On January 10, the Shanghai premiere of the vertical screen film "Fireworks in the World" was held, and the film will be released nationwide on January 13. Director Sun Hong, producer Lei Jianjun and other main creators appeared.
The vertical screen film "Fireworks in the World" consists of 887 clips of Kuaishou short ** clips, these images are from the hands of 509 "amateurs", among them are construction workers, truck drivers, delivery workers, textile women and other ordinary laborers, with their own lenses, recording vivid life images, simplicity and novelty, joy and tears, together constitute a true portrayal of thousands of contemporary Chinese.
"Fireworks in the World" was the opening film of the 2020 Pingyao International Film Festival. Jia Zhangke, the founder of the Pingyao International Film Festival and a famous director, said that the first time he saw the film, he noticed that it was "very contemporary".
From short ** to movies, more than 500 amateurs co-"direct".
Around 2018, it was the period of the rapid rise of short ** in China, which not only changed people's lifestyle, production mode, consumption mode, and way of thinking, but also innovated the way of creating documentary images. "The short ** that the old iron shoots themselves seems to have more real power. Producer Lei Jianjun said.
At that time, director Sun Hong was studying for a doctorate with Lei Jianjun's mentor at Tsinghua University, and they came up with the idea of making a documentary related to short **, and then found the Kuaishou platform, and the two sides hit it off.
After reading millions of short **, I went through the process from shock to shame, like opening the dimensional wall. Before this, I couldn't imagine that there was a group of very beautiful crane workers on the high-rise building under construction. They overcame their fears to climb to the top of the tower every morning, and as soon as they went to work, they spent the day. From their point of view, there are scenes that we would not normally see. We live in an era of rapid development, and we can see tall buildings, but we can't see the people behind these reinforced concrete. And those we can't see are actually the same as us. Sun Hong said that in these massive short **, she saw too much vivid daily life, and those ordinary people who were neglected.
In the sense of a traditional movie, "Fireworks in the World" does not seem to be a movie, a 16:9 horizontal large screen is filled with several vertical screens placed in parallel, and at the same time, it is short content under the same theme and in different time and space. The film is divided into 5 chapters, including clothing, food, housing, transportation, and home, from the material needs of "clothing, food, housing and transportation" to the spiritual and emotional destination of "home", the director hopes to let the audience find a common connection from it.
Huge waves engulf fishing boats, typhoons hit tower cranes, and wind and snow erode plateaus; Construction workers display a "gymnastic horizontal bar" in their spare time; The master worker who was bathing in the mud laughed and shouted: "Come on, be happy"; A tower crane girl in her early 20s sings; At the time of the harvest, the farmer's eldest brother shouted domineeringly at the rice field, "This is the country I have beaten down......".The stories of 509 amateurs are vivid and moving, very short and long. "Fireworks in the World" is like a crowd-created movie, and more than 500 short ** authors are their co-directors.
A successful cinematic experiment, with a contemporary character.
The first time I saw "Fireworks in the World", I noticed its 'contemporaneity', the film itself is very contemporary and experimental, it represents a new way of expression and life. At the 4th Pingyao Film Festival in 2020, director Jia Zhangke affirmed the experimental nature of this film.
The same opinion is also held by Professor Dai Jinhua of Peking University. "The Fireworks was a bit more than expected, and it was a miniature miracle for me. Dai Jinhua said, "Here we see the labor of the laborers, and their state of labor is very happy, they are playing, laughing, dancing, having a good time, living a vibrant life, which is rare in the current film and television works." ”
In Dai Jinhua's view, "Fireworks in the World" has thought and experimented in form, and consciously dealt with the relationship between horizontal and vertical screens, turning the relationship between horizontal and vertical screens into a consistent sense of form.
I think it's a very successful experiment: first it's a reverse conversion of a medium; In addition, when it is organized into a movie, it must be able to carry a meaning and expression that today's new and short ** does not necessarily carry. Dai Jinhua said.
Liu Haibo, a professor at the Film School of Shanghai University, told reporters that he was in a state of "tears" when he watched "Fireworks in the World": "You see the difficulty of life in the most ordinary Chinese, see their yearning for beauty, and be moved because it is true and beautiful." ”
Liu Haibo believes that with the development of science and technology and the changes in the reality of life, the way of film production has also changed, and the traditional concept of film has also changed, "This is a direction worth paying attention to."
The 10th China Documentary Academy Awards also awarded the "Best Innovative Documentary Award" to "Fireworks in the World". According to the award speech, the film is based on the content filmed by netizens, and more than 800 short ** pieces are selected. Walking out of the square inch of the mobile phone and projecting it on the big screen of the movie, ordinary people jointly wrote a vivid and vivid civilian epic. The film breaks the rules and constraints of traditional audio-visual, and innovatively adopts multi-piece vertical composition, which provides a valuable innovative concept for the production and dissemination of documentary images in the era of mobile Internet.
Text丨Reporter He Jing**丨Provided by the filmmaker.