Appreciation of The Last Mountain God (I)

The Last Mountain God is an anthropological documentary.

This documentary records the original life of Meng Jinfu, the last shaman of the Oroqen people in China, fishing and hunting in the mountains, which gives us a taste of the beautiful mountains in Daxing 'anling and the simple folk customs of the Oroqen people. However, the long-term settlement life has fundamentally changed the original lifestyle of the Oroqen people, and they gradually moved out of the mountains, and the traditional culture of the Oroqen people gradually dissipated.

This film reveals the nostalgia and reluctance of the last generation of Oroqen people who lived in the mountains for the traditional mountain life, and at the same time, it also makes us deeply feel the regret that the traditional cultural forms of Oroqen people tend to disappear with the development of modern civilization.

This film adopts a sequential narrative structure, selects two typical seasons, winter and summer, and records the life of Meng Jinfu and his wife in different forests in different seasons in the narrative time sequence of "winter-summer-winter". In space, it takes "mountain forest-residence-mountain forest" as the transfer, which shows the traditional hunting life and natural scenery of mountains and forests, and forms a sharp contrast with the nearly modern lifestyle of residence.

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Background information about directing and shooting:

Zengtian Sun graduated from Beijing Broadcasting Institute in 1983, majoring in television photography. As a photography director of CCTV, he has created nearly 1 TV programs (episodes). He is the executive director of China Film and Television Anthropology Society, the director of China Documentary Society and the member of International Documentary Association.

In 1992, Zengtian Sun visited the Oroqen Nationality Township at the 18th Station in Tahe County, Heilongjiang Province. He found that decades of settlement had fundamentally changed the traditional lifestyle of the Oroqen people. Zengtian Sun believes that the traditional culture of ethnic minorities against the background of Chinese culture has unique humanistic value.

In the interview, Zengtian Sun got to know Meng Jinfu, the hero in the film. His thoughts, experiences and images all have the typical characteristics of the older Oroqen people. He is an old hunter, still engaged in the traditional hunting production of this nation, and he is the last shaman of the whole nation. Zengtian Sun used the figurative mountain gods as the carrier to express the abstract national spiritual world and the conflict between tradition and modernity through this documentary.

The Last Mountain God was filmed in the virgin forest of Daxing 'anling, and the environment was harsh. In order to truly show the mountain life of Oroqen people, the film crew and Meng Jinfu's family get along with each other and become close friends, so that they can naturally face the camera and even forget the existence of the camera.

The activities in the film were all done by Meng Jinfu's family spontaneously, except that the author asked Meng Jinfu shaman to jump out of his mind. Focusing on the conflict between tradition and modernity, the author constantly observed life, photographed a large number of typical details and typical pictures from life, and chose the materials.

The editing process of this film is different from the usual way of writing a commentary first and then editing the picture. Instead, we first edit the picture and actual sound, and at the same time consider where to lay the music. After the editing, we will ponder the commentary.

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