【一席】畢贛：路邊野餐 (中英日文版)

编号：0108283160526007 2016.04.03 台北 毕赣. 路边野餐

Occasionally I direct films. 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia Occasionally I direct films. 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia And, 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia I never get nervous, 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia but coming onto this program made me quite nervous, 英文字幕翻译： Edward Columbia but coming onto this program made me quite nervous, so beforehand I had a little whiskey, and now I feel much better.

My mother is a hairdresser, and my father is a driver.

From a young age, I grew up with my grandmother.

When I was little my grandma started a mahjong parlor and that was where I used to do my homework.

Thanks to this, later on when I started making films, I could write scripts anywhere, no matter how noisy.

I really don't have any particular philosophy I want to share with you.

I'll just talk a bit about how I started making films and whatever else comes to mind.

Around the time I was in high school, I really liked animals and one day a friend of mine gave me this film called Quill, which is about a seeing-eye dog.

Watching it made me so happy, and I hoped one day I could film something to do with animals.

Around that same time another friend showed me a magazine called Book Town, which had a lot of discussions on philosophy, art, drawing, and music that I could not understand at all.

But, I could understand the film reviews, because before each review there was a synopsis of the story.

These offered a brief summary of the plot that I could easily grasp.

So, I figured...

Basically, I thought from the beginning that movies were extremely simple.

So, I started to think about making movies about animals and other things that interested me.

Anyway, my grades were really terrible, so I ended up going to a junior college.

I thought it would teach me how to make films, only to find out it was actually a college for learning about TV production.

One day at college I randomly Tarkovsky has this film called Stalker, which is widely regarded as an exceptional film.

As soon as I started watching it, though, I thought it was exceptionally bad!

I was sure I had been totally deceived.

I had a strong urge to criticize this awful director.

But I felt that if I was going to criticize Tarkovsky, I should at least finish watching the film.

So I was determined to finish it.

But it was soooo awful, each day I could only manage to watch a few minutes.

It's about I guess it took me one or two weeks, watching a little bit at a time.

The day I finally finished it, I was so relieved, and I went to the cafeteria to eat.

I felt now that I had finished Stalker, once I got back to my room I would really let Tarkovsky have it.

But as I was eating I suddenly felt that something was off.

Suddenly, I don't know...

To this day I'm not sure exactly how to express the sensation I had.

You might say that the first film I made, and the second film, too, are both in conversation with this very feeling.

In that instant, thinking about Stalker, I realized something about the unique beauty of film.

It's hard to say.

Ever since, I have been trying to address this sense of beauty with my work.

After that day, I put a poster of Tarkovsky up in my dorm room on the wall next to my bunk.

Then one day there was an inspection of the dormitories, and someone from the school saw the poster and said, "How on earth could you put a poster of Hitler next to your bed??"

I looked at the poster -- I had never realized the resemblance!

It was kind of embarrassing, So I just said, "I didn't mean to!"

So not long after, I began to watch a lot of films, but often the films I could find online had no subtitles, and there were so many European films I wanted to see but couldn't understand, because my English is poor.

I could only watch some films from Taiwan and Hong Kong, since there wasn't a language barrier.

There were still loads of films that I wanted to watch but could not find.

At that time, I had very little money, so it wasn't like I could go out and buy DVDs.

I had no choice but to trick a friend into helping me.

Every time I thought a film might be worth watching, I would talk it up telling him it was great for this and that reason.

to my roommate on the bunk below, Then the following day he would go out and buy the movie, and when he brought it back we'd watch together.

I saw lots of films that way.

He himself never ended up making films. A bit later, in my sophomore year, I made my first film project for school.

I turned in the assignment, and it ended up getting the top award from the school.

The prize was a cellphone.

On the cellphone I wrote a note to myself: "By the time I'm 24, I must make the best film I possibly can."

It's true, I was pretty high-spirited and confident.

I started preparing to make my first real film.

When I left home to go to school my aunt had given me 10,000 yuan, and I still hadn't touched it.

