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石牌往事 Once upon A Time in Shipai Village

For Xiao Song, who is in his early thirties and a new father, the largest existing urban village in Guangzhou, Shipai Village, is a place that supports him in achieving his goal of supporting his family. He loves and hates Shipai Village at the same time, just as his feelings for the city of Guangzhou are complicated: Although the household registration system prevents him from being afford to keep his three-year-old son with him to go to school in Guangzhou, he believes that this is a fair city after all. It has provided many migrant workers like him with an opportunity to "earn the first pot of gold".

This film uses a large number of daily life video clips taken by Xiao Song with his mobile phone in the past 7 years, trying to use the first person perspective of a "floating population" to tell the story of the deep relationship between Shipai Village and migrant workers in Guangzhou, and provide a perspective of “the others” in the context of anthropological research methodology in the topic of urbanization of first tier cities of China.

对于三十出头、又初为人父的小宋来说，广州现存最大的城中村——石牌村——是一个支撑他实现养家糊口目标的地方。他对石牌村又爱又恨，正如他对广州这个城市的情感也很复杂：虽然户籍制度让他没办法把三岁的儿子留在身边上学，但他认为广州终究算是一个公平的城市，给许多像他一样的外来“流动人口”提供了“赚取第一桶金”的机会。

本片使用了大量小宋过去几年用手机拍摄的日常生活视频片段，试图以一位“流动人口”的第一人称，为石牌村与广州外来务工群体深层关系的故事文本讲述，提供一种视觉人类学方法论下的“他者”视角。

  • Manman Yang
    Director
  • Manman Yang
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    石牌往事
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    June 1, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    1,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    China
  • Country of Filming:
    China
  • Language:
    Mandarin Chinese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Manman Yang

Manman Yang / Mrs / Believing is Seeing Co., Ltd./ China

As a documentary filmmaker, visual storyteller, and visual anthropology scholar, Manman was born and raised up in Hunan province of southern China. She got her M.A. in Drama and Film Study from Beijing Film Academy in 2015, then started working as a documentary filmmaker. Driven by cultural shocks from her study and living experience in the Europe, she has been using documentary film making as a way to explore the world and affect the reality since 2016. She was enrolled as a M.A. student of the Germany university HMKW in the program of Visual and Media Anthropology in Oct. 2020. Her works were official selections of 2019 SVAFMF, 2020 EASA Lisboa Film Program and 2021 SVAFMF. In 2019, She set up BELIEVING IS SEEING STUDIO in Guangzhou, focused on documentary production, visual arts and visual anthropology.

杨曼曼，纪录片作者、视觉人类学者、策展人。1988年生于湖南怀化，现居广东佛山。
2015年毕业于北京电影学院获戏剧与影视学硕士学位，后学习和旅居于欧洲逾一年, 2017年回国，2019年南下广州。德国柏林HMKW大学视觉与媒体人类学硕士在读。其作品曾入选2019年国际视觉人类学电影节（SVAFMF)（加拿大温哥华），2020年欧洲社会人类学协会双年影展（葡萄牙里斯本），2021年国际视觉人类学电影节（SVAFMF）(美国)。

2019年她在广州创立独立纪实影像厂牌“眼见为实”，专注于纪录片制作、人文科学策展和视觉人类学；致力于在东西方互文的视角下，创作具有艺术水准、商业价值、社会责任和学术高度的纪实影像内容。合作对象包括广东科学中心、英国科学博物馆和英国驻华大使馆等。

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Director Statement

This is a machinima documentary about a young house rental agent in Shipai village of Guangzhou.
In this ten minutes film, I made use of the social media footage posted by the protagonist in his past 7 years life experience which was related to Shipai village closely, to endow him the subjective position of the visual storytelling in the film.

By telling his life stories as a migrant worker with his own perspective, I want to introduce him to the audiences in various latitudes as below:
Where he is from;
Who he is;
Why he is in Shipai village;
What he is doing there for making a living;
What he cares about most now and how Shipai village relates to it.

Through the personal life story of a marginalized migrant worker in a first tier city of China, I wish to disclose that to what extent Shipai the village and Guangzhou the city have made their own effects on his life routes, and most importantly, to depict the inner connection existing in between the urban village and the floating population in the context of violent urbanization progress in contemporary China.

导演阐述：

这是一部关于广州石牌村一位年轻租房中介的截屏纪录片。
在十分钟的影片中，我利用了主人公近三年拍摄的与石牌村紧密相关的日常生活社交媒体视频，赋予他在整个影片的视觉叙事中的主观地位。

通过以他第一人称的视角讲述其作为农民工的人生故事，我想从以下几个维度让观众了解他：
他从哪里来;
他是谁;
他为什么在石牌村；
他在那里做什么谋生；
他现在最关心的是什么问题，石牌村又是如何与之联系起来。

通过一位房产中介的个体故事讲述，我试图揭示石牌村和广州这座城市对的一位外来务工人员的人生轨迹产生了多大的影响。更为重要的是，在当代中国极速城市化进程的大背景下，我希望通过他的故事去描绘城中村与流动人口之间存在的深层内在联系。