In April and May of 20001year, he invited five patients to Wuhan. His idea is simple. Because all five people agreed to face the media, he thought the society could donate some money and give them some help. Among the five AIDS patients, I later filmed Ma Shenyi's family ── Ma Shenyi, Lei Mei and Ma Zhancao (in the film, he is learning to walk).
When they were in Wuhan, the media surrounded them. I have a good relationship with Professor Gui, so I can meet them. I am deeply impressed by Ma Zhancao, because my children are not big, and I want to have an equal life first. Such a life is born with HIV, and HIV has decided that this child will not go far. He was also born to his parents. If you give him a piece of cake, he can eat enough. If you give him a drink of water, he won't be thirsty and he can run happily all day. But slowly he died in a daze. In fact, he is very innocent. It is very unfair to let children go on such a journey of purgatory on earth completely innocently.
At first, I thought it was simple and I wanted to do it. Their families are also typical. Both Ma Shenyi and his wife were infected with the virus, and two of their three children were not spared. Ma Shenyi's parents and his brother and sister-in-law are also infected. I told Ma Shenyi if I could make a movie about you. He agreed at that time and gave me a phone number, which was a public phone in their village.
I got caught again and again.
The film almost stopped several times in the middle. I can't say what department it is when I encounter some interference. They have an unwritten rule that whoever reports will get a reward from 50 yuan. After I was caught again and again, I had to sneak in and hide in his small yard. To this end, almost all the scenes in the film are concentrated in this small yard. On May 7th, when Ma Shenyi visited Lei Mei's grave, I followed her out once, which was also a big risk. In addition, there is a little place during the Spring Festival, because the Spring Festival holiday, the working group is not in the village; There are also scenes of heavy snow. Because of the heavy snow, the roads in the village are difficult to walk.
Every time I go, I walk from the county seat, which takes more than an hour. Basically, I walked through the cornfield. When I arrived at my landlord's house, I packed the machine and put it in a fertilizer bag. I asked my patient friend to mention Ma Shenyi's house first, and then I sneaked in another way, preferably pretending to be a farmer. My film didn't involve the epidemic, I just filmed a family. When confronted with resistance, their only statement was that they could not report the epidemic. They mainly limit me according to this statement.
At first, Ma Shenyi called me Mr. Chen. Later, he changed his mind and called me Brother Chen, from the day his wife died. I arrived at 4 o'clock in the morning that day. At that time, Ma Shenyi and I were alone beside the body. The shooting time is only two or three hours. At 6 o'clock, the cremator came and I had to hide. I said, "Alas, Lei Mei was beautiful when she died", which is true. I think she suffered too much, but she looked good after her death. The next day, after the cremator left, I went there again. Ma Shenyi told a long story about his wife's death. I think his fear of death was uncontrollable, so he wanted to tell me. I'm afraid only people who shoot at the scene can feel the atmosphere after Lei Mei's death. Coupled with his words, it is very terrible to oppress everyone to die.
I'm still very impressed. When it snowed, Ma Shenyi suddenly said, "I heard that children with AIDS can only live to be 4 years old." At that time, I felt that when a father drew a line for his child's life, he could only say this sentence calmly for tens of thousands of times in his mind.
I also had contact with other people in the village and made some friends. I live in another family, and they also sold blood, but they all collected it. They checked once and said they were not infected with the virus. I only need to live in that place at night, with five or six regular patients. Talk to me after dinner. They keep asking me this question, asking me what food I eat in the city and what air conditioning is. Many of them have never seen it on the train. I have been in contact with them for a long time and know that they are particularly kind. He usually hands you a cigarette, but he won't take it out for you. He handed you the cigarette case. I spent the Spring Festival in that place. On New Year's Eve, I want to go home after filming, and my wife and children are still in Wuhan. At that time, there were no cars. There is a family in their village who has an agricultural tricycle. As soon as my friends heard that I was leaving, they went out to find the driver. Six or seven people took me all the way to the county seat to help me negotiate the price. Finally, they wrapped a bun, accompanied me to Zhumadian, and went back to pay New Year greetings to them overnight. After the Spring Festival, it means that a small cycle is over.
What should the documentary face?
One detail had a great influence on me, which prompted me to cut the film. This is an interview with Ma Niu at the end of the film. At that time, she stood by the door with her younger brother in her arms, and her sister stood by. I asked her, "Are you afraid that your brother and sister will infect you?" She immediately said "not afraid", and then I asked "why not", and she fell silent. I want to cut it out, also to verify the shooting some time ago. Because my range of activities is particularly small, the camera is particularly monotonous, and I have always been in that small yard. I want to cut it out and see if it still looks like anything.