I planned to use that money to make my first work, called Tiger.

I returned home for the summer and started looking for an actor to play the male lead.

I wanted him to be middle-aged, someone mature.

But at the same time as I wanted an old soul, I also wanted somebody with a child's spirit.

I looked and looked and looked, until I found my own uncle (Chen Yongzhong)!

He's a bit of an odd one out in the family...

One time, soon after my father had started being a driver, he was robbed, robbed of a lot of money and a jacket as well.

Three days later my uncle helped my dad recover what was stolen, and so I was convinced my uncle was a total hero.

So when I was home preparing to make the film, one day I found him at my grandma's house.

He was watching Winged Migration, the documentary by Jacques Perrin.

I had seen it while at college -- remember how I said I like animals?

So I said to him, "Why don't you change the channel?"

"Put on the sports channel and let's watch a game or something."

And he goes, "Hey, this is Jacques Perrin's Winged Migration, this is great stuff."

I thought, how could he possibly know this film?

I started chatting with him, and I discovered he had read a lot of books, including the novella that Chen Kaige's film King of the Children was based on.

It turned out he had his own perspective on films and aesthetics.

I wanted him to act in my movie, so I asked him, I call him uncle "Uncle, will you help me by being in this movie?"

Then he said, "I help everybody anyway, of course I'll help you."

The summer ended, and I went back to school.

I wanted to make a film, so I ought to have a script.

I decided that even if I just wrote one page, that would count as a screenplay.

So that's what I did, then under the page I wrote I put a thick stack of blank paper.

I found a classmate of mine who had a camera, a friend of mine.

I put the thick "screenplay" down on the table and said, "Are we gonna make a movie or what?"

As soon as he saw what a long script I had, he said, "I'm in."

I found some others to join the project including one of my roommates.

All in all I got together four people, and we got ready to head back to my home and film.

I spoke with my grandma on the phone and told her, "Grandma, I want to bring a few people home to make a movie."

Because she was My grandma was very worried about safety, as it was very far, you know, to travel from Taiyuan to Guizhou.

At that time the transportation wasn't as easy as it is now: the trip used to take 30 hours by bus.

My grandma was so afraid for our safety that she wouldn't agree to it.

So, I had no choice but to start crying, and she gave in.

I brought my classmates home with me to Kaili (Guizhou Province).

Pretty quickly I remembered I had no idea how to actually make a movie.

I didn't know how to film, and I didn't even really want to, I was so lazy.

My cast and crew started to fall apart.

my assistant director Since I had written a script one page long, used scissors to cut each sentence out.

He pasted these strips on the blackboard and forced me to film one sentence every day.

My habit of filming this way, making a work scene by scene, was formed back then.

So each day we filmed one sentence.

We would carry some basic equipment on our backs in black bags.

We would set out early and come home late.

One night when we got back, the person at the little shop under our apartment asked us, "Hey what have you guys been doing each day?"

We didn't know how to answer, so I asked him, "What do you think we've been doing?"

And he goes, "Fishing?"

I wanted to agree with him, that we were a bunch of fishermen.

From then on we maintained this attitude, that we were like fishermen.

After we finished filming Tiger I realized all of the footage we had had very bad audio, lots of continuity errors, and you could see microphones right in the middle of everything.

I don't know why, I just thought it was terrible, and I felt Then there was no way I could keep working on this film.

I set it aside.

I doubted that I had the right stuff to make movies.

In my junior year the college wanted one of us to go intern at a TV station, since we were all majoring in TV directing.

I didn't want to go to a TV station.

I had this friend, a classmate of mine, who was working at a gas station, and I would often go hang with him at the gas station and play Pro Evolution Soccer.

I don't know if you guys have played it.

It's a video game.

Anyway, speaking of that game, lots of people have asked me about how I set up and shoot the long takes in my films. For instance, in Kaili Blues there is a forty-minute-long take.

People wonder how such a long take can be executed so precisely, and I would say it goes back to when I would play that soccer video game.

