion of the script, the drama plan has also been added. From script completion to filming and creation, and then from post-production to derivative dramas, Pingyao Film Festival is trying to open up the complete industrial chain. In the ancient city café, it is often heard that the famous director of a certain literary and art film is going to shoot a web drama, and the producer in the industry who met him also said, "No way, now on the theater line, in addition to a few main themes, it is difficult to make money, and it must be developed." "It sounds like the last director of the earth predicted that the movie will become a relic in the future."
Introspection and exploration so that movies don't become artifacts
This time, Pingyao screened a total of 46 feature films from 32 countries and regions, with a global premiere rate of 32% and a Chinese premiere rate of 100%, fulfilling the original promise of the film festival to give the audience a sense of freshness. Of course, there are inevitably cases of uneven quality. Although the viewing experience and preferences are good for green vegetables and turnips, this time, whether in the Douban score or the media field score, there has been a rare high degree of convergence. The screening of "Animism", "Thank You for Warming My World" and "Little Sonata" all received a neat one-star bad review. They either didn't think about what story to tell, or mistook it for an experimental spirit.
The "Crouching Tiger" unit competed for by 12 international films, most of which are works from non-main competition units of the three major European film festivals, although they are not stunning, but they also have a stable finished film quality and their own unique artistic atmosphere, so that film fans and travelers who are trapped in China during the epidemic era have seen the social outlook of some aspects of other countries over the years, as well as the changes in artistic expression on their respective soils. My favorite is the Georgian film What Do We See When We Look Up at the Sky? The director is very willful to express his Argentine fan complex, and even breaks the fourth wall in the film to bring the audience to interact. However, the jury awarded the largest prize for the unit to the Equally Experimental and Exploratory Egyptian film Feathers.
In the "Hidden Dragon" unit belonging to Chinese films, Fei Mu honored two major awards for best picture and best director, convincingly giving the two most acclaimed films, "Cosmic Exploration Club" and "Yong'an Town Story Collection". These are two outstanding works of art with very different appearances and styles, but both successfully mobilize the audience's emotions between tragedy and joy. The latter ends the common and unresolved disagreements and disputes of the film's creators with the phrase "Maradona is dead"; the former uses a love poem written for the vast universe and the spirit of exploration, with a grand thinking that is higher than all the trivialities in the world, to bring people to tears. With the existence of these works with unique artistic temperament, I believe that there is still hope for the development of film, and will not become a protected cultural relic like the thousand-year-old city that houses the film festival.