When I started cutting, I thought a lot about the various beginnings and endings and how to lay them out. Still influenced by the traditional documentary concept, I want to cut out a plot, but it will be more fragmented after cutting it out. Now its structure has a special place, that is, it adopts the solar terms of the lunar calendar. There is a desk calendar on my desk, and every time I go, I will mark the time on it. I find that every time I go, it basically coincides with a solar term. Lei Mei, an ignorant peasant woman, died at the time of the first frost, herbal medicine; From summer solstice to summer heat, the weather is the most manic, and Ma Shenyi's mood is particularly unstable, because Lei Mei is lying there, stimulating him all the time, indicating his future. In the Spring Festival, it feels like a very peaceful family. Ma Zhancao learned to walk, and Ma Niu began to know her mother's illness. After I started cutting at the beginning of the year, I found that there is such a process. Later, this film was called "Life is Better than Death", which is such an idea. I think people rarely have the opportunity to face an AIDS patient, let alone an AIDS family, and there is absolutely no chance to enter a family with so many AIDS patients to see how they spend a spring, summer, autumn and winter. I want to use my eyes and XL 1 lens to show many people who have never experienced such a disaster something deep in their hearts.
I think the most successful place of this film is Ma Shenyi's family. In the face of such a devastating disaster, they showed something that was most in line with the essence of life. For Ma Shenyi, death should be said to be a great relief. But he didn't. He has children. He had to teach them to walk and feed them. They also know that AIDS will die, so many people around them are dying. They only have the simplest requirements for life, as Lei Mei said, as long as they have food and drink.
I went there again recently. Ma Rong was ill and couldn't go. I will follow, if there is no great resistance, I will always follow, it is not easy to start. One of my thoughts is that in a few years, this family may only have Ma Niu and her relatives, just like the cycle of time and space. This film can capture the time when the child sent all her family members away, at least five or six years later.
I think some documentaries in China are basically pseudo-folk customs. Adding a label of environmental protection or mountain education never touches on real life. The other is to turn over old paper piles, use old photos and movies from the past, and add a little comment that seems to be philosophical thinking, which becomes something that reproduces history. At present, these things are the safest, but they have no sense of responsibility. What should the current documentary face?
I care about a person and a family. If someone says that my subject matter is clever, then the symbol of AIDS can be removed. It can be said that this family has hepatitis. Then you can still feel some instinctive reactions of people when life is facing disasters, and some things that people insist on spending their lives.
What I hope most is that there is such a kind-hearted person to set up a growth fund for children who may become AIDS orphans in the future, so that they can grow up.
The topic is less than one kilometer away from you.
Life is worse than death, which has won Chen Weijun an international reputation. In 2007, BBC executives attended the Guangzhou Documentary Conference and enjoyed themselves in the seafood market. They thought that when the 2008 Olympic Games came, many TV viewers would want to know about the life of China people. More than two months later, an old British director was sent to film the catering in China. The old director can't find the feeling and can't shoot it. So the BBC found Chen Weijun.
"If I filmed traditional China cuisine, I wouldn't do it. I want to use the restaurant as a stage to reflect the basic value orientation of China people. " Chen Weijun focused on the West Lake Building, which can accommodate more than 4,000 people at the same time. This giant restaurant is considered to be the largest Chinese restaurant in the world, with more than 1000 employees, including more than 300 chefs.
He divided the shooting plan into several parts. One of them is how the boss runs a restaurant, which shows China people's views on their careers. There are three banquets in the restaurant: the wedding banquet, the birthday banquet and the full moon banquet, which he thinks covers the whole life of China people. "China people live this life just to find a good job, marry a good wife, have a good child and honor the elderly."
This is the same idea that he later accepted the invitation of NHK to shoot in Tokyo. He filmed the "universal emotion" in life-NHK has a plan to find directors around the world to shoot stories in Tokyo, and Chen Weijun participated in this plan.
Tokyo has two districts, Shibuya and Nested Duck. Shibuya is the birthplace of the world's youth fashion culture, with a large number of grotesque teenagers. One of the reasons why he is very concerned about teenagers is that his children are in this period. Nest Duck has a Gao Yan Temple, which is a temple dedicated to Tibetan Bodhisattva. On the 4th,14th and 24th of every month, old people aged 70 or 80 in Tokyo gather here. In Chen Weijun's view, the characteristics of middle-aged people all over the world are the same: nine to five. However, teenagers and the elderly have their own characteristics. Chen Weijun wrote a shooting plan: shooting young people in Shibuya and shooting old people in Nesting Ducks.
