1983年--纪录片,影视纪实,专题片外文翻译--中国映画西方纪录片中的中国印象

中文3009字,1800单词，英文字符9330译文原文出处：《CHINA IMAGES ABROAD: THE REPRESENTATION OF CHINA IN WESTERN DOCUMENTARY FILMS》，Merrilyn Fitzpatrick, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 9 (Jan., 1983), pp. 87-98中国映画：西方纪录片中的中国印象马林.菲茨帕特里克西方人从这个世纪早期开始制作关于中国的纪录片。

这项工作涵盖了整个二十世纪的中国历史，从1905年发生在中国大地上的日俄战争，一直持续到文革之后。

在这个过程中，西方纪录片制作人不仅反映了中西方关系的变化，同时展示了纪录片自身在过去80年间的发展。

这个世纪的中国经历着最动荡的历史，因此这些影片也主要关注于战争、革命、政治和社会问题。

好莱坞系列电影甚至把影片中的中国背景限定在这些动荡的因素里：农民生活（《大地》1937年，《龙种》1944年）；军阀混战中的传教士（《六福客栈》1958年）；反帝国主义运动（《在北京的55天》1963年）和内战（《圣保罗炮艇》1966年）；或者如同解放前的上海那样，成为条约、奢华和阴谋的代名词（Sternber的《上海快车》1932年）。

但是，这些影片全部是在好莱坞的摄影棚或者其他国家和地区拍摄，而不是在中国。

战火导致的动乱、审查制度以及与外界隔离的状态，挫败了那些外国人人进入中国实地拍摄的念头。

因为这些原因，1949年前的中国几乎没有任何的实况报道。

从1949年开始，西方纪录片一直受限于中国政府在意识形态方面的严格控制、中国长期的仇外心理（尤其是在1966年至1976年的十年间）以及一直延续至70早期的社会主义和资本主义两大阵容敌对状况。

这种不正常的状况一直持续到1976年，一些微弱的变化开始发生。

那些纪录片一般都得到了国家邀请、支持并且是在政府严密控制下拍摄，在选题和拍摄手法上也被受到严格的控制。

Edgar Snow和Felix Greene这样的“中国专家”，充当了先驱的作用。

然后在如何摆脱中国政府这种家长式的严格控制，坚持影片的公正性方面，他们还不如Chris Marker （《北京的星期天》，1955年），Michelangelo Antonioni（《中国，1974年》）和Joris Ivens（《愚公如何移山》，1976年）。

这个时期的影片，很少反应中国人的个性或是导演对于中国的个人看法，他们大多数只是充当了宣传工具而已。

事实上，这正是这些影片的最大看点所在，因为它们真切地反映了特殊时期中国政府的诉求。

它们被当作记录那个年代稍纵即逝的中国政治的宝贵资料。

尽管中国政府很大程度上影响到了这些影片的内容，但制片人的风格和手法依然反映了二战后的十年间西方电影制作人在技术、潮流和习惯的变化。

非殖民化和第三世界的出现猛烈地吸引了大批的纪录片导演前去实地拍摄，包括中国。

随着战后的照明设备、合同制、同期声、16毫米相机的发展，以及更快的电影胶片，使得这些纪录片导演可以通过新的纪录片风格来表达自己新的观点。

以Jean Rouch在非洲拍摄的影片为始，非洲人开始用他们自己的语言畅声交谈，那些着眼于时事和政治的纪录片导演开始接受，所有独立国家的公民都可以用自己的语言为自己的民族辩护。

新的照明设备和快速的电影胶片，使电影摄制队不再如以前那般庞大和突兀，甚至一个摄制队只包含了那么一两个人。

开放式的拍摄成为可能，比如在民宅进行拍摄，以及面对突发事件，可以很快给出反应。

二战前期，纪录片的有着固定的表达形式，比如Flaherty, Grierson和苏联的纪录片制作人，他们习惯把人作为自然景观中的一个具象，一般是指英雄人物。

在这些传统纪录片风格和纪实性风格中，存在一个被称为“人类动物园”的风格——我们观察他们“自然”的行为，然后结合外部物理环境将他们区分为几个不同的模式。

因此，在Chris Marker的《北京的星期天》和Antonioni的《中国》里，这些电影制作人运用类似于游记的手法，在街头用镜头记录景象：公园里的太极练习、聚在上海的老茶馆里闲聊的老人、骑自行车的人。

