Jiemian News Reporter | Xu Luqing Jiemian News Editor | Huang Yue In 2015, Fan Jian moved from Beijing to Guanyinqiao, Chongqing. There is less smog and more mountains here. It is the hometown of my wife Zang Ni. On days when they are not working, they often go hiking in the subu

Interface News Reporter | Xu Luqing

Interface News Editor | Huang Yue

In 2015 years ago, Fan Jian moved from Beijing to Chongqing Guanyin Bridge. There is less smog and more mountains here. It is the hometown of my wife Zang Ni. On days when they are not working, they often go hiking in the suburbs with their friends. The WeChat group is called Mountaineering Team. Several of them are documentary directors living in Chongqing. There are Li Wei, who filmed Liangshan and pneumoconiosis, and Huawei, who filmed the demolished Foreigner Street. Cheng, and Wu Yue, who photographed female Chinese professional boxers.

Fan Jian has lost count of how many people he has photographed. He is 47 years old this year and has “created documentaries for more than 20 years,” he writes in his personal introductions in many places, often adding at the end: “The purpose of his work is to "Leave a slice of time and preserve a photo for history." He sounded serious, but when we met, he wore a blue sweatshirt and often mentioned doing housework, more like the neighbor downstairs who loves running. Asked him if it was intj, he asked, what is that?

More than twenty years ago, Fan Jian was doing regular programs on Shandong TV Station, and filming a death row prisoner before his departure changed his career trajectory. On the last night before the death penalty ended, they had a deep chat. The next day, Fan Jian went to photograph the execution scene, and then went to the hospital to photograph the kidney transplant. When the death row prisoner's mother watched Fan Jian leave, he couldn't control his emotions and wanted to throw away the camera in his hand. He was only 22 years old at that time. "I couldn't sleep almost all night, and my brain was extremely excited. I still clearly remember the soft tone of the death row prisoner and his very shy expression." From then on, he knew what he wanted to shoot, and the camera gradually changed from the society The topic turned to the specific lives of ordinary people.

resigned from his job and went to Beijing without any hesitation. He went from a local station to CCTV, and finally left the well-resourced system to become an independent documentary director. He was lucky enough to catch up with the "tail of the golden age", and of course he also had the motivation to work hard, such as working while working. Bian studied for a full-time master's degree at Nortel. The documentary "Brother" was his earliest attempt. Fan Jian based it on "The Four Seasons" by Italian composer Vivaldi. He placed the camera on the rear shelf of the taxi to record the conversations of the passengers. , took photos of all kinds of guests received by Beijing taxi driver Shi Chen within a year. "My Land" focuses on how a landless farmer struggles with society and manages his life, while "To Live" discusses the reproduction of a family that lost its only child after the Wenchuan Earthquake. He has been following the film for twelve years. The protagonists Ye Hongmei and Zhu Jun live in a distant place, and Fan is thrifty. My wife Zang Ni and I go to visit from time to time. "We have become relatives."

In recent years, Fan Jian has taken photos of Yu Xiuhua, with "The Shaking World" winning international awards and Yu Xiuhua being frequently searched, she has accumulated more and more viewers. After taking pictures for a long time, the books on the bookshelf at home have been changed one after another. Now they are mostly about feminism and psychology. "Influenced by Yu Xiuhua and my wife Zang Ni," Fan Jian said, reading "Dangerous Women Writing" can understand Yu Xiuhua's various choices, and his reaction after reading Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" was "very shocked." He is always gentle and calm, and the verb he mentions most is "understand", which means understanding people's choices and the tricks of fate. If you don't understand, just read more books and look at the shooting materials again and again. This humility makes the subjects willing to communicate. Out of trust.Recently, Yu Xiuhua's second documentary had just been finalized. One day she asked Fan Jian, "When I die, do you want to film it?"

020html In the spring of 2020, Fan Jian was commissioned to go to Wuhan to photograph communities affected by the epidemic. Yu Xiuhua’s book editor Yang Xiaoyan sent him a message to encourage him to write something. During the twenty years of working on the documentary scene, he had hardly organized the text, so he had to use the unique method of a documentary director: dig out the dusty hard drive and write while reading. He also signed up for Li Haipeng’s online course. "Teacher Li said that writing skills can be significantly improved for young people through learning and reading, but it is very difficult for older people. This shocked me at the age of 47."

is not good enough. Li Haipeng still gave some encouragement - "Maybe you have many writing shortcomings, but as long as you have a strong point, the quality of your writing will be determined by the strong point." - After listening to and , Fan Jian gained confidence again, "I have exclusive story material that others don't have." Compared with most written work, documentaries allow for more flexible patience. You can't get back what you missed. The only thing you can do is to hold the camera and wait for the next moment of light and darkness to fall, so people and people The on-site interactions will be accumulated longer and deeper.

