海洋 Océans (2009)

Winged Migration co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and Jacques Perrin re-team for this documentary produced for Walt Disney Studios' Disneynature banner and exploring the many mysteries of our planet's oceans. Almost three-quarters of the earth's surface is covered by oceans, yet strangely we seem to know more about deep space than the world of the sea. There's no question that the ocean has played a crucial role in the history and sustenance of humankind, but what secrets does the underwater world hold? Follow filmmakers Cluzaud and Perrin beneath the ocean waves as they seek out the answer to this and explore the many dangers and mysteries of the deep. - Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The images in the movie can be called perfect, majestic, and exquisite, including breathtakingly beautiful marine lives and the fine soundtrack. This work is made by a 400-people team for more than four years, embodying lots of painstaking efforts. These efforts are sufficient to worth our salute.

Since the same theme is about oceans, The Cove, which won countless awards last year, is full of murderousness: dolphin’s mournful moan and that bloody bay, like a knife, straightly stab to Japanese government. This is the essay. The “Oceans” is not the case, because it presents pictures of Oceans themselves. It is more like an artless and curious exploration to the oceans, the blue planet that we never lacked interest in. There is full of tender feelings. It is a prose, more accurately, a lyrical prose.

The most important reason why I prefer the “Oceans” is that it completely returns the speaking right to oceans themselves. Watching “The Cove”, it is impossible that we do not admire creators’ courage. However, the focus of the entire film lies in the entanglements between people, the confrontation between dolphin protectors and those Japanese fishermen, as well as the local government, and the focus is also to reveal: a group of people revealed the pain of another group of people. However, the “Oceans” selected another perspective, which is broader, closer to the oceans themselves. It just shows us and tries to guide us to learn about the amazing and incredibly beautiful scenes in oceans that we cannot even imagine: tens of thousands of fish forms a spherical fish school in their corkscrewed marching; many lazy and lighting transparent jellyfish rise up religiously; and a variety of strangely shaped fish, with or without light, are also shown, as well as the fights or affection among them and their fate. One clip is that little turtles that just crawled out of the eggshells on the beach and struggled toward the sea. It is not long distance but defines life or death. The lens is aimed at these fresh lives; the sun is shining brightly, and it is full of harmonious joy of life everywhere. With a black shadow skimming over and launching on the sand, however, a small turtle is taken away. It is completely true that death attends their celebration of the birth. Watching that little turtles are quickly captured by black birds, just like the moves in martial arts films or some kind of magic, we can do nothing but mouth falls open.

The director is clever, because he shows us those beautiful, lively and interesting marine lives at first to make us praise them or smile, and then starts to tell us how they are cruelly killed. This group of lenses is very beautiful and quiet, but then uncertainties and fierce shock come, finally, water reddened by the blood. Throughout this section, there are few shots above the sea. Here we feel like fish, just like those, which are thrown back into the sea with fins cut off, entangled in the net and finally dead, shot by steel fork or guns: both of us have no idea what has happened above the water, and what we can feel is just fierce waves, distorted boats and a glance of human, then, we just fall down and fall down, directly toward the dark at the deep ocean.

影片的画面堪称完美，磅礴精致，美的令人窒息的海洋生物，配乐也同样的精美。这是一个400多人的团队耗时4年多完成的片子，凝聚了多少的心血。其用心，足够让我们向他们致敬。

同样是关于海洋，去年获奖无数的《海豚湾》杀气腾腾，凄厉的海豚哀鸣以及那积郁一湾的鲜血，像一把刀，直直刺向日本政府。这是杂文。而《海洋》不是这样，它把画面还给海洋本身，它更像是一派天真好奇的探究，探究海洋这个我们从来不乏兴趣的蔚蓝星球，并且温情脉脉。它是散文的，抒情散文。 

我更喜欢《海洋》的原因最重要在于它完全把话语权还给给了海洋本身。看《海豚湾》，不可能不佩服主创们的勇气，然而整个片子的重点还是在于人与人之间的纠葛，是保护海豚的与那些日本渔民、当地政府之间的对抗，是一种揭发，一群人揭发了另一群人的伤。而《海洋》选择了另一个视角，一个更广大更亲近海洋本身的视角，它只是展示，试图带着我们去了解，了解海洋里那些惊异而极富美感的我们根本无从想象的场景，由上万条鱼螺旋式前进的结成球形的鱼群，一只只慵懒如灯的透明水母宗教般的上升，各种奇形怪状发光不发光的鱼，它们之间的对抗、亲昵、以及命运。有一幕是沙滩上刚从蛋壳里爬出来的小乌龟奔向大海，距离不远，却是生死迢迢，镜头对准这些新鲜的生命，阳光充裕，一派生的祥和喜悦，然而黑色飞影一掠而过，落在细沙上，乌龟的小背壳上。死亡从它们出生的第一刻便亲临现场，没有半点假。你看着一个个小乌龟迅速的被黑鸟抓走，就像武侠片里的招式，像魔法，不得不张大了嘴巴。 

