Chen Daixi
March 28, 2016 12:06 Source: Wen Wei Po Mobile News
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Documentary "I'm in the Forbidden City to repair cultural relics" premiered in January this year in CCTV ratings were mediocre, but recently in the gathering of a large number of post-90s The pop-up video site Bilibili harvested more than a million hits, among the popular search, the Forbidden City craftsmen have become the new human god.
"I repair artifacts in the Forbidden City" stills. The picture shows the copper gilded country music water law clock after eight months of restoration by master Wang Jin, wooden doors, waterwheels, poultry and other parts will move with the music. (File photo)
Documentary "I repair cultural relics in the Forbidden City" premiered in January this year in CCTV ratings flat, but recently gathered a large number of 90 after the pop-up video site Bilibili harvested more than a million clicks, among the top searches, the Forbidden City craftsmen to become the new human male god.
There is no barrier between good content and new humans. The young audience in the heart, is condensed in the artifacts of the wisdom of generations of imperial workers and craftsmanship, but also the profession of the sublime.
Chen Daixi
A middle-aged man named Wang Jin may not have dreamed that he had become the god of a large number of 90-year-olds overnight. That group of youthful hormones flying children, yesterday still in the circle of friends screen tearing shouting South Korean actor Song Joong-ki "husband", today in the B station (Bi1ibi1i pop-up video site) screen full of pop-ups to the Wang master fly book confession. The master, who has spent half his life quietly repairing clocks and watches in a secluded palace, probably doesn't even know what a B-site is, so I'm surprised you're surprised (snicker).
As a network gathering place for domestic hipsters, the Bi1ibi1i pop-up video site has more than a million hits and a peak Douban rating of 9.4 (surpassing Descendants of the Sun and Luang Phu Pang), which in one fell swoop has pushed the documentary film I'm Repairing Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City into a popular search. When the younger generation was impressed by Master Wang's innocent smile, and when this simple craftsman captured the hearts of young girls with a gentle and modest image of a gentleman, a new round of thinking was triggered by the fact that masterpieces can break the boundaries of the subgenre, and that there is no barrier between good content and the new human beings. In English, there is a word called "touch", which is translated into Chinese as touch, touch, but I prefer the phonetic translation as "step", "be touched", meaning being touched. So the question is, what exactly is it about this documentary that has touched the hearts of young people?
The back of the Forbidden City: A Curious Perspective
I am a documentary filmmaker. In the eyes of my peers, this is a standard "handover movie". The 90th anniversary of the Palace Museum, the organization to make a film, whether as publicity or archives are common again. Documentary in April 2015 officially opened, it is rumored that the production cost of 1.5 million, in the current image of the "blockbuster" era, compared to the production volume of ten million, this investment is not impressive. So the film did not use large-scale high-precision aerial photography, did not lay a lot of track, there is not too much three-dimensional animation special effects, there is no large team of staff travel consumption traces. The whole documentary transportation mirror neat, sharp, simple, with common equipment can be completed. The reason why the film looks good is that the production vision, material selection, interview skills, character portrayal, editing techniques, narrative skills and other soft power related to artificial production is even more exquisite. Especially a big production of internationally acclaimed documentary "The Forbidden City" Jewel in front, the creative team to grasp how the subject matter, from what angle into, in order to continue to excavate the Forbidden City without picking up on people's teeth? Telling the story of a group of domestic top experts in cultural relics restoration, using the camera to lead the audience through the door into a door that has never been opened to the public, such a small a cut, have to praise the choice of material let a person amazing. If the 12-episode documentary "The Forbidden City" is the "emperor" point of view, set the country's top production power macroscopically a tribute to the Forbidden City, then "I repair artifacts in the Palace" is an original micro perspective. The creative team put on a micro-focus lens, with a distance of 0.01 centimeters close to the people, close to the object, the Forbidden City to carry on the meticulous observation. This selection, as if around the back of the Forbidden City, a tour, to find the ordinary people and the Forbidden City flesh and blood connection.