In the game, you have to organize everybody on this little "map" of the field, and that's how I organize those long takes that go through many locations.

Not much difference, really. I am totally used to it.

Anyway, back to the story: I would go visit my friend at the gas station, and every night the place would be full of truck drivers.

They would sleep there in the parking lot overnight, and get up the next day to refill with diesel and gas.

There would also be lots of kids from the township who'd fill up their motorbikes.

Every morning at 7:00am, they'd be out there yelling like crazy, "Jia you! Fill her up!"

"Jia you! Fill her up!"

And I would be half-asleep inside, just waking up.

So every morning, for a whole week, I'd wake up every morning to the sound of people shouting "Jia you!"

which in Chinese also has the meaning of "Come on! You can do it! Keep working!"

And I had this unexplainable feeling that they were all cheering for me.

After one week I left that spot, and as I was riding the bus on the circuitous route back to Kaili, I suddenly thought, "I do have what it takes to be a filmmaker. A really great one."

I was so self-confident.

I can't explain it, this confidence.

Later I started using my poetry...

my poetry...

Oh, I should say that I had written lots of poems, kind of like diary entries or free-writing, I just thought of it like writing on QQ, Until somebody pointed out to me that what I was writing was poetry.

So, I started to combine these poems with some of the scattered pieces of Tiger, and I found a lot of beauty came from fitting these together loosely.

Even though the audio was still bad and all of it was still rough, and I couldn't do anything about the continuity flaws.

But I enlarged it, so much of the film looked almost panoramic, and Tiger became very grainy and rough, sort of like an 8mm experimental film.

I was very grateful to Zhang Xianmin and Wei Xidi for selecting the film for the Nanjing Film Festival that year.

I was so grateful.

At the time, I was only 22.

After finishing Tiger I went back home, and to be honest, I wasn't all that eager to make another film right away.

I figured I would just find a job or something.

I started looking for a job and ended up starting a wedding videography business in Guiyang (capital of Guizhou Province) My mom gave me a little money, and my partner's father sold the family's van and gave him some money as well.

Along with a young woman apprentice, the three of us opened a wedding photography studio.

It didn't last long.

I ended up moving with my partner the sound guy to another unfurnished house.

We got a couple of mattresses from a flea market I think they were made by Simmons or something.

And We bought a bunch of tires, and put the mattresses up on the tires and slept like that.

The place had two rooms, one with a door and one without.

My partner didn't have a girlfriend, so he got the room with no door.

Then It was at that time that I made the short film The Poet and the Singer.

I really like that short film, even though it doesn't have many fans.

After I finished filming, I headed back to Kaili.

I was feeling pretty good about myself, since The Poet and the Singer had won a prize in Hong Kong.

I thought of myself as a really capable filmmaker, and I imagined my classmates and my friends in Kaili would think I was really awesome.

When I got back to Kaili I told them how amazing I was.

They were totally unmoved!

They thought I was making microfilms. I got really mad!

Later after I won the Golden Horse (for Best New Director), I went home and found my friends' attitudes had changed.

I went out drinking with them, and one of them introduced me to his new girlfriend, saying I was the winner of the Golden Horse Prize.

I thought, ah, finally they get what I do.

But then the friend went on, saying, "Yeah, he makes really good microfilms." You know, my friends really keep me grounded.

I like them so much.

Every time I win some prize, they'll be very really happy for me for about ten minutes, then go back to normal like nothing happened.

Spending time with them in Kaili puts me in a good place, so I haven't felt the need to go to Beijing or some such city.

After finishing The Poet and the Singer, I want to say I still hadn't had the chance to make a feature film, though I had already begun writing Kaili Blues.

I thought I would find a job again.

My aunt, she was working in a bus station, and they had an opening I could apply for, and I could start work after a little training period.

So I tested for the job, thinking I should put everything else aside and just have a normal job for a while, and maybe make another film when I was 30.