观众可以自由地通过眼睛和耳朵去感知到更多的景观——那些一旦存在所谓的主导因素，就可能不被注意到景观。

但是对于荧幕上的中国人，这一手法却被中国人的行为、表情和动作以及社会评论所限制。

行为主义者大量地运用偷拍和远摄变焦镜那些非定性的个人行为和表达。

Antonioni把这种手法运用在他的影片《中国》里，有评论表示，这部影片并不意在向观众解释“什么是中国”，而在于让观众去观察这个大民族的人们的面孔、动作和生活习惯。

这部影片在西方上映之后的一段时间里，来自中国的批评浪潮汹涌而来。

人们认为这只是反对周恩来运动的一部分，因为周恩来是Antonioni和其他重大的20世纪70年代初外国电影项目赞助者。

虽然争端来源于国际政治斗争，但是纪录片的详细评论则更多的关注于影片拍摄手法，以及对道德激愤的真实表现。

《中国重建》（1974年6月）的一篇文章讨论了电影记录图像的意义。

该文是由在北京王府井商业街银行工作的两位办事员所撰写的，并描述了Antonioni创造的拍摄方法。

但是，两位办事员表示，Antonioni 的方法其实是为了“寻找中伤我们首都和中国人民的场景”。

虽然银行允许Antonioni在银行屋顶拍摄街景，但是他拒绝了此方案，并最终选择了透过底楼一扇“仅能看见一条街道的唯一入口和王府井大街的一小块区域”的窗子拍摄。

“更让人愤怒的是，他拉上窗帘并用剪刀减出了两段30厘米长的裂缝。

之后他将镜头穿过裂缝开始偷拍。

他长时间的躲在窗帘后面，想方设法的拍摄可以攻击和抹黑我们伟大首都的镜头。

真的是太卑鄙了！”尽管这样的解释并不合理，这种电影技术还是受到西方电影制作人的质疑，并引发了从20世纪60年代后期开始的针对纪录片电影制作人对主题和观众的责任的讨论。

在60年代后期和70年代电影制作人采用的直接引语摄制的电影中，有一部分是为了对这种独立和主观模式拍摄的一种审慎的驳斥。

由Joris Ivens和Marceline Loridan拍摄的系列纪录片，《愚公如何移山》（1976年，拍摄于1974年），是首次在中国广泛应用直接引语法拍摄的大型系列纪录片。

在12小时时长的影片中，80%的片段含有没有经过添加音乐、旁白和声效的日常对话和背景噪音。

该片是Iven首次尝试拍摄此类影片。

他这样做的目的一方面是检验文化革命的效果，了解其优缺点；另一方面也是为了“观察普通人（中国人）在工作，玩耍，吃饭或者娱乐中的表现——那些不为西方所知的知识”。

对于他在影片中大量使用对白，他说：“这是中国人民首次拥有自己的声音”。

这些目标旨在表明，Ivens和Loridan对观察人类行为感兴趣，就像Antonioni一样。

然而，目前随着对话的加入、摄像机的使用以及公众公开度的提高，他们还得到了一些饱含深意镜头。

这些材料与1970年代民族志学电影风格类似，人们为了镜头而举行仪式或者召开会议和研讨会。

实际上，在《愚公如何移山》系列的12部电影中，大多含有小型的政治和社会礼仪的固定程序，这在1970年代早期可以有效帮助外国观众了解中国小型政治团体运作或者应该运作方式（特别参见长篇《军营》和多部《足球事件》）。

虽然该片1976年首映后广受好评，但是因对中国官员的被动性，Ivens和Loridan的《愚公》系列电影至今仍饱受批评。

即使1976年中国官员彻底清洗之后，该影片在最低程度上也去掉了虚假欺骗的帽子。

当然制片人在电影中所表现的立场并不明确，借口拍摄者需要保持中立以掩饰他们在主题评论和情况中注解、语言或其他方面的失败。

在这部12小时的电影中还有一部分内容相当枯燥。

之后拍摄的温和的澳大利亚系列电影《中国人脸》（1979）虽然是更少政治限制条件下完成的，但是与其相比，这部12小时的《愚公》系列至少扩展了其在拍摄和历史层面的影响力。

1970年代早期拍摄的非批判电影通常可以在争议电影《北京鸭汤》（中文名, 一个人努力的革命1977）中找到非解决之法的回馈。

该电影是由René Viénet and Ji Qingmin拍摄的，目的在于讽刺“主义神话”破灭过程中的知识分子运动，推动左倾无政府主义观点。

《北京鸭汤》是典型的法国政治纪录片，想当然的认为该片的观众都是理性的、见多识广的和政治观点鲜明的。

（Chris Marker的《周日在北京》也属于这个范畴，其中含有大量关于历史、文化、马克思主义和中国政治体制理性思辨的评论，反映了来自于北京街道和旅游者密集区的巨大思潮动态。