Flahadi, the father of the world's documentaries, aimed his camera at the Eskimos living in the Arctic at the beginning of the 20th century, and in June 1922, the famous documentary film Nanook of the North was screened in New York City, becoming a hit with audiences and a sensation in the Western world. The director, who had a lifelong disdain for the civilized world and explored the art of documentary with a romantic vision and an explorer's character, wrote the definition of documentary at the very beginning of its existence: the original gene of documentary is a great hunt. In the film, the Eskimos live in snow huts to withstand the extreme cold, hunting seals for food shocked the audience who wore Western-style clothes and boasted that they came from the civilized world, and the primitive desire for survival connected the human blood from the ancient **** sound. I Repair Relics in the Forbidden City" is also a journey of discovery, a cultural curiosity. For those young viewers who are chasing new things, what kind of hidden kingdom is locked in the seven major doors of the Palace? In the movie, a beautiful girl from the ceramics team rides a bicycle alone in the empty Taihemen Square, "the last person to do so was Puyi", the audience was electrified by this narration. What kind of youth do these young people of their own age have?
Two paradoxes: great tension
Based on its unique perspective, the movie then succeeds in constructing two paradoxes in terms of content and vision. First, there is the paradox of time and space. The restoration of cultural relics takes place in the Forbidden City, but in contrast to all the fantasies of luxury and opulence, the workshop in the film reveals a bit of desolation. Whether it's the aluminum lintels and window frames inside the house, or the long tubes of fluorescent lights on the roof that are a little too crude, it doesn't seem to be the same place as the palace we know so well. Deep in the heart of our great capital lies a place that is at odds with modernity, more like a quiet hutong, inhabited by simple working people. The fluorescent lights are on all day long, their job is to ensure the clearest possible vision, time stands still in the dust that dances and flies outside the lamps, and the cats squinting and yawning under the trees outside the window are descendants of the imperial cats of the palace. Several small courtyards that neither dissolve into history nor catch up with the pace of modernity were once cold palaces, and outside the door, the most traveled tourist landmark in China today. From morning to night the sound of horns, shutterbugs, shouts, translations in every language on the planet, all sounds are cut off from the palace walls. Raise your head and look around the sky, not a tall building in the square, the courtyard is deep, nothing can be heard. A group of domestic top cultural relics restoration experts, the ghost circle in the center of the whole country, day after day, in the most lively place to engage in a most meditative work. They hold this great skill of pure craftsmanship to live in isolation from the world, their master's master, is the ancient Chinese scholar, farmer and worker in the work, even the most young and beautiful girl among them also face to face, plain clothes, daily eight to five, low-eye brow and artifacts *** place, with the ancient people in the artifacts to leave a secret language to talk to. Qianlong emperor placed poetry manuscripts of the wooden box surprisingly brushed more than 120 layers of paint, repair before understanding a layer is what texture, what color. There is no documentation, and no one to ask. Cultural relics restorer in the dark a little bit forward, with the language on the fingertips and the ancestors of the dialogue, from which to feel condensed in the artifacts on the body of the wisdom of generations of imperial workers and craftsmanship.
