China Photographic Documentary

Characteristics of antonioni China Documentary

[Author: sw520268]

1972 China is still a mysterious world to the west, and China is like a sleeping lion, which makes the west feel mysterious. Just then, the famous Italian director antonioni was allowed to shoot a documentary in China. It was in this year that China welcomed the mysterious American guests Nixon and Kissinger, and unveiled the mystery of China in the East. Antonioni was not allowed to perform in China after filming China, which made the artist feel uncomfortable for a long time. However, in the following years, this film named China immediately caused a sensation all over the world. It was not until 2004 that the Cultural Section of the Italian Embassy performed its first performance at the Beijing Film Academy. That night, the film academy had a grand occasion of waiting for the refund of the film. The auditorium of the Film Academy is full of audiences, and the audience in China is in China and antonioni.

China consists of three parts. The first part was shot in Beijing, showing a primary school student, the old city of the city, a caesarean section by acupuncture, a cotton mill and its workers. The second part visited the Hongqi Canal in Linxian, the collective farm in Henan, and the ancient cities of Suzhou and Nanjing. The last part is about the docks and factories in Shanghai.

People see the schools, factories, kindergartens and parks that their owners want the world to see. People do exercises, run and work in an orderly way, and their faces are filled with happy and confident smiles. The child is naive and the song is clear and loud. Women workers in textile mills are still reluctant to leave after work, and consciously study quotations from Chairman Mao in groups in the factory yard to discuss the current situation. The most complete passage in the film is the whole process of caesarean section for parturient through acupuncture anesthesia, from how to insert a long silver needle into the plump abdomen of parturient to pull out a bloody little life, which is almost as meticulous and thoughtful as a science and education film. The film ended with a 20-minute acrobatic performance.

Antonioni's China doesn't even have a library. The quality of TV rip downloaded from the Internet is poor, but it does not hinder the quality of the film. This film was made in 72, when I was still in middle school, so I was familiar with that kind of life. Until the mid-1980s, the face of that kind of life did not change dramatically, and it left an unforgettable mark on my life.

This film was shot by antonioni in China at the invitation of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the China government. Unexpectedly, after the film was finished, the director didn't please at both ends. The west thinks that he beautifies the autocratic communist party government, wants to have a good relationship with the Communist Party of China (CPC), and tries every means to prevent his films from being shown at the Venice Biennale. The China government probably wants to show off the great achievements of socialism to the whole world with the help of a western left-wing director, so that the world can see how happy the people in the stuffy jar are and how they support the government. Unexpectedly, although the director was classified as a leftist in the west, he was called a counter-revolutionary by the standards of China at that time. His western aesthetics and film ideas, which were not lofty at all, were thrown into the wasteland of China and blown up. I don't know how many people actually saw the film being sent back to China, but the critical articles were overwhelming. 1974 65438+1October 30th, People's Daily published a commentator's article "Vicious and despicable means-criticizing antonioni's anti-China movies", and later a collection was published, which included people from all walks of life's criticism of antonioni.

What's the movie I saw?

The camera is quiet and moving slowly. It is not to cut life to please us and adapt to the illusion in our minds, but to force us to open our eyes to see life and see its own rhythm, which is slowly revealed. This is very similar to Jia. He may have learned something from him. Their colors are similar, the contrast is very small, they are all gray, and they don't rely on strong stimulation to attract your attention. It leads you into deeper poetry, but whether you can follow it depends on yourself. In antonioni's lens, the times have a strong authenticity, so does Jia's lens. Not all directors can do this. Wang Xiaoshuai's Green Red is a fake when it comes out. It seems that the times are gone, so we can only forge them. Nobody cares anyway. Of course, China is a documentary, and its authenticity seems right.

Is it really necessary? Look at the shooting conditions: obviously, the route is specified, the scene is arranged, and the director's freedom is limited. It's just that under the wrong abacus, a strong sense of reality seeps out of the film only by shooting techniques and a few strong shots. We have seen people's movements, expressions and ways of speaking in that era. Antonioni didn't stand at the height of ideology. He squatted down and stared, letting life seep from the picture. Like Jia, he knows how to explore the poetry of ordinary life. Those dark, gloomy and even trivial corners of life can also become poems because of gazing, which is a kind of Zen in a hard life.

And in the final analysis, in the final analysis, I have a sense of nostalgia for that era. Yes, during that time, I was hungry, poor, depressed, isolated from all noble thoughts and cultures, and I didn't know what I missed during that time of crazy resistance. But a real homesickness rises like a mist in time, and I was soaked by it when I watched Platform. What did I miss? Perhaps it is the kind of leisure, the kind of interpersonal relationship, the kind that has been forcibly uprooted, but both ends are still buried under the traditional soil. Although Chun Xue no longer exists, the smell of chin beauty still belongs to China. Although the folk customs are far from those of earlier times, they are still simpler than they are now. Maybe it's my own teenager. There's not much left in memento mori, which is already vague and far from aesthetic poetry. It's only when it is forcibly pulled to the screen to review that it can be reborn.