）译文原文：CURRENT ISSUESCHINA IMAGES ABROAD: THE REPRESENTATION OF CHINA IN WESTERNDOCUMENTARY FILMSMerrilyn FitzpatrickWesterners have been making documentary films in China since the earliest years of the century. This body of work spans twentieth century Chinese history, from newsreels of the Russo-Japanese war fought on Chinese soil in 1905 to the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. In spanning such a period, the work of Western documentary filmmakers reflects not only the changing relationship of the West with China but also the development of documentary film itself over the past eighty years.Because of China's turbulent history this century, the film records of Westerners have mostly been concerned with war, with social upheaval and with political and social issues. Even Hollywood feature films have taken for the backgrounds of films set in China the turbulence of contemporary life: of peasant life (The Good Earth 1937, Dragon Seed 1944); of Western missionaries in the midst of warlord troubles (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness 1958); of the anti-imperialist movements (55 Days at Peking 1963) and the civil war (The Sand Pebbles 1966); or have used as settings pre-Liberation Shanghai, with its reputation for licence, luxury and intrigue (as in von Sternberg's Shanghai Express 1932). But these feature films were all shot in Hollywood studios or on location in other countries, not in China. Warfare, censorship and the disruption caused by war discouraged foreigners from going to China to film. For the same reasons, few documen- taries were made in China before 1949.Since 1949, Western documentary filmmakers have been limited by the Chinese government's restrictive views of culture in general, its long bouts of xenophobia (particularly during the ten years 1966-76) and the stand-off in political relations between most Western countries and China which continued until the early 1970s. Conditions for Westerners making documentaries in China remained unfavourable until 1976, and compara- tively few were made. Those which were made generally had the invitation, support and close supervision of the Chinese government and were consider- ably restricted in their subject-matter and treatment. 'China experts' such as Edgar Snow and Felix Greene who acted as anchormen for film series did no better, and mostly worse, in avoiding this paternal control than did filmmakers of reputation such as Chris Marker (Dimanche a Pekin 1955), Michelangelo Antonioni (China 1974) and Joris Ivens (How Yukong Moved the Mountains 1976). The films made during this period show little of the experience of individual Chinese or the filmmakers' own responses to China; many of them do little more than reflect the propaganda interests of the regime at the time of shooting. In fact, these films may come to have substantial intrinsic interest precisely because they so closely reflect the preoccupations of the Chinese government at particular times. They may come to be regarded as valuable documents preserving fleeting moments of Chinese political culture.While the Chinese government heavily influenced the content of these films, the styles used bythe filmmakers reflect the changing techniques, fashions and preoccupations of Western filmmakers in the decades after World War II. Decolonisation and the emergence of the Third World strongly influenced the approach of documentary filmmakers to filming in Third World countries, including China. The development of light, compact, synchronous sound 16mm cameras soon after the war, and of much faster film stocks, provided the tools which enabled documentary filmmakers to express these changed attitudes in new documentary styles. Beginning with the films made by Jean Rouch in Africa (e.g. Jaguar 1958; Moi, un noir [I, a Black] 1958), in which Africans spoke for themselves in their own languages, socially and politically conscious filmmakers have come to accept that the citizens of these now independent countries should speak for them- selves. The new light equipment and fast film stocks have enabled film crews to be less obtrusive than before, and crews may consist of as few as one or two people. It has become possible to film in intimate settings, as in the dwellings of ordinary people, and to respond quickly and directly to events.In the range of expression established for the documentary before World War II by, for instance, Flaherty, Grierson and the Soviet documentary film- makers, the most common approach to human subjects is as figures in a landscape, usually heroic figures. Falling somewhere between these classic documentary styles and Rouch cinema-verite there is an intermediate style which could be termed the 'human zoo' approach, where we watch people behaving 'naturally' and observe the visual patterns their behaviour makes within the physical environment. So in Chris Marker's Dimanche 'a Pekin and Antonioni's China, both somewhat idiosyncratic travelogues by substantial filmmakers, the camera watches life in the streets: taiichuan practice in the park, old men chatting over tea in a Shanghai tea house, people cycling. The audience may perceive much, indeed may be freed by this approach to use eyes and ears to gather non-verbal information that would be passed over if the dominant verbal cues were there. But its idea of the Chinese on the screen is limited to what is implied by their activities, their faces and gestures, and what the commentary chooses to say about them.This 'behaviourist' approach makes much use of the 'candid camera' and the telephoto-zoom lens to catch off-guard expressions and activity. Antonioni used this approach in his China; the commentary states his aims plainly when it says that the film 'does not pretend