But the day after I took the test for the job, I called my former classmate from Taiyuan.

I said, "Buy me a plane ticket, I want to get out of here."

So he bought me a ticket and I left.

Good thing I didn't pass that test after all, so my aunt didn't blame me.

I arrived in Taiyuan and worked with my friend as a wedding videographer.

I paid him back for the plane ticket.

I started spending a lot of time with my teacher Ding Jianguo, who I always call "master."

We would go drinking every day, and the two of us would get really drunk.

I went to Beijing looking for investors,with my screenplay in hand, with my screenplay in hand, and Master Ding connected me with a lot of people, but I wasn't able to raise the money.

Oh well, I thought. I shrugged it off and went back to Kaili.

Since I couldn't make the film, I set about looking for another job.

So Some of my friends They were about to go to work for a demolition company.

I thought it would be a great time if I joined them, so we all took the test for the demolition company.

Man, when I got certified to go bust rocks, my teacher totally lost it.

He said, "Look, I'll help you out of my own pocket."

"I'll give you money to make your film."

I was so moved.

I talked it over with my mom and told her what I wanted most was to make this film.

She said, "How much money do you need?"

I said, "20,000 yuan."

By this point I guess she thought I was out of my mind, but she said, "Will 20,000 yuan be enough?"I told her it would be, and she gave me 20,000 yuan.

Master Ding also gave me some funding, as did my wife, along with my friends who all pitched in a little.

So, that's how I got rolling with this film Kaili Blues.

I brought a lot of my friends to Kaili, and we started the project.

We rented out two houses, and every night we would meet.

We had the storyboards for lots of scenes up on the wall.

We'd meet and I'd have them play games like "Truth or Dare."

I just wanted everybody to share their most embarrassing or shameful stories, so that we as a cast and crew would become very close.

Why?

Because only once we knew the best and the worst of each other could we work harmoniously.

When after two months we had totally run out of funding, and all of us had used up our energy, I had to dismiss the crew.

Then I worked with my friend the sound artist and my wife, along with a dramaturg named Chen Ji, who had flown back from Beijing again to help me out.

The three of us worked to finish up the last 30% of the production.

One day we were filming in the mountains and it started pouring rain.

There was no place to take cover, so we just tried to keep the equipment dry, and got soaked ourselves.

Everyone was so happy, because in that moment we rediscovered the creative spirit we had when making The Poet and the Singer.

It felt great to return to that mindset.

After we finished filming Kaili Blues, I showed the footage to my uncle (Chen Yongzhong) and asked what he thought of it.

He said he loved it, but I noticed that he had actually slept through it!

Later, though, when he and I were at the Locarno Film Festival, he watched the film with an audience of three thousand people, and as he watched it he started crying.

He cried, because it was the first time he realized what I had been doing the whole time with this film.

Afterwards on the way home he just smoked cigarette after cigarette, and I didn't ask him again what he thought of the film.

After I wrapped Kaili Blues, I went to Beijing to do post-production.

After seeing the reels, several companies offered to help, and they each worked with me on different aspects.

The first post-production company recommended to me an editor.

She is still at that company.

And,em...

I really did not want to meet this editor, and at the time she didn't want to meet with me either.

But, we both wanted to show good manners, so we got together.

We decided to meet at a cafe.

After we sat down in the cafe, she told me that he had studied shipbuilding.

As soon as I heard that, I thought, wow, this person must be a great editor.

I mean seriously, shipbuilding has a lot of complicated architecture.

I was suddenly sure that I wanted her to edit the film.

I recommended that she watch two things.

The first was Tarkovsky's film Nostalgia.

I wanted her to see one way of handling editing that wasn't all high-paced action stuff.

I also recommended she watch one segment of the CCTV program Legal Report.

She was dumbfounded, she had no idea what I was up to, and that made me want to work with her even more.

When we started editing the footage for Kaili Blues I was in Beijing, living with my wife in a place that Master Ding Jianguo had rented for us near the campus of the Beijing Film Academy.

