Where you are born, half of you will die there

So my hometown is also called the blood land

——Jia Pingwa

As the second feature film directed by Huo Meng, "Land of Life" continues the continuous gaze of the Chinese countryside in his previous work "Crossing Zhaoguan", and strikes the hearts of the audience with its unique long-shot image aesthetics. The director once again captures the fading nostalgia with a poetic lens - from the grandfather and grandson riding a three-wheeled motorcycle across the dusty road, to the picture of the four seasons and life and death in the eyes of the ten-year-old Xu Chuang, the director expands his personal memory into the low singing of all living beings in the village, and explores the stories and people on this ancient land in a deeper and farther way...

"The Land of Life" press conference (Photo/©Xinchen LI)

Director Huo Meng, who was born in Zhoukou, Henan, spent his childhood in the countryside. The soil, wheat fields, and local accents there formed the first lines of poetry in his life, and also forged the essence of the Chinese people's diligence, kindness, tenacity, and optimism. Huo Meng's works always focus on the intersection of "countryside and modernity". He uses documentary-like reality to capture those small and brilliant moments in life; through individual daily narratives, he reveals the cultural ruptures and spiritual dilemmas under the changing times. The natural interpretation of non-professional actors and the soft natural light in the morning and evening have injected flowing vitality into the images. Director Huo Meng's works are both poetic and critical, and he is a "video poet on the Central Plains."

The crew of "The Living Land" in Berlin

Actress Yao Chen participated in the production of the film "Land of the Living" as a producer. "Land of the Living" impressed her, who was a judge at the Golden Rooster Venture Capital Conference, with its delicate and profound "simple emotions between people and land". She actively introduced high-quality resources for the film, allowing this work to shine on the international stage. Since "Umbilical Cord" and "Send Me to the Clouds", Yao Chen's keen capture of the female perspective has made the images of rural women in the film more vivid and lively. They are not only the gentle guardians of this land, but also the tenacious fighters in the torrent of the times.

Jiang Hao, the film's chief producer and judge of the 6th Golden Rooster Venture Capital Conference, was also impressed by the unique literary charm of the script when he first came into contact with the project. Jiang Hao said: "The vivid rural life scenes and the control of the performances of a large number of non-professional actors in the film prove that Huo Meng is not only a good screenwriter, but also has the ability to accurately transform literary imagination into infectious film language. This is also the biggest reason why we firmly support this project. Huo Meng's narrative is full of delicate emotional tension and can reflect a broader era background. It is very rare. I believe this story can trigger the audience's deep thinking about social changes."

With the changes in society and the development of the times, the countryside has gradually disappeared in the hustle and bustle of the city. Young people are rushing to prosperity, and the life in the village has been quietly changed by the wave of "urbanization"... And who will tell the stories of the elderly, women and children who stay in the village? Director Huo Meng's film focuses on the villages in Henan and the ordinary people on this land, using the lens language with magical realism to inject poetry into the documentary background. The dialogue of Henan dialect is the cultural foundation of the flow of this land, adding a more primitive rural texture to the film, outlining the flesh and blood of the people in the village in the dimensions of time and space.

The crew of "The Living Land" in Berlin

The story of "The Land of Life" unfolds from the perspective of a ten-year-old boy, Xu Chuang. Due to his parents' work, Xu Chuang has been living in his grandmother's house in the countryside. He and his cousin Li Bao's son Lai Dan are good friends. In 1991, Xu Chuang experienced the birth, aging, sickness, death, weddings and funerals in his family, and felt the forbearing and strong emotions between relatives in the quiet flow of time. The countryside that year was also quietly changing... Unlike the spatial narrative of the previous work "Passing Zhaoguan", the internal time of the movie "The Land of Life" spans the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. In the director's view, time provides a field in which we can feel the Chinese lifestyle and strong emotional connection for thousands of years, and also see the quiet changes of an era.

The story takes place in China in 1991, when the wave of reform and opening up slowly extended from the coast to the inland. In a village in Henan, the boy's parents went south to seek a living, and he stayed in the village with his aunt, grandma, and grandpa. Birth, aging, sickness, and death, the changing seasons, and the concept of hometown and home, the boy had no answers to these profound questions at first.

spring

March is the season for wheat growth, and the wheat fields are just beginning to turn green, but the story begins with a funeral. Xu Chuang is still ignorant of the death of his elders in the family, but because of the funeral, his parents return home and he can reunite with them for a short time. The director uses a long panning lens and a noisy voice-over arrangement of a group of people to show the mourning customs in the countryside like a scroll. The Chinese rely on the land to live, and eventually turn into a handful of soil, forever accompanying the land that gave birth to them. The director focuses the camera on the land and wheat fields, and on the farmers working in the fields. He leaves two-thirds of the picture to the land and crops. For farmers, facing the loess and back to the sky is their daily life. And their days depend on the twenty-four solar terms of the lunar calendar. Every beam of light passing through the tender wheat ears reflects the tenacity and perseverance passed down from generation to generation by Chinese farmers.

