寻找小糖人 Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary film directed by Malik Bendjelloul , which details the efforts of two Cape Town fans in the late 1990s, Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumored death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true, and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which never took off in the United States, had become wildly popular in South Africa, but little was known about him there.

This documentary is elaborately designed with a few skills of suspense films. Rodriguez himself is extremely dramatic: he’s zero in US, while hero in South Africa.

36-year-old Swede, Malik Bendjelloul, ever co-worked with many outstanding musicians, such as Björk and Die Prinzen, during the work at a TV station, so he is an insider without doubt. He was completely amazed the first time he heard Rodriguez’s song in Cape Town when he resigned in 2006 and went for a backpacker tourism in Africa with then girlfriend.

Malik originally planned to make a seven-minute video to be broadcasted on TV, however, only collecting information had taken several months. Malik told himself over and over again: This is a bigger story, and this should be a movie. Malik decided to stay in Cape Town and made friend with Rodriguez through the latter’s daughter. However, it is at the third year when Malik flew to Detroit that these two men met each other. At first, Rodriguez was reluctant to be shot, but when he saw Malik shot the snow scene of Detroit early in the morning at minus 20 degrees, he was deeply touched by that young face, red with cold and agreed to take a very short interviews.

The biggest difficulty lay in funds. If you are an investor, would you invest in a documentary about an artist that nobody knows about, the directorial debut of a young director? Swedish Film Institute ever provided him support funds, which, however, was withdrew in the third year of film shooting. At first, Malik used Super 8 video camera, but then, he could not afford the Super 8. At that time, he was excited to find that there was a Super 8 APP in Apple’s App store, so he took most of his material by using this APP priced 1 dollar. Until 2011, the actual shooting part had been basically completed, and the rest parts were post-editing and sound soundtrack, as well as the most important cut scenes. Paying everything for Searching for Sugar Man, Malik almost had nothing to keep it going on. He began to pick up the brush and make some simple illustrations by himself; on the table at him home in Stockholm, he struggled with editing software. This is how he completed the film, suffering various difficulties. His film might be the most inexpensive one, but indeed the best one.

这部纪录片经过精心设计，有一点点悬疑片的手法，rodriguez本身也确实有很强烈的戏剧性，在美国是zero,在南非是hero。
36岁的瑞典人Malik Bendjelloul在电视台工作期间和许多优秀的音乐人合作过，例如比约克和王子乐队。他自然是识货的，所以当他06年辞职和当时的女朋友一起去非洲背包旅游，在开普敦第一次听到Rodriguez的歌就惊为天人。
原本计划拍一条七分钟的短片在电视上播出，光是埋头整理资料就是好几个月，Malik一遍又一遍的告诉自己：这是一个更大的故事，这应该是一部电影。Malik决定留在开普敦，通过Rodriguez的女儿Eva和他成为了朋友。不过是到第三年Malik飞到底特律，两人才见上了面。起初Rodriguez不愿意入镜，后来看到Malik在零下20度的底特律清晨抢拍雪景，被那冻得通红的年轻面孔所感动，才录了极短的一段访谈。
最难的还在于资金。如果你是投资方，你会不会投给一个首次执导的年轻导演的关于一位没人知道的艺术家的纪录片？瑞典电影研究所曾给予的电影扶持基金，也在影片投入拍摄的第三年撤出了。Malik最初用Super 8摄影机拍摄，后来连Super 8都用不起的时候，兴奋的发现苹果App store里有一个super 8的app，他用这个售价1美金的app拍了本片的大部分素材。挨到2011年，实际拍摄的部分已经基本完成，还差后期剪辑和声音配乐，还有最重要的过场动画。为了《寻找小糖人》弹尽粮绝的Malik，这时真的到了揭不开锅的地步。他开始自己拿起画笔做一些简单的插图，在斯德哥尔摩家里的餐桌上和剪辑软件死磕，就这么哆哆嗦嗦的做完了成片。他的电影是最寒酸的，也是最好的。