导演是高明的，在他已经把那些美丽、生动而有趣的海洋生物一一展现给我们，而我们或者赞叹或者莞尔之后，才开始告诉我们，我们是怎样残酷的杀死他们。这一组镜头非常美，宁静，然后暗涌，最后激烈的冲击，血染红了水。整个这一段，少有海面之上的镜头，我们仿佛也成了鱼，和那些被割掉鱼鳍然后丢回海中、被网缠住而终于死去、被钢叉、被枪打中的它们一样，看不到水面之上发生了什么，只有剧烈的水波、扭曲的船与人的一瞥，然后坠落，落向深海黑暗。

猎杀本·拉登 Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man.

Considering the subject matter of Zero Dark Thirty, a film that follows the CIA's decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden, it'd be little surprise were Hollywood to knock the edges off a little to make it easier for a broader audience. But director Kathryn Bigelow makes no such concession. Off the back of her Oscar-winning feature The Hurt Locker; her movie is pulls-no-punches, under-your-skin drama. As such, it's not always the easiest film to watch, but it is an utterly compelling one.

At the heart of it is Jessica Chastain, playing CIA officer Maya. She's the anchor of Zero Dark Thirty, and it's her drive and determination that underpins the ongoing search. Bigelow employs a broad ensemble, unsurprising given the length of time the film's story covers, but she too is a standpoint. She's emerged as one of America's most compelling, interesting directors, and Zero Dark Thirty is an exceptional, bold piece of film making.

The disc features some welcome extra material that digs a little deeper, but it's on something of a hiding to nothing, given the strength and ferocity of the main feature itself. A modern classic? Maybe, maybe not. But Zero Dark Thirty is a film, either way, which simply demands to be seen. --Jon Foster

I admit that 911 is not a theme that is easy to take. On the very contrary, it is a theme that is so difficult and so error-prone that a director becomes totally discredited in a very short period of time if any slightest mistake occurs. In last year Daldry made a challenge from a subjective and emotional perspective, but he did not receive any good results. In this year, Bigelow told a story from another direction, a more objective and rational perspective. I think it is at least much better.

As for the movies of B, no matter in Zero Dark Thirty or The Hurt Locker, the director’s attitude to the war and revenge is difficult to be defined out. She is more like trying to describe events with a neutral attitude: support or protest against war, agree or disagree with revenge, it is just personal experience after watching her movies. What the audience has seen via director’s lens is human state: the exhausted CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty, or the soldier who is almost morbidly fascinated with bomb disposal in The Hurt Locker.

Overall, I think: 1. this movie is very good, and I don’t feel 3 hours is a long time; 2. it begins with the record on the day of 911 - the blank screen and phone records of victims before being killed, which is very shocking; 2. Various serious cruel tortures in CIA 3. The CIA female staff member acts very well.

我承认，911不是一个容易上手的题材。恰恰相反的，这个题材是如此棘手如此令人投鼠忌器，以至于稍有不慎就会陷入几乎短时间内身败名裂的境地。去年Daldry用比较主观比较感情化的视角挑战了一次，结果没有招来什么好脸色。而今年Bigelow从另外一个方向，从一个比较客观理性的视角来讲了这个故事。我想至少好了很多。。
B的电影，无论是《猎杀本拉登》还是《拆弹部队》，都很难看出导演对战争和复仇的态度，她更像是试图用一种与己毫无关系的镜头描述发生的事件：支持或者抗议战争，认同或者反对复仇，都只是每个人看过电影后的私人体验，而观众通过导演镜头下看得见的，是人的状态：无论是《猎杀本拉登》里心力憔悴的CIA分析员，或者是《拆弹部队》里对拆弹几乎病态迷恋的士兵。
总之这部电影我认为1、非常赞3小时毫无感觉；2、片头是911当天记录，黑屏和遇难者遇难前的电话记录非常震撼；2、CIA各种重口味酷刑；3、CIA女职员演技很赞。

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。

轮回 Samsara (2011)

Samsara is a 2011 documentary film, directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson, who also collaborated on Baraka (1992), a film of a similar vein. Samsara was filmed over four years in 25 countries around the world. It was shot in 70 mm format and output to digital format.

The official website describes the film, "Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation."

