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Interview of Deng Bin, the director of the documentary movie “Hometown on the horizon”

 


Profile:

Director Deng bin, enlisted at the age of 17，since then, he has been engaged in news media and graphic photography，In 2005, he joined the Economic Science Press as an editor，Since the establishment of Kalman (Beijing) film and television culture media Co., Ltd. in 2008, Four episodes of documentary "looking for Cao Xueqin" were filmed in 2012 calendar year，In 2015, he studied in the class of producer and director of Beijing Film Academy，In 2016, the work "forgotten gift" won 5 domestic awards and 4 international awards，In 2017, there were two domestic awards for shooting the micro film Qinglian，In 2018, the public welfare micro film "memories of coffee" won the first prize in the integrity micro film competition of the people's Bank of China. From 2018 to 2021, he shot six episodes of documentary "hometown on the horizon" and was shortlisted for the 11th documentary Academy Award in 2021.

 

Question 1:

Deng Bin. The director of ‘Hometown on the Horizon’, has been working in the media industry since he was 17 years old and has worked on an amazing list of documentary films and TV shows since then, having won many awards and received a great deal of critical praise. What achievements are you most proud of during your time as a film-maker?

 

Ans.

What I am most proud of is not how many awards I have won, but to take real, beautiful, and yet to vanishing records, and tell them to others in the form of images to listen and see, so as to awaken more thinking and balance about it.

 

Question 2:

The documentary series is about a community of horse-breeders and farmers in Yunnan Province, south-west China. What attracted you to want to tell the stories of these people and what broader message did you want the series to convey?

 

Ans.

The Hani are a mountain people, but also a poor people, as early as 1300 years ago they migrated to the mountains to escape the war, and they did not become poor slaves, driving the horses out of the mountains, to the world to do business, they exchanged their hard work for the happy life of their families. Men go out of the country and go out into the world, and the women who stay at home finally choose to stick to it for the rest of their lives.

I chose to shoot this story, I want to wake up those lazy people through the film, hard work can get rich, but also want to wake up women, if after becoming a wife, do not willfully lose the responsibility of being a wife.

 

Question 3:

Throughout the series we are given the impression of modernity coming into the lives of this traditional community. Honghe district has a very long history and it’s terraced agriculture is listed as a World Heritage Site. What changes, both positive and negative, come about due to modernization in China’s rural areas?

 

Ans.

In Ailao Mountain, due to the terrain factors, it is difficult to achieve agricultural modernization, as a director and chief planner, why make such a film? Not to show their backwardness, but to awaken everyone's attention to traditional agriculture, if it is all mechanized agriculture, it will lose the joy of farming and its cultural literacy.

 

Question 4:

The film features a lot of traditional music, which is performed in the dialects of the region. What role does music play in the lives of the people of Honghe?

 

Ans.

Music is the happy note of the farmer, music is the rhythm of the four seasons in the mountains, music is also the feelings of the Hani people on the south bank of the Red River to the mountains, and music is also the medicine of the Hani people for 365 days.

 

Question 5:

Are you working on any projects right now and what can we expect to see from you in the future?

 

Ans.

The documentary "The Hometown of Tianbian" was originally planned to shoot 5-6 ethnic minorities in China's border areas, such as "Kazakhs, Mongolians, Yi, and Koreans" The nomadic steppe Mongols of the second "Homeland of the Heavens" are currently being prepared,

The documentary film "The Wind Blows North" tells the story of the ecological protection of forest people, these two films.


 

Interviewed by: David James Bell

Edited by: Lisa TAO

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