划痕.Trace: Vision of Documentary

策展前言

作为草场地工作站“交叉：2006”艺术计划的影像部分，“延展：纪录片论坛”试图展示的是中国独立纪录片最新鲜的生态。共有12部作品参加此次论坛，其中长片9部，短片（1个小时以内）3部。这些作品半数都来自于学生作者，而其中4部长片，《毕摩记》，《在城市中跳跃》，《哈佛女孩》，《台北京》都是北京电影学院纪录片专业研究生的毕业创作。也许跟这些作者都有过社会生活经验有关，他们在作品中展现出的视野超出了他们的环境；而如果说他们的表达成熟的程度让人吃惊，或者非常令人触动，那是因为他们将自己也放在这个看别人，看别处的生活的过程中――他们在寻找自己作为一个纪录片工作者，或影像工作者的身份。 

另外的半数来自于社会上自由身份的影像工作者。他们带着各自的背景和制作纪录片的经验――这经验对于广义和白补旦来说还是第一次。虽然也是以不同的视角关注自身以外的事物，但在整体的气质上，这些作品与学生作品相比显得更加粗砺和彻底――粗砺是指那里生活的质地，彻底是说拍摄者对这种生活的态度。我们因此可以看得更直接和深入：它是艰难的，甚至令人沮丧。然而那就是存在于我们周边或我们未有机会接触到的现实，是我们甚至缺乏勇气看的这时代的一部分人活着的样子！ 

在类型上，大部分作品还是延续当下中国独立纪录片的主流，是用传统的跟拍方法结构而成的经典的现实主义，它们是指向外面、周围和旁人的，描述的是某种社会存在，当然这个描述的过程对作者而言，有可能使他们更深地了解了自己。在这个坐标系中，杨蕊的《毕摩记》在对少数民族生活的诗意描绘中不忘保持人类学纪录片的文献性，想必对她而言，他们的存在本身就是仪式性的；而蒋志的《香平丽》由于掺入了剧情因素和制作方法，而反对成为完全意义上的纪录片。 

然而正如这些影片所拍摄的对象，他们自己不能表达自己，这些作品，也难以说明它们自身。它们需要被放在一个更广阔的语境当中被理解，也正是这种语境，更明确地反映出了它们出现和存在的意义。这个语境是关于时间和空间的。在这个语境之下，所有的作品都成为一种累积，我相信，它们积聚起来的能量，势必会改变什么――所谓“延展”，意在表达这种累积和促进它的能量释放的过程，也是在这个意义上，这次论坛不仅和草场地五月艺术节的影像节目有所关联，是那次放映的一个直接的延续，同时更会与今后将要在这个空间发生的类似活动相呼应――它愿意提供一条线索，让我们在时间的段落中，更清晰地了解自己的去从。

张亚璇

 Curator’s statements:

 As the video part of "Crossing:2006" art program by Caochangdi Workstation, "Extending: Documentary Forum" is trying to show the freshest appearance of Chinese independent documentary. 12 films are involved in this forum, with nine long-feature ones, and three shorts, which are less than one hour. Half of the twelve were made by students, while 4 of the long-features, the Bimo Records, Dancing in the city, the Girl from the Children’s Village and Three Affairs of Three Cities are the graduation works made by the students of documentary major at Beijing Film Academy. The view expressed in those films is far beyond their surroundings, which may be linked to the social life experience they‘ve got before their studying. If how mature they expressed themselves makes us surprised or even touched, that’s because they also laid themselves in the process of observing others and around, through which they were pursuing their identity as documentary filmmaker.

The other half comes from some of free filmmakers in this society, along with their own background and experience of making documentary respectively, which was the first time for Yu Guangyi and Bai Budan. Though focusing on things around themselves from different aspects like the students do, generally, those films appear to be more rough and tough. Rough means the texture of the life shown in those works, tough means the filmmaker’s attitude towards that, therefore about those lives we can observe more profoundly and directly, it’s hard, even depressing, but that is just part of reality existing around us or we have no occasion to touch yet, that is how some people live their life in this era which sometimes we even don’t have enough courage to see. 

Most of the works maintain the mainstream in genre of Chinese independent documentary nowadays, which is classical realism structured by the way of following (the subject), they point at the outside, the surroundings and the others, describing some kind of social being. For the filmmakers, the process of the description might make them know more about themselves. In this coordinate system, the Bimo Records by Yang Rui keeps the literature of anthropological documentary while describing Yi minority’s life poetically. For the auteur, the existence of those people must be marked by those rituals. While for mixing some fiction’s elements and working way, Our Loves by Jiang Zhi is opposed to be a strict-defined documentary.

Just as the subjects in these documentaries can't express themselves by themselves, it’s also difficult for the works to illuminate their own. They have to be put in a broader context to be understood, which reflects more distinctly the significance of them being produced and existing. This context is related to the time and the space, in which all the works can be taken as a kind of accumulation, its accumulated energy must be able to change something, the so-called “extending ” is exactly supposed to express the accumulation and the process of promoting its energy releasing .And on this level ,the forum not only links to the May Festival happened in Caochangdi in May，as a direct extension to the last screenings, but also corresponds with the continuous activities about to take place in this space. The forum would like to provide a clue with helping us see our traces of coming and going more clearly in these times. 

Zhang Yaxuan

Sept. 21,2006