◎Yin Yiyi
The documentary "Fireworks World" has become a film with "problems" since its premiere at the Pingyao International Film Festival: problems of form, problems of subjectivity, problems of the author, problems of copyright, Media issues, aesthetic issues... many questions and discussions are intertwined. On the one hand, it verifies its experimental, current and rich nature as China's first "vertical screen" film edited from short videos; on the other hand, It seems that it has been brought into the scope of academic discussion prematurely, thereby ignoring the very simple essence of this film - a work that can truly allow people to "see" others, "see" labor, and "see" life again. .
Many people's doubts about the "cinematicity" of "Fireworks" stem from its re-editing of short videos: short videos can be watched for free by everyone every day, so why do they become a movie when they are cut together? My impression of this film just confirms that its exploration of the boundaries of film art is successful in a sense - the collection of short video content and montage editing, the popular nature of the film, and the screening environment of the theater, together bring It creates a new embodied experience and aesthetic logic, bringing the "sense of reality" swallowed up by highly fragmented and entertaining short videos back to the screen.
It is undeniable that people have more or less "seen" the videos of these bloggers in short videos, but they are often a corner of a huge entertainment system, an "electronic mustard", a "spectacle of others", and almost never Present yourself with the "true face" of life. In the world of short videos, creating new memes can make them popular, while being the same can be annoying. But in "Fireworks World", repetition is regenerated through mixing. When people see five vertical screens at the same time in the horizontal screen, each screen is a truck driver driving on a different mountain and river road, all from different backgrounds. When the female workers in the cotton factory share similar smiling faces, a social perception that goes beyond entertainment is formed - individuals form a crowd, and then regain their subjectivity and narrative rights.
intercepts any vertical screen from "Fireworks World" and reproduces it in the short video. What the audience "sees" may just be a funny "spirited boy". But in the movie, when five different "spiritual guys" are put together in the same picture, filming, telling and performing themselves with similar logic, the change in form makes the "meme" of the short video unfamiliar, and we can Recapturing life and labor - not just the spirited young man, not just the eye-catcher, but the construction worker, the cotton factory girl, the truck driver, the fisherman, the rice farmer, and their vibrant life itself.
Put it in the simplest and most straightforward terms: short videos rarely make people truly sigh, "It turns out there are still such a group of people living such a life," but "Fireworks World" did it. As a movie and only as a movie, "Fireworks World" strives to break through the barriers between different groups and classes by gathering individual self-narrations and allow diverse lives to be "seen" again. This also responds to the cultural researcher Lei Mond Williams' classic statement that culture is the way of daily life itself.
The vivid and vigorous power of life itself is the most moving part of this movie, and he is also widely recognized as a "film author" - a person who most of the time tries to understand and interpret others from his own perspective. Creators always dream of the "sense of reality". Among the large number of reality-themed feature films that have emerged in recent years, a little grasp of the so-called social reality has become extremely valuable under the package of dramatic treatment, and "Fireworks World" almost completely relies on the vividness of the reality itself to attract people into the image. of.
Although the creators have tried to highlight the story as much as possible in the editing, there are still few coherent dramas and dramatic conflicts in "Fireworks World". They are replaced by the fun that the short video author himself found and recorded in life. Its origin is nothing more than "clothing, food, housing, transportation, and home" throughout the film, but it shows a very rich level and interest in the most daily fireworks. This is very rare in any current reality-themed film and television works.The people the film focuses on are different from the lifestyles that most viewers are familiar with, but everyone can be so emotionally close to them when watching the film. It can be seen that life is not only the best drama, but also the way for us to truly see, understand and empathize with others.
At this point, if we return to the many "questions" about the film, we can probably approach them more reflectively: What is the boundary of film as "art"? Do we have any presuppositions about the "elite" status of film authors? Can workers become authors, and how can they become film authors? If workers have been widely accepted as short video authors, then what’s the problem with 509 workers jointly acting as “movie” authors? When we deny the artistry and creativity of this film, what are we denying?
The answer is of course not certain, and myths can be discussed slowly. In fact, there are many symbols and metaphors generated through editing in the film, which are waiting for the audience to find them in the theater. However, if we temporarily put aside our hesitation about form and focus on the practitioners and narrators who "see" life through them, we may be able to find that even if they are really unmodified, the world of fireworks is moving enough.
On January 15th, I attended the screening of "Fireworks World" at the Film Archive. An elementary school student spoke after the screening: "I am often awakened by the sound of renovations near my home on weekends. I am always very angry and want to scold them. But after watching the movie, I realized that this is how construction workers work and live. In the future, I won’t scold them casually anymore.” The simplest words are also the most touching. "Firework World" makes the life stories, labor and life of couriers, takeaways, workers, farmers and fishermen visible, and is no longer just small icons monitored in the software or irrelevant "noise". I think that today, when people are accustomed to algorithms, consumption, numbers, and systems, it may not be that these lives need to be "seen", but that we should learn to "see" again.
Source: Beijing Youth Daily
