Introdunction
Timber Gang by Yu Guangyi, Zhao Chuan
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"Never Mind" Independent Film Screening VOL.9: Timber Gang
Curated by Zhao Chuan / Gao Zipeng
Producer: YU Guangyi
Director: YU Guangyi
Cinematographer: YU Guangyi
Art Director: Shen Shaomin
Editing: Yu Guangyi, Wang Guosheng
Length: 90 minutes
Year: 2006
Film Synopsis
Timber Gang documents the life of a group of loggers in Heilongjiang Province, China. It records the most basic state of being and desire of humans amidst ice and snow, and serves as a document of a disappearing mode of production as well as living in the process of civilization’s progress.
Forests have been exploited for a living for over a century here. Due to the huge transportation inconveniences, people here still hold onto their inherited mode of production. Winter is the best logging season. Each year after a few snows, the forest farm management will consign a whole mountain or a whole valley to a contractor (“batou”), and the “batou” then entrusts a “sledge head”(“palitou”) to go to the villages and recruit villagers who have spare horses during the winter farming break. Two men prepare a sledge and provisions sufficient for a whole winter, select an auspicious date, and head for the depths of the mountains. There starts their logging life for the winter. They often slay a pig before their entry as a sacrifice to the Mountain God in exchange for blessing of safety and protection.
Humans are forced to shift the burden of their own existential crisis onto other living forms. A group of lonesome loggers are scattered in a universe of ice and snow to the oblivion of modern civilization. They struggle with fate and nature like beasts, yet they show their insurmountable dignity in the process.
Horses fare even worse than livestock in the mountains. They are worked until a back-broken death. While horses are highly valuable to the loggers, worth as much as half of their material belongings, they have to eat them in tears after the horses give away under the heavy work.
Patch after patch of primitive forests are felled down like crops do in autumn. Logs that are sent out of the forests are made into coffins. In spring, a coffin with an old logger in it comes back into the mountain. People sweep away the snow and pry open the frozen field. A big tree that was felled down after having grown here several hundred years now comes back to be buried in the field where it once was, with the person who fell it down lying in its embrace.
Director’s Words
I grew up in the forests of Heilongjiang. Many people in Timber Gang were my childhood buddies. After school we often went to play in the big shack where loggers were living. They had two big heatable brick beds; many old bachelors were living there. Many of them had come from Hebei Province or Shangdong Province to find their fortune in the former Manchuria. They would sit on their bare bottoms on the brick beds, with a comforter over their bodies and start telling those wonderful magical tales in the mountains in the former Manchuria period. Those tales have become the most important part of my cultural life and extracurricular education.
I have been away from my hometown for about twenty years. In winter 2004, I went back and walked among the loggers again, eating and living with them for a whole winter. Everything about them deeply touched me; I found myself all tears during filming. It is as if I had entered a tunnel where time was reversed. What those old loggers had related years ago came back alive for real, scene after scene. In the 21st century, people still strive so hard in order to make a living. Is this really my hometown? I approached them and made it an obligation of mine to document their life with honesty.
Many of the loggers are from villages nearby the forest, their age ranging from seventeen to over fifty. They get up at three in the morning, make meals, prepare horses, and climb about six kilometers uphill. It takes over two hours to go uphill, but only a few minutes to go downhill. If one goes amiss, man and horse might fall through the woods or down to the mountain stream. In the Black Bear Valley, six horses have died in one winter while going downhill. One horse is worth over three thousand yuan, so six horses gone means a whole winter’s hard work has gone futile. The loggers work in the mountains during the day. When they go to bed at night, the over thirty pairs of bare, dark feet look like they belong to a pile of dead bodies…
As a result of the extreme coldness, fatigue, and hunger, these loggers suffer a local ailment called “heart overthrow”(gong xin fan) that endangers their life. It leaves them with limp limbs and a chilly, purple-colored body. The local therapy for this is bleeding, cupping, and shamanism.
Many moments that cannot be filmed are left behind the camera forever. A horse was trotting downhill with a sledge behind it; suddenly the logger slipped and fell in front of the horse. The horse saw its owner was about to be killed by its own hooves yet it could not stop. It immediately picked him up with its mouth and rushed on downhill. The sledge came to a stop; the logger owner hugged his horse, breaking into tears: “I will always keep you and feed you until you get old; I will see you off properly when you die.” Years ago, another logger was alone in the mountain. Coldness, loneliness, boredom, and libido drove him to have sex with his horse in the quietness of the night…
I was fortunate to spend a cold, long winter with these loggers and became witness and documentarians of a part of their real life. When I finished filming, it was already early summer of 2005. Editing took another year to finish in the busy, noisy city. Everyday while I was going through the huge amount of raw footage, my sentiments were split between the life of the loggers and that of the fashionable city folks out in the streets. I felt divided between the traditional regional culture and modern industrial civilization, between the forests that are being cut down and the sandstorms hanging outside my window…
This might be just the age we are living in.