to explain China' but only wants 'to start to observe this great repertoire of faces, gestures and habits'. Some time after the film's release in the West a campaign of violent criticism of it was mounted in China. It is generally accepted that it was part of the campaign against Zhou Enlai, the sponsor of Antonioni's film and of other major foreign film projects of the early 1 970s.Although internal political struggle was the origin of the attacks, detailed criticisms of the film paid particular attention to methods of filming, and some of the moral outrage expressed was apparently genuinely felt. An article in China Reconstructs (June 1974) makes an issue of the means of obtaining images for the film. Written by two clerks working in a bank in Beijing's busy Wangfujing shopping street, the article admits from the outset that Antonioni was open about his stylistic intentions. But, say the clerks, his methods show that he was really 'looking for pictures with which to vilify our capital and the Chinese people'. Refusing the bank's offer for him to shoot the street scene from the roof of the bank building, Antonioni eventually chose the view from a window on the ground floor 'from which one can see only the entrance to a side street and a small section of the Wangfuching street'.More enraging was the fact that he drew the curtains and cut two 30-centimeter slits in themwith a pair of scissors. Then he poked the lens through a slit and started to take sneak shots. He hid behind those curtains for a long time, racking his brains for ways in which he could attack and denigrate our great capital. Truly contemptible to the extreme!Absurd as this account is overall, suspicion of such filming techniques is shared by some Western filmmakers and has been voiced in the debates which have been going on since the late 1960s over the responsibility of documentary filmmakers to their subjects and their audiences. Direct-speech filmmaking in the late 1960s and 1970s has been used by filmmakers partly as a deliberate repudiation of this detached and yet subjective mode.The series by Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976, shot 1974), was the first major series shot in China to make extensive use of the direct-speech method. Eighty percent of the twelve hours of film has natural synch sound which includes talk and background noises without added music, commentary or sound effects. It was Ivens' first venture into this style of filmmaking; his stated aims were, on the one hand, to look at the effects of the Cultural Revolution, its achievements and shortcomings and, on the other, 'to watch them [the Chinese] at work, at play, while eating, or laughing - that's the knowledge we most lack in the West'.' About his extensive use of his subjects' conversation he maintained, 'This is the very first time that the people of China have a voice'.2 These stated aims show that Ivens and Loridan, like Antonioni, were interested in observing behaviour. However, with the dimension of speech added and with the camera and crew openly present, they obtained a deliberately camera-conscious response. The resulting material is close to the style of many ethnographic films of the 1970s in which people performed rituals or forms of meeting and discussion for the camera. In fact, of the twelve films in the Yukong series most contain substantial sequences of small-scale political and social ritual, and these are very effective in conveying to foreign audiences the way small-group political activity worked, or was supposed to work, during the early 1970s (see, particularly, long sections of The Army Camp and most of The Football Incident).Generally greeted with enthusiasm when first released in 1976, Ivens and Loridan's Yukong films have since been much criticised for their passivity towards the Chinese official line. When that line changed drastically after 1976 their films were left looking culpably gullible, at the very least. Certainly the filmmakers' distance from the positions set forth in the films is ambiguous; they seem to rely on the excuse that the camera is a neutral observer to account for their own failure to make comment, verbal or otherwise, on their subjects' remarks or situations. The twelve hours of film also contain a fair share of tedium. Yet compare them with a bland series like Film Australia's The Human Face of China (1979), produced more recently under less restrictive political conditions, and at least among the twelve hours of the Yukong series there are some extended sequences of great interest in terms both of film and of history.The generally uncritical films produced in the first half of the 1970s found their reaction, if not their antidote, in the polemic film tract Peking Duck Soup (Chinois, encore un effort etre revolutionnaire 1977) by Rene Vienet and Ji Qingming, an extended and vitriolic intellectual exercise in debunking the 'Maoist myth', done from a left-anarchist viewpoint. Peking Duck Soup is in the best tradition of French political documentaries in that it assumes its audience to be intelligent, well-informed and politically committed. (Chris Marker's Dimanche 'a Pekin fits in this category too, with its dense, voluble commentary of intellectual speculation ranging over history, culture, Marxism and Chinese political forms, a formidable flow of ideas generated by the Beijing streetscenes and tourist highlights which form the images.)NOTESI D. Bickley, 'Joris Ivens filming in China', Filmmakers' Newsletter (New York), X:4 (February 1977), 22.2 R. Sklar, 'Joris Ivens: the China close-up', American Film, III:8 (June 1978), 64.3 Screen International (London), 6 February 1982, p.4.4 Variety (New York), 10 June 1981, p.7.5 N. Jillett, The Age (Melbourne), 11 December 1981, p.10.。