Stills from "The Living Place"

Spring not only brings the beginning of life, but also makes people immersed in the memory of the past. The young Xu Chuang did not understand the cruelty of death, but inadvertently felt the fragility and solemnity of life. As the wind gently blows, the wheat waves ripple, as if it is a mourning elegy, gently calling every scattered soul back to the embrace of the land. At this moment, the land is not only a cradle that nurtures all things, but also more like a silent mother, gently and firmly embracing the joys and sorrows of life.

summer

When the wheat harvest is on holiday, it is the summer when the wheat matures. The hot air is filled with cicadas. When the camera passes over the wheat fields in the Central Plains, the wheat ears lying low in the wind seem to be telling a survival fable that has not changed for thousands of years. The farmers harvesting in the fields include women, men, children, and the elderly. They are independent individuals and also depend on the land for survival. The director puts the audience in this group of people through group portraits, quarrels and conflicts. Maybe you can't hear specific words, but the occasional silence is like a moment of holding your breath, and it is also a moment when the difficulties of life are about to crush you. But time always pushes people forward, and we don't have much time to breathe. One thing happens after another, and a new life is welcomed in the family. It seems that everything is developing in a good direction, but the marriage of the aunt has planted the seeds of anxiety in the heart of the young man.

The director portrayed women of different ages in that era in the film. They are the core of this village. In the director's memory, from childhood to adulthood, the image of grandma, the image of aunt, many relatives including sister, these vivid images with different personalities existing in life, allowed him to create one female character after another in the film. In the foreground of the picture, some of them are working, some are holding newborn babies, and some have wrinkles on their hands... Women are so vivid in this land of life.

Stills from "The Living Place"

Autumn

The land never stops, and in autumn the land belongs to cotton. Modern farming machinery has replaced livestock, suggesting the development of the times, but the land is always the foundation of farmers' lives. The air was filled with coolness, and Xu Chuang read his father's letter. He seemed to feel the taste of separation for the first time.

winter

My aunt got married in winter, and the cotton was finally harvested. My aunt's dowry was a cotton quilt sewn by her family. The sunlight in the cold air reflected the floating cotton wool. Xu Chuang shed tears for the first time when he saw my aunt marrying far away. One after another, the wedding cars met the oil exploration vehicles in the fields. This was the collision of traditional culture and modern development. Heidegger's "poetic dwelling" was also shattered in the explosion of oil exploration, like an outside intruder that broke the complete tranquility of the village, and people became strangers on the earth. The arrival of the Spring Festival heralds the end of one year and the beginning of another. The living people called their dead relatives to come home and reunite beside the graves of the land. The cold air mixed with cold tones suggested that the end of the story was still a death. In the silent white snow, the sugar jar containing ashes fell. The great-grandmother who had no name in her life, her ashes fell on the land where she grew up. As the camera zoomed further and further away, we saw the vastness of nature and the insignificance of human beings...

Stills from "The Living Place"

Under the lens of director Huo Meng, the wheat fields in the Central Plains are both the cradle of life and the cemetery of memory. By placing "The Land of Life" in the genealogy of new rural films, we can find its unique cultural stance. In the film, Xu Chuang's "Silly Brother" has a magical realist setting. He seems to exist independently of the village, but he is also a part of the village; he also loves wheat, but others cannot understand his inner world; his image is a metaphor for the loneliness of each individual in the village. They are all carried forward by life, but the pain in their hearts can only be resolved by themselves.

Director Huo Meng used "Land of Habitat" to pay tribute to his hometown and question the question of life and death. From the personalized narrative of "Crossing Zhaoguan", to "Land of Habitat" expanding the perspective to collective memory, from "individual life experience" to "the grand proposition of civilization survival". With his profound observation of rural China, the director has constructed an author film system that combines documentary power and poetic reflection. Today, when the digital torrent sweeps everything, movies may be the "land of habitat" of contemporary people, allowing us to touch the disappearing cultural genes in the dark theater. It allows us to see the dilemma of survival while still maintaining a deep attachment to the spiritual hometown. As the title "Land of Habitat" says, it is a vivid realism of the village and a reproduction of the details of life in China in the 1990s. We walked through this land of habitat from the perspective of the young Xu Chuang, and walked through the spring, summer, autumn and winter of this village through a slow long lens...

In the cycle of the four seasons, birth, aging, sickness and death, weddings and funerals repeat themselves, just like the never-ending pulse of the village. Through the eyes of the young man, we see death and rebirth, memory and hope in this land of life. "Land of Life" tells the story of a group of people, the story of a village, and also the story of an era in China.

The crew of "The Living Land" in Berlin