"Light and Darkness in the World" is Fan Jian's first written work, or it is the instinct of the photographer. The title of the book is still related to light. It is divided into three parts, all developed from the shooting notes, one about the loss of his only child in Wenchuan Family, Wuhan and Yu Xiuhua during the epidemic. This time, Fan Jian chose to leave the photo in words.

1 Yu Xiuhua’s aggression and vitality

"I saw Yu Xiuhua pouring two spoons of white powder into a plastic travel cup and asked her: "What did you drink? "Rat poison." "She answered. I saw a bucket of collagen powder next to me, where the "rat poison" comes from. When Yu Xiuhua is in a good mood, she will share her drink with her friends around her, but this day she did not share collagen with me, but Decided to make tea. She likes to drink various "recipe" drinks. There are more than ten or twenty tall and short bottles and cans on the bedroom terrace on the second floor. In addition to collagen powder, there are also All kinds of tea leaves, kudzu powder , soybeans, black beans, coffee beans , honey, and some powders with miraculous weight loss effects. This reminds me of the "I Love You" poem she wrote many years ago: "Drink tea in rotation: chrysanthemum, jasmine, rose, lemon/These beautiful things seem to take me on the road to spring. "I'm not sure that the things she often drinks now are all beautiful things, but I often see her pouring various unknown objects into her plastic travel cup, brewing them with boiling water, or crushing them with a wall breaker. , like doing a chemical experiment. "

Interface Culture: The movie that you are most discussed about is "The Shaking World". How did you decide to film Yu Xiuhua?

Fan Jian: I wanted to photograph a poet, not a professional poet, but an ordinary person who wrote poetry, maybe a worker or a farmer. I wanted to know how to discover poetry in a life where poetry is invisible. of. When I had this idea, I didn’t know Yu Xiuhua. In early January 2015, I saw an article about Yu Xiuhua. I noticed at first glance that she wrote great poems, and then I slowly learned about this person’s background.

The process of filming poetry can easily be presented as mere writing or verbal expression, which may appear boring in a movie. However, I am very lucky that Yu Xiuhua is not a person who just stays in his room and writes. She is someone who walks around and "causes trouble" everywhere. During the filming, another big thing happened, that is, her divorce.

Interface Culture: The main line of the movie is about her emotions and marriage, and the literary part is relatively small. How did you determine this line at the time?

Fan Jian: At first, a company approached me to shoot a short film about Yu Xiuhua. When I contacted them, I found that she and her husband had a strong sense of distance. The two of them usually live in separate rooms and do not talk to each other. Later, when I read Yu Xiuhua's poems, I felt that there was a lot of longing for love and repression in marriage. At that time, I quickly settled on the direction of filming marriage and family.

As expected, the divorce happened step by step. In the first two months when Yu Xiuhua became famous, she might not have the ability. But more than half a year later, everything was ready. She soon wanted a divorce. She thought about it. More than ten years. I never thought about what happened next, such as new relationships after divorce and domestic violence. Everything happened in a hurry.

Interface Culture: You mentioned in the book that you read "Writing Women Are Dangerous" after filming Yu Xiuhua. Did you feel this "danger" when you were there?

Fan Jian: I can feel her sensitivity and aggression. Later I realized that this aggression was actually a strong expression of her vitality. Most people in society wear masks to restrain their aggression and do not want to offend others, but she freely releases this instinct.

Yu Xiuhua is a very adventurous person, and he also likes to take risks when it comes to love. We are usually afraid of facing danger, but for her, it means that she should touch things even if she knows they are dangerous. She just wants to see what will happen.

Interface culture: Is this what attracts you most about her?

Fan Jian: Yes, the part of is very attractive to me. I now the more comes the more I like I like photographing highly sensitive people , this may be the part of the soul that I will be interested in and resonate with, if I can photograph them their status will Very powerful.

I will not explore love, it may be somewhere else. There’s a reason she’s who she is, and I’m going to try to understand her. For women, compared to men, many times they will be transformed into others, so I can only learn by reading and trying to understand it. How others are formed. Recently, Yu Xiuhua's second documentary has been scheduled to be edited. This film is co-directed by my wife Zang Ni and I. Zang Ni injected quite a lot of energy into the editing of the series. Women's perspective is something that men, like me, may not be able to achieve, so I feel that this film has its author's attributes.

For example, when was in Shennongjia, she and Yang Chuce had a big quarrel and threw things for the first time. I felt it was quite dangerous that day. Yang Chuce was easily impulsive when he was in a mood and almost hit someone that night. We had been filming for about ten days at that time, and we were supposed to leave the next day. I asked Yu Xiuhua what her plans were. She seemed very confused that night, wanting to go with us but also full of hesitation. I really don't understand why she stays.