They gathered research from people's works and photo books as well as the Internet and YouTube, resources not available at the time of planning Baraka. They considered using digital cameras but decided to film in 70 mm instead, considering its quality superior. Fricke and Magidson began filming Samsara the following year. Filming lasted for more than four years and took place in 25 countries across five continents. Three years into filming, the pair began assembling the film and editing it. They pursued several pick-up shoots to augment the final product.

Samsara was filmed in nearly a hundred locations across 25 countries over the course of five years. Some locations include: Angola, Brazil, China, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Mali, Myanmar, Namibia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and United States. 

This film shows the audience 25 countries during the 104 minutes, in which the historic Asian continent occupies a large proportion. The director delicately captured many stirring scenes and gradually guided the audience into meditation, which leads us to more deeply thinking about human nature. In the film, the eye contact is an important medium to convey emotion. The director unconventionally kept characters in the film staring at the lens, giving the audience lots of thinking and interpretation.

In addition, Samsara also reaches the audiovisual extreme in music and composition. The soundtrack is the key element to control the film rhythm and emotional grasp: when the film presents religious and natural scenes, the soundtrack is magnificent, leading the audience to calmly indulge in wise thoughts; when the lens goes over the noisy and prosperous city, the soundtrack suddenly accelerates the pace and pushes the original slight tedious rhythm to high tide by accompanying with electronic percussion. As for the film’s shooting, I think the photographer has developed the composition aesthetics to the extreme. Every frame is just as a beautiful magazine cover with using 70MM film to make its image color plump, bringing unparalleled visual shock to people.

Watching the film, I am mostly impressed with that performance artist who is self-mutilated by mud and brushes. His hysterical performances demonstrate the twisted and perverted psychological state of city people under the huge life stress. In this clip, the director inserted an expression of a high simulation robot before and after the artist, which seems like deliberately laughing at our “well-behaved” urbanian.

All in all, Samsara is a film that is able to change the worldview of audience. Some ones may become vegetarians after watching the film; some ones may consider arranging a journey around the world; while some ones may want to be volunteers in a third world country, and so on. This does not mean that Samsara is a brainwashing film, on the contrary, Fricke do not impose his own view on the audience at all. What he does is just to broaden audience’s horizon through videos and leave them thinking about all the things in the world, which is also the greatest point of the film.

影片在104分钟的时长里带着观众游历了25个国家，其中历史悠久的亚洲大陆占据了很大的比重。导演细腻的捕捉到了许多震撼人心的场面，并把观众逐渐带入到冥想当中，让我们越来越深入的去思考人性的本质。其中，眼神的交流是影片传达情感的一个重要媒介，导演突破常规的让影像里的人物凝视镜头，给观众带来了多方面的思考和解读。

此外， Samsara 在配乐和构图学上也到达了视听的极致。影片的配乐是控制电影节奏和情感收放的关键元素，比如当电影在展现宗教和大自然的场景时，配乐显得大气悠长，让观众平静的沉醉在哲思当中，而当镜头进入到恬噪浮华的城市上空时，配乐顿时加快节奏，并伴随着电子打击乐把一开始略显沉闷的节奏推向高潮。至于影片的摄影，我觉得摄影师把构图的美学发挥到了极致，每一帧画面都好比精美的杂志封面，给人带来无比的视觉震撼，并且70MM的胶片使得的画面的色彩非常饱满。

在观看途中，给我映像最深刻的是那个用烂泥和画笔自残的行为艺术家，他歇斯底里的表演展现了城市人在巨大生活压力下产生的扭曲变态的心理状态，在这个片段里，导演前后插入了一个高仿真机器人的表情，似乎是有意在嘲谑我们这群循规蹈矩的城市人。

总之，Samsara 是一部可以改变观众世界观的电影。或许有些观众在看完影片后会决定成为素食主义者，或许有些观众会考虑安排环游世界的旅程，或许还有的观众会产生前往第三世界国家当志愿者的想法等等。但这并不是说 Samsara 是一部洗脑的电影，相反 Fricke 完全没有把自己的观点强加在观众身上，他所做的是用影像拓宽观众的眼界，让我们观众自己去反思世间的凡凡种种，这也是这部电影最伟大的地方。

ZhouShan -- fishing boat 2

Next day, I found a small fishing village named Yue Ao, which was also found via friend’s introduction. A fisherman’s daughter provided us reception, and also showed us the fishing port. This place was really amazing. We drove all the way and on both sides are resident rooms. Then, we arrived at a lake, where was a small port. Although small, there were full of fishing boats with red flags on each boat. All around the port were ropes, fishing nets, placed by people on the ground, and there were a lot of people sitting outside and making tools. I felt really warm at that time. I asked that if these were useless, and the fisherman’s daughter told that these were fishermen’s things, which were put here for drying and would be taken away when fishermen went out for fishing.