The apartment was very small, with only one bed.

In the big apartment next to us was the landlady.

She had such an explosive temper.

My wife and I often didn't have hot water, and, not wanting to make trouble, I didn't dare say anything to Master Ding.

The landlady didn't tolerate us talking loudly, but that place was so small, it was easy to get riled up.

So every night my wife and I would argue in whispers, which meant we ended up not really arguing at all.

One day I discovered that the router password in the room had been changed.

I got angry because the landlady wouldn't let us use the internet.

Every day before I would go meet Qin Yanan, the editor I mentioned.

Anyway before going to meet her each day, I would restart the router.

The landlady couldn't work the router herself, so every time she'd have somebody come and reset it.

In the end, three days later she kicked me and my wife out.

Chen Jin, the dramaturg, came and helped us out with our luggage.

We had no place to go, so we ended up staying at the editor Yanan's house.

We edited the work, and when we were finished, we invited lots of veteran artists to come watch.

They all care about me very much, but they also have a lot of ideas about what I could do better.

I started to feel pretty dejected, because every time Yanan and I would have them watch the work, we'd be filled with anticipation, and then they'd always shake their heads, and we'd ride the subway back full of dismay.

But then she and I watched it again, and we couldn't see any problems with it.

This happened like ten times: we'd have these teachers shake their heads at it, and we'd feel really down, ride the subway back, hopeless, but then we'd watch it, and after having a few drinks, we couldn't see anything the matter with it!

After the editing was pretty much done, I got ready to submit Kaili Blues to film festivals.

Before I had submitted it anywhere, before we went to Locarno, Yanan suddenly told me that she owed 60,000 yuan on his credit card.

I thought, wow, she edited my film and has no money to show for it, and she had said no to other projects, and given me food and a place to stay and everything.

So I promised that for the next film we did together, I would pay her 60,000 yuan.

I didn't realize at the time that the next film would actually have a big budget and lots of investors.

I'm still determined to only give Yanan 60,000 yuan.

Later on we went to Locarno, several members of the cast and crew, and everybody was very happy.

At Locarno we all got a taste of what a refined film community was like.

During the premiere I stayed in the waiting area, waiting for the last of the audience to go in.

As I was going up to the stage to greet the audience, the middle-aged man with a big beard came up to me.

My English isn't good, so I couldn't understand what he was saying.

He said a lot of stuff, and my producer was really excited.

After the guy walked away, my producer told me, that guy said he really, really likes your film.

They'd seen some of the press about it, but he actually wasn't supposed to talk to me because he was a judge for the festival.

So I thought, oh nice, that means we'll definitely win a prize.

After that I didn't worry too much.

Every day I would go to the casino near the Locarno Festival.

I'd usually bring a couple of producers with me, and every day I would win some money because ah, anyway I won't talk about that skill with you guys.

Every day I'd win money, sometimes twenty Swiss francs, and I'd buy a couple bottles, and the three of us would drink together.

Sometimes I'd win a hundred and fifty francs and we'd all have steak.

Happy days...

And it continued like that, I went to other festivals, one after the next, until today.

Maybe some of you have seen Kaili Blues...

I'm not sure how to end this.

I mean, I feel like everything has just begun.

Back when I went to the Nanjing Film Festival that year for Tiger, I sat outside the theater, as the audience trickled out, until it came time to talk with them.

I would just say, "Thank you all for spending time to watch my film."

I say the same thing today.

I've done hundreds of film forum Q&As, and this is always what I say first.

Last off, I can't help myself, I have to tell one last story, around the time I returned to Kaili after graduating, I had a brief stint at this advertising company that a friend had introduced me to.

Actually the boss is a good man, but he would always criticize my films, and it really bothered me.

One day I argued with him, and he told me to get lost.

So I left.

I walked to the elevator, and as I stepped inside, I realized he was still shouting, "Dogshit!"

"Dogshit!" "You're so talented, huh?"

"You think you can put food on the table with that?"

Yes, I think I can.