Including later, after they broke up, Yu Xiuhua still wanted to find him. I also understood this part for a long time.At the time, I thought it was quite unbelievable - you have already been beaten, why do you still go? But I won't say it, I just say what do you need me to do? Where are we going? For people like me, providing support and companionship is enough.

Later, my wife and I studied the material in depth and kept understanding this character, and we gradually felt that she had a desire to explore danger. I believe Yu Xiuhua also knows that the danger may cost people's lives, but she will not stop until she reaches the most dangerous point. Her motivations include both the inertia of emotion and the inertia of desire.

Yu Xiuhua is unique in my life experience. That's what's interesting about documentaries, you don't know who you're going to meet, and it lasts for so many years all at once. She joked with me more than once, "Do you want to take pictures when I die?"

Interface Culture: Before "The Shaking World", you photographed more social themes, such as land and Wenchuan, but this time There seems to be a difference between the previous one and the attention paid to it.

Fan Jian: It is true that is different from , but is quite different, but my working method of is similar to before, that is, starts from home. However, one of my biggest changes is that the way to express no longer points to a social conference topic . I want to more into into people's to describe. . In addition, Yu Xiuhua also brought me more thoughts about the female perspective. I am currently filming different content and also pay attention to the female characters. The question is where is in . is in the position of , how is , and is in the environment of . These are all ideas that started after started in 2015.

Interface Culture: How did Yu Xiuhua evaluate the part where you wrote about her?

Fan Jian: She dislikes my poor writing skills (laughing). At that time, our publisher editor was very worried that the content would be bad for her when it was sent out. I said that it was up to to judge the results. She said a words are not necessary delete , this is also , which surprised me , she just disliked that my writing was not good enough. After I changed it several times, she said that it was finally a little better now.

2 Image work should be done slowly

"We are Baibuting" Yes." The man answered me. Wearing a thin cotton coat and glasses, he glanced at the old man in the wheelchair. The old man is about seventy years old. He wears a peaked cap with white hair peeking out from under the cap. He has a green bag at his hand. The man continued: "We have to go to the hospital to insert a urinary catheter. Without a catheter, the swelling will be unbearable."

Interface Culture: In the spring of 2020, you went to Wuhan to shoot the documentary "Forgotten Spring". What was the situation like at that time?

Fan Jian: The project of in Wuhan was a feature film that The Paper asked me to cooperate with.Three months after the epidemic broke out, we had to make decisions quickly, start preparations for photography, and have too much time to hesitate. At that time, I decided to only shoot in the community, instead of going to the hospital to shoot scenes of saving lives and rescuing injured people, because once you want to choose that direction, it will It takes a lot of time to stay in the hospital to take pictures of patients, and the focus is different.

Gradually, several documentaries directed and went to Wuhan . Some people chose to be in hospitals. Since medical hospital. My colleague Zhou Hao was stationed in alliance and wanted to group be located in Wuhan factory , and I chose area , chose at the time to shoot in the area There are not many people who take photos of .

Interface culture: Why choose community instead of hospital?

Fan Jian: First, I think has a more newer smell than . I will tell first tell myself that I don’t want to do anything or , and I don’t want to do anything that is too new smells because has been and many people have gone there. If you want to make a long piece of , it must be late in the new , cannot do what is called . The first place to start is, the hospital is out of order. site, if you want to do it, you need to invest a lot of time in that site .

What I most want to pay attention to is people's daily hair gave birth to and what kind of changed to , then it must be all happened in the small area, because at that time all east west You can't go out of the house, public activities are stopped, and people are trapped in their homes. When doing research, we will first judge whether it is suitable for photography based on the space and crowds in the small area. Filming talks about the rich visual expression of the space - the community cannot be too new, the appearance will not look good; The pattern will be more diverse; small area will be large enough large enough , 1000 many residents, and 0 multiple people will be infected. We spent two days time to determine to shoot this community .

Interface culture: Photographed SARS and After the Wenchuan earthquake, do you think the difficulty of entering the scene was any different?

Fan Jian: The panic of during the SARS period is similar. I was very young at that time, and the ignorant were fearless. In fact, there were various restrictions in the community, so I came out secretly and went around blindly with DVDs. Ran around and took pictures. I was still on CCTV at that time, but I couldn’t get into the hospital, so I took pictures of the outer circle of life where I was, and the expression of my impulse was similar to that in Wuhan.