影片介绍
《木帮》 于广义、赵川
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策划：赵川、高子鹏
制片：于广义
导演：于广义
摄影：于广义
策划：沈少民
剪辑：于广义、王国生
片长：90分钟
年份：2006年
影片梗概
《木帮》拍摄记录了中国黑龙江省一群伐木工人真实的生活，展现的是冰天雪地之中人类最原始的生存状态和欲望，即将消逝的生产与生活方式将成为人类文明进程中一段真实的记录。
这里的森林开发已有一百多年，由于交通不便等原因，至今仍采用着旧有的生产方式，每年冬天是伐木的最佳时节，几场大雪后林场将一座山，一条沟包给“把头”（承包人），“把头”委托“爬犁头”回村招募冬闲有马的农户，两人一伙组成一副爬犁，备好一冬的粮草，选定吉日，人马进入深山，开始了这个冬天的伐木生活，开山前要杀一口猪，祭拜山神以求人马平安。
人类将自身的生存危机无奈的转嫁到其它生灵身上，一群孤独的伐木人已被现代文明遗忘在冰天雪地之中，他们付出的是牲口一样的艰辛与命运和自然的顽强抗争，体现的是人类不屈的尊严。
马的命运在山上连牲口的待遇都没有，一匹匹马累死撞死在山上，马是木帮的“半个家当”只能含泪吃掉。
一片片原始森林就像秋后的庄稼被砍掉，选出大树做成了棺材，春天里它盛殓着一个老伐木工人又回到了山上，人们扒开积雪刨开冻土，一棵生长了几百年的大树伴随着伐木人一起又埋在了它生长的地方...
导演阐述
我从小生长在黑龙江林区，《木帮》中的许多人都是我童年的伙伴，小时候放学后我们常去老伐木工人住的大棚玩，那里两铺大炕，住着好多个老光棍，他们大多是早年闯关东来林区的伐木工人，他们光着腚披个被讲述着满洲国时期山里那一个个神道道的故事，这些成了我那时最重要的文化生活和校外辅导。
离开家乡快二十年了，2004年冬天我又回到了那里，又走进了木帮，和他们同吃同住整整一个冬天，他们的一切深深地感染着我，拍摄中时常使我泪流满面，仿佛走进了一个时间隧道，老伐木人当年讲述的一幕幕又回到了现实。二十一世纪的今天人们为了生存还要如此的艰辛，这就是我的家乡吗？于是我走近他们，真实的纪录他们，成为自己的一种社会责任。
他们大多来自林场附近的农村，老的五十多岁，小的只有十七岁，早晨3点起床做饭、套马，爬到山顶6公里，一路上坡人马需走2个多小时，下山的速度极快，十几分钟就跑到楞杨，转弯处稍不注意，人马就会扎到林子里，或掉进山涧。黑瞎子沟一个冬天这样损失了六匹马，一匹马三千多元，一冬就白干了。白天山上干活，夜里在窝棚中露出的三十多双黑脚就像是一堆尸体……
寒冷劳累饥饿常使人得一种地方病，当地人叫“攻心翻”，四肢无力全身寒冷发紫，抢救不及时就有生命危险，他们只有放血拔罐或请萨满跳神。
还有许多没法拍到的永远留在了镜头的后面，一匹马拉着爬犁快速下山，伐木人一下滑倒在前面，马看见主人就要命绝于自己的脚下却停不了，它立刻用嘴叨起主人跑下山，爬犁停下了，马的主人抱着马大哭：“我要养你到老为你送终”。前些年一个木帮在山上，寒冷、孤独、寂寞对性的渴望，夜深人静时他和马发生了性行为……。
我有幸和木帮一同度过了一个寒冷漫长的冬季，见证和记录了他们一段真实的生活，当我全部拍摄完成下山时已是2005年的初夏，在这喧闹的城市后期剪辑又用了整一年的时间，每天整理着大量的素材带，感受着现实生活中的木帮和街上时尚的男女、传统的地域文化和现代的工业文明，砍伐中的森林和窗外飘过的沙尘暴……
这些就是我们所经历的这个时代吧！
《木帮》所获奖项：
2007年第1届首尔国际电影节“最佳导演奖”“评委会奖”（两个奖项）