Her father is a fisherman, mainly fishing crabs. The certain time of each sailing could not be determined, so no one knew when they would come back. But she said that it usually took several days on the sea. A few days later, they would go for jellyfishes, but jellyfishes could not be placed in the boat all the time, therefore, another fishing boat would be sent to take over their captures every one to two days. The captures would be directly taken to the market to ensure the freshness of seafood. 

But unfortunately, we did not meet her father at home, because he was out for fishing. Since she could not get the exact time when her father would come back, she promised that I would be notified when her father was back. I intended to find other fishermen during the waiting time, hoping that I could find fishermen to shot. 

第二天，我找到了一个小渔村。这个地方叫月岙。也是通过朋友的介绍找到的。渔民的女儿接待了我们。她先带我们去了渔港。这个地方真的很神奇，我们一路开着车，两边都是居民房，突然开到一个湖边，那里有个很小的港口，但是停满了渔船，每艘渔船上都插着红色的旗帜。沿着海港一圈都是人们放在地上的绳索、捕鱼网还有很多人坐在外面正在做工具的。当时的感觉真的很温馨。我问这些都是不要的吗，渔民的女儿告诉我，这些都是各家渔民的东西，放在这里晒着，等出航的时候会有人来取走的。

她的爸爸是渔民，主要捕捞螃蟹。每次出海都是不定时的，没人知道他们什么时候回来。但是她说基本都在海上待好几天。再过几天他们要开始捕捞水母了，但是水母不能一直放在船上，所以每一到两天都会有另一艘渔船去接货。然后运回来直接去市场。这样就能保证海鲜的新鲜度。

但是很不幸，我们没能碰到她爸爸，因为它爸爸正在外面捕鱼不在家。也没办法知道他爸爸确切回来的时间，她说等她爸爸回来了就通知我。我打算在等待的时间里再找找其他的渔民。希望我可以找到可以拍摄的渔民。

ZhouShan -- fishing boat 1

Chinese fishery resources become scarcer and scarcer, so the Chinese government has implemented fishing off-season policy to recover fish quantities. This time, Zhoushan fishing ground was chosen as my viewing location. The fishing off-season at Zhoushan fishing ground starts from June 15 to September 15, lasting 3 months.

T

he shooting plan, scheduled originally in June, has to be brought forward. On 4 May, I came back to China and went to Zhoushan fishing ground by friend’s introduction.

I conducted shooting exercises on the boat and found many problems about the shooting on boat. The boat fluctuated very much on the sea, and I could not shoot stably even using tripod. If fishermen went fishing, they must be very busy; we almost had no chances to go out to shoot their fishing scene, so we could only shoot their fishing scene at the side from the cabin. Besides, we might be seasick if we went with them, because the fishing boat fluctuates very much on the sea, thus, people, like me, who do not often work on the sea, are very easy to become seasick. Therefore, in the process of shooting, the cameraman needs to control his stability and camera. Because I had to timely follow and shoot them in the close-up shot process, I took anti-seasickness medicine before boarding to maintain good health as much as possible. And the encountered unexpected things should also be handled timely.

中国渔业资源变得越来越短缺，所以中国政府实施政策通过休渔期来恢复鱼群的数量。我此次的取景地点是舟山渔场。舟山渔场的休渔期自每年6月15日至9月15日止，厉时3个月。

原本定在6月的拍摄计划，使得我必须提前的计划。5月4日我赶回中国，通过朋友的介绍，赶往了舟山渔场。

当晚8时到达舟山，就直接赶往一艘渔船。到达那里后，我发现这是鱼钓船。但是中国的渔船都非常类似。都是以木头为主要材料制造。我登船之后，在船上考察了一下，拍下了很多船内照片。船长告诉我，各个渔船的内的设备都是差不多的，并介绍了各个设备的使用，讲述了在航海中碰到问题需要解决的方案。

我还在船上进行了试拍的练习。发现在船上拍摄问题很多。船只在海中浮动非常大，就算使用三脚架拍摄同样很不稳定。如果渔民捕鱼，一定很忙碌，我们基本不能出去拍摄他们捕鱼的场景，只能在船舱内从侧面拍摄他们捕鱼的场景。而且我们出海很有可能晕船，在海上渔船的浮动是非常大的，像我们不经常在海上活动的人来说，是很容易晕船的。所以在拍摄的过程中需要摄像师自己控制自己本身和摄像机的稳定性。在拍摄特写时需要及时的跟拍。在上船前要服用晕船药。尽可能的保持身体健康。在碰到突发事情的时候要及时处理。