"A newborn child, without any social constraints. With the growth of my age, I began to accept the training of many rules and finally became a social person. Growing up will make many people feel scared. "
Facing the fear of growing up, Chen Weijun thinks that China and the West are different. "The West will tolerate the free development of children, and children have a process of trial and error. For example, before marriage, westerners were very free in sex, and it was at this stage that they tried. When they really fall in love, they seldom think about sex, so the combined family is more stable. On the contrary, in China, teenagers are sexually repressed. After marriage, messy things come, and such marriages are prone to problems. "
Japanese left Asia and entered Europe in many concepts, which was the object of Chen Weijun's thinking. At the beginning of this documentary called Sunrise and Sunset, there is a passage of his dictation: "At sunset, I came over Tokyo, and I will land in the sea of lights below. I don't know who my lens will be aimed at, and I don't know who will break into my lens, but as a Japanese, I will definitely see the difference in Japan. "
In Shibuya, he photographed a pair of young people who fell in love with each other vigorously. 10 days later, this relationship ended. In "Nested Duck", he filmed an elderly couple. The old man has Alzheimer's disease and only remembers two things. First, his wife is very good; One is: I am a carpenter.
The day I left Tokyo after filming was New Year's Day in 2009. The young couple in Shibuya just broke up that morning, and the girl couldn't contact the boy anyway.
Sunrise and Sunset was broadcast on NHK at the end of February this year. Of all the documentaries that have been filmed, Chen Weijun is most satisfied with this film. "This movie will inspire me for the rest of my life. “
Someone asked him, what information can you use to find such a good topic? His answer is: "China Taoism says that the Tao gives birth to one, two, three and all things. Shooting works with cross-cultural background is actually the same, all of which are born and died. Some people think that making a documentary requires finding strange people and strange things, but this is not the case. It is better to tell a humanized story and talk about the truth. The topic is within one kilometer of you. "
My philosophy is my life.
Photographing things around you is what Chen Weijun has been doing.
1992, Chen Weijun came to Wuhan TV station after graduating from the journalism department of Sichuan University. What interested him in documentaries were two films: Looking at the Great Wall and Dragon Ridge-these films could hear the breathing of the camera. The host was not so eloquent and casual, which inspired a generation at that time, and the documentary did not have to be "very like a temple".
After working in a TV station, he borrowed a video camera from a friend and started making documentaries. The earliest documentary "Shoot and Play" targeted at two objects: Deng Xiaomang, a professor of philosophy at Wuhan University, and Xiao Ping, an engineer at Wuhan Meat Factory. "Deng Xiaomang is a man with profound thoughts and profound attainments in German classical philosophy. Xiaoping was laid off to sell vermicelli pots, and his business was very good, because he came from a meat factory and knew where the meat was the best. Similarly, they have to face their wives and children every day. "
He used a sentence from Deng Xiaomang as the title of the film: My philosophy is my life. At first, this documentary laid a Chen Weijun-style shooting style: totally unrelated characters were put on the same timeline in different spaces to see what would happen.
Chen Weijun never learned how to make a documentary. After coming out of school, all the shooting skills come from social and personal experience. "I have always told young people who want to make a documentary that if they want to make a good movie, they must seriously talk about friends, get married and have children. Life is incomplete, and so are your feelings. I don't know that rice, oil and salt are expensive if I'm not in charge. If you don't marry, you don't know how difficult it is for women to serve. If you have no children, you don't know how hard it is to be a parent. Just like a tree, where it grows, the shade can cover it. " When he said this, he kept smiling at his wife next to him.
Among those who make documentaries in China, there are not many people with international influence like Chen Weijun. Many people will think that he must like this line very much, but he doesn't think so. "Making a documentary is a very annoying thing. If you ask me if I like making documentaries very much, to be honest, I won't shoot at any time. "
The answer was unexpected, and he even made it clear that he didn't intend to make any more documentaries after finishing the work at hand. His reason is: "Making a documentary needs to go deep into one's life. As long as you are sincere enough, you will definitely touch the most real thing. For example, if I shoot you for a month or two, I will definitely shoot something you don't want me to shoot, even though you may take preventive measures. At first, you may realize the existence of the camera, but after a month, you will ignore it. You think you're just talking to me, but in fact, many people are watching. When editing, I know that there are thousands of pairs of eyes in the back, and they will evaluate a detail at any time. Do you want to put this detail in? Putting it in will hurt the subject and me. But if a director makes this film' win-win' and harmonious, then this film is even more problematic. "
This is the pain of Chen Weijun's documentary, and it is also the pain of life. When we face a world that is real enough, sometimes we can't accept it ourselves. This is also the charm and essence of the documentary. (The information comes from Phoenix. com)