When I went to photograph Wenchuan in 2009, I first dealt with psychological assistance volunteers. The volunteers introduced me to some families, and I gained the trust of these families before I could photograph. At that time, I had some cooperation with Shanghai Taiwan, which seemed to be more "formal".

Interface Culture: Most of these documentaries are observational. Is this your creative approach throughout?

Fan Jian: When I was filming "Alive" in 2009, was also very expensive. You must have children to replace the with those children. That child will bear all these burdens. When comes to the world, won’t the pressure on be very great? But I don't have try to debate with them , what I have to do is to think how to understand them , to pass a lot of to learn and experience to be able to enough Understand the side of .

I am a person with a strong sense of boundaries, and this is also true when I shoot documentaries. This may be related to my native family. When I was little, I didn’t have any relatives, so I didn’t live in a big family. In a rural village, a family exists as a whole. It is easy to cross the boundaries between each other, but my family is not sticky. west. My father served as a soldier, so my whole family immigrated to work in a factory in Ningxia—a large number of factories were built in northwest China during the 1960s. I have been immigrants since I was a child. We don’t have any relatives there, is just a family of four .

Interface Culture: Going back to your own experience, how did you first start making documentaries?

Fan Jian: I first worked at Shandong TV station. Later, I wanted to improve myself, so I went to the Central Television Station to become a employee. At that time, our was a bit like an illegal job. did not have a contract, did not have a guarantee, did not have five insurances, and one gold. , but as long as lets me me do it, even if it is a black job me is willing. They gave me a one-month trial period. If I could stay, I would stay. If I couldn't, I would leave. I resigned directly.

I caught up with CCTV very idealistic tail, in the " east side time empty" "Chronicle" column item do 30-0 minutes record piece, The director of film review is Chen Yu old teacher. In the series of films recorded by CCTV, he is a pioneer figure who created the genre. It is telling the stories of ordinary people themselves. I very much like documentary language of ordinary people, and at the same time also talk about certain newness of news.

Interface Culture: The work of the TV station is considered to be within the system. Why did you decide to move from the system to independence?

Fan Jian: In 2006, while I was working at CCTV, I also studied as a graduate student at Nortel. After graduation, my work "Leap in the City" was submitted to the Amsterdam Film Festival (idfa) and merged into . is very lucky to be in . That year idfa did a unit called " China's Changes in China" . selected a dozen films by Chinese directors, including Zhou Hao's and Du Hai's Bin , Zhao Liang, I met them that year. After that, I went to the independent circle layer , and went to the film festivals in Songzhuang and Nanjing.

The Amsterdam Film Festival was the overall appearance of Chinese documentary director . Before, everyone went to film festivals sporadically. For example, in the 1990s, the films of Wu Wenguang and Du Haibin would go to the Yamagata Film Festival in Japan, and Films by seniors such as Duan Jinchuan and Liang Bibo were showcased at international film festivals such as the French Real Film Festival. That was also the first time I went to a foreign exhibition that was larger than the standard. Only then did I know what the foreign film was like. Later, I slowly began to think about how to do it. Make it like this .

Interface Culture: It is difficult to raise funds for most documentaries. What is your situation like?

Fan Jian: I spent all my own money for the early filming of "Brother", but it was very little. The cost was mainly paid to the taxi drivers and I edited the album and the sound. Doing it myself. It wasn't until I was filming the rebirth of a family in Wenchuan that lost their only child in "To Live" that I really started spending money, and the cost of travel expenses was a lot more.

In 2009, directed by Fan Lixin's "Return to the Road List Car" won the big award , it was an movie jointly produced by , which stimulated us a lot. People, it turns out that documentaries can also be co-produced internationally, which allows more Chinese documentaries to start and slowly learn this process. That year was also a turning point for me. It was the first time I started filming a topic like "Alive". I met my producer and started an international co-production.

Now , we still mainly rely on jointly produced , in China it is Find mutual networking platform support. but requires a good director experience and discuss price capabilities, is lighter author in this aspect is also is more difficult than , especially is different from After 022 years, the Internet platform - especially the pair of record films - has been shrinking in large numbers. The most obvious is Tencent . It is difficult to get money from others.

But it should start after the epidemic in 2020. I believe I will leave to some things things. In the future, will slowly shine, this is imaging work, especially documentaries. The meaning of work is that you can't expect it to be enough for others to see, and you have to come slowly. Even when I was working on the Wenchuan earthquake, I had the same feeling. The rebirth of independent families was mostly discussed one or two years after the earthquake, but no one cared about it after that. These children have grown up after these earthquakes. How do they grow up? We followed the filming for a long time and found that the real story was slowly fermented into after four or five years. Although the information we record now is not easy to spread, but it itself has been a historical information, we just need to wait patiently.