How to evaluate Xu Tong's tramp trilogy?

"Wheat Harvest" is Xu Tong's first documentary, and its peer review is "vigorous", but it has also caused great controversy. This time, he came to Shanghai with the other two parts of the wandering trilogy-fortune telling and soup-stock head? .

"Wheat Harvest" is the first documentary filmed by Xu Tong, which records the life of a sex worker and the two living conditions of the rural girl who shuttles between the suburbs of Beijing and before and after the wheat harvest. The content of the film is a little rough-the conversation between sex workers evaluating clients and describing the process is unavoidable, so Xu Tong has always been praised as "energetic" and "lively" by his peers, and has been affirmed by many international film festivals all the way.

This image style is likely to come from the training of ruffians. From 65438 to 0987, Xu Tong graduated from TV Department of Communication University of China, majoring in photography. He comes from a typical class, but he has never worked in the system. In the past 20 years, he has been engaged in advertising, graphic design and contemporary art, and has been in a floating state. "From a distance, artists are vagrants, but from a close distance," Xu Tong laughed at himself in an exclusive interview.

In 2006, he began to write novels. The novel Treasure Island began in the 1960s, describing the absurdities encountered by a little person in real life. After writing, he felt dissatisfied. "Images should be more vivid than words," he said. Then he picked up the camera and aimed it at the more vivid people.

He made three documentaries in one breath-Wheat Harvest, Fortune-telling and Soup-stock Head, which are collectively called "The Tramp Trilogy". Under the lens of Xu Tong, most of them are grassroots figures such as sex workers, beggars and fortune tellers. Recently, he took two documentaries, Fortune Telling and Soup-stock Head, to attend the premiere of "Image China-Documentary Screening Tour" held in Chuangzhi Tiandi.

Wang Xiaolu, a film critic, thought of the expression in Wang Xuetai's book "Vagrant Culture and China Society" and classified these characters under the lens of Xu Tong as "vagrants". Wang Xuetai believes that vagrants are different from grassroots, they are out of order, they are out of order, and they are more marginalized than grassroots.

Director Xu Tong always calls himself a vagrant. He hopes that through images, a "wandering society" that has been invisible for a long time in history and reality will surface. Therefore, he does not evade all kinds of moral hazards related to movies, "because the moral relationship you respect has been wrapped in the value system of tramps." Xu Tong's communication link after the screening was amazing: "If you want to be a bad guy, make a documentary." He said "willing to dive" and "willing to sink". Li Xiaofeng, who is also a documentary director, commented in Weibo: "Xu Tong used this painful and decisive attitude to shut up those who are guarding the moral high ground."