In the three episodes of the documentary watching process, the audience has always been this visual paradox brought about by the great tension torn, the so-called fascinating, it is the surface of the documentary language hidden under the effect of dramatic tension. Another major paradox comes from the contradictory nature of cultural relics restoration work itself. Trying to cover up the traces of restoration, repairing the old as the old, is the highest standard of their business. In other words, the higher the skill of the craftsman, the closer the mark left on the artifact is to "no trace". The audience was once again shocked, there is such a law in the world, the highest form of existence is, not in. Restorer of cultural relics of a lifetime of efforts, is to this "no" word to climb. I even think that this job is a bit like the Tibetan Buddhist altar, all kinds of splendor, but a scoop of fine sand, the ultimate purpose of its existence, is to erase. The obliteration of traces of self is seen as the realization of self-worth, which is once again incompatible with this modern society that flaunts and manifests itself. This paradox is superior to the tension brought about by the paradox of their working environment and atmosphere. As the movie writes about the national treasure, the "Spring Festival Scroll" from the Sui Dynasty, "It is the oldest landscape painting in the Palace Museum, and in the 1,400 years since its birth, it is hard to imagine how many wars, natural disasters, and man-made calamities it has endured, but it has been miraculously preserved. It has been miraculously preserved." Countless national treasures, like the Spring Festival, have been restored by generations of skillful craftsmen, and we have been fortunate enough to see them. Those craftsmen have never been named, and the value of their lives, which seems to have been erased, is attached to the objects, which will be handed down for all eternity.
Ling Hui Xu and: the collision of youth of the same age
If the camera can capture the flavor, then you will certainly be watching the "I repair artifacts in the Forbidden City" when you smell a variety of pungent odors. Just divided into the wood group, lacquer group, painting and calligraphy group of young college graduates, the initial craft to learn is to make adhesives. They learned to make pig's blood mixed with lime, paste, swim bladder glue, and followed professional lacquer farmers up to Fangshan to pick raw lacquer. Most of them graduated from prestigious schools and were the pride of their age group. When they first came to work, they probably did not realize that in a post-industrial era, they had actually entered a pre-industrial workshop. Then, they suddenly realized that they were not here to talk to the emperor, but to kowtow and learn the art. The Ming Dynasty Zhou Jiaxing required ancient book restorers to have "the hand that mends the sky, the eye that penetrates the louse, the spirit of wisdom and emptiness, the heart is as fine as a hair", the 16-word aphorisms in the most difficult to do, I'm afraid of the "spirit of wisdom and emptiness". How to make a flying and jumping contemporary university graduates to endure loneliness, down-to-earth inheritance of the craft, from unruly and untamed repair into the spirit of the wisdom of the virtual and how to wear off the world of the fireworks on their body is the masters of the responsibility and the problem. The camera captures the relationship between several pairs of masters and disciples, ranging from being as close as sisters to gambling and fighting. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the two masters of the painting and calligraphy group, teaching their apprentices with aplomb, arms raised, dusting water on ancient paintings in the standard pose of the profession. Their generation may not have received formal education, their body still retains a strong artisanal flavor, they left the Forbidden City, the appearance may not be too different from the ordinary repairman you see, but their craftsmanship and heart is the country's most precious treasure. They are in this shabby little workshop, dedicated to a lifetime, they heal the generations of masters corroded by the work of the years, and finally, they will erase their own traces. Finally one day, the apprentices discovered the beauty of the master sweating in the backlight, a beauty that had the same roots as the beauty of the artifacts they would later feel under the soft lights of the temple. A high-minded college student will let go of the last expectation of fame and fortune, he will also be like his master, low-browed, calmly treat the human culture in the river of artifacts drifting downstream to their hands, give it a lifetime of labor, so that they are intact, safe and sound, in the long river continue to float on.
The documentary uses the art of concealment to promote a spirit and character that exists outside of personal fame and individual value. Young viewers may not be able to decipher the code of the language of the images, but they really feel the touching feelings conveyed by the images. What touches the hearts of young viewers is the spectacle of the scene and the nobility of the profession. The best of their age, actually can choose such a youth, such a way of life, not to personal fame and fortune, almost to self-absorption posture, into the long river of culture. They repair the cultural relics in the Forbidden City, repair the fickle heart, repair our desires, repair is our self-righteous standard of value. Many people say that this documentary is the Palace Museum cultural relics restoration department of the recruitment notice, I prefer to see it as a hymn to youth.
(The author is a documentary filmmaker, whose works include "Discovering New Shanghai" and "Historical Memory in Karst Landscape")