China Daily Global Edition (USA)
EPIC ENDEAVOR A documentary about the Hani ethnic group’s tradition for recounting their collective history through extended songs has helped record them for posterity. Liu Xiangrui reports.
Fu Yongshou, a teacher of ethnomusicology at Yunnan Arts University, decided to document the singing traditions of the people of his native Hani ethnic group from Yunnan province, when he learned about a project initiated by the Ministry of Culture in 2015 to encourage such works.
His documentary, Historical Memories of the Elders, explores the rituals and processes involved in performing one of their epic songs, which recounts tales from the Hani people’s collective history in the form of an extended vocal work.
His film made its debut at a recent photo and video exhibition about intangible cultural heritage held in Pingyao, a UNESCO world heritage town in Shanxi province, after being completed late last year by the Kunming-based filmmaker.
Running from June 7 to 9, the exhibition was jointly organized by the Center for Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art Development under the Ministry of Culture and the National Library of China, while also receiving assistance from several academic institutions from around China.
Organized on the theme of “Memory, Life and Propagation”, the exhibition screened some 30 selected documentary films, all focusing on China’s intangible cultural heritage and their inheritors like the ones portrayed in Fu’s film.
According to its organizers, the aim of the exhibition was to raise the profile of intangible cultural heritage and inform the wider public about its value through screening and discussing films and documentaries relating to cultural heritage.
“Film and photography are becoming increasingly important mediums for recording our cultural history nowadays. These memories belong as much to the nation as they do to the individual, so by supporting these kinds of works, we hope to pass on more memories of our cultural history to future generations,” says Li Song, chairman of the organizing committee.
Fu successfully applied to the heritage documenting support fund organized by the Ministry of Culture, and spent several months working on the film.
He spent an extra 200,000 yuan ($31,000) in addition to the 100,000 yuan subsidy offered by the project to finally complete the documentary.
“I didn’t pay much attention to the financial side. The cultural benefits of the film are much more important than any economic aspect,” explains Fu during the exhibition.
Fu says his aim was to document the disappearing culture of the Hani people. With the development of modern society, the epic songs — a highly ritualized part of traditional life where the Hani people recount key stories from their collective hispast tory through the form of long musical tales — are rarely seen, even in the heart of the ethnic group’s settlements.
Fu undertook a long search through a number of villages before he finally found two village elders who could perform the epic songs from start to finish, a task so complex it can only be done through mutual cooperation.
During the interviews conducted in the documentary, the singers — who are both in their 70s — explained their understanding of the epic songs, while concern for the future.
“Few young people can perform the songs. Even those Hani people in their 30s and 40s have difficulty understanding every line,” Fu explains.
“However, the experts said that after watching my documentary, the epic songs will never be lost, because people will be able to learn them whenever they want (by watching the film).”
The Hani people only developed their own written language over the also voicing few decades. Before then, the details of their ethnic history and culture were passed on through oral accounts and epic songs, Fu says.
Fu documented an entire song, which lasted several hours, and made a transcript of the content with the help of professional language experts.
During the three-day event in Pingyao, nearly a hundred scholars from the film and television arts, anthropology, ethnology, folk culture, as well as representatives from the documentary and film industry attended forums discussing innovative ways to protect intangible cultural heritage.
Documentary makers have been playing an increasingly important role in protecting and popularizing China’s intangible cultural heritage, and it has additional advantages in some aspects compared to language and the written word, says Lei Jianjun, a professor from the department of journalism and communication at Tsinghua University, during the event.
He cited the example of Masters in the Forbidden City, a documentary recording the daily work of cultural relic repairers at the Palace Museum in Beijing, which was first broadcast on China Central Television in 2016.
The documentary enjoyed extremely broad popularity, and the department in charge of the protection of cultural relics at the museum quickly became a household name in China.
Thanks to this, and after the department changed its name to Hospital for Cultural Relics, more than 20,000 people applied for positions at the branch, which was previously unpopular.
“To bring action through propagation, that’s the true value of documentaries,” Lei says.
The film producers attending the exhibition were also invited to exchange ideas with the audience after their works were screened in Pingyao.
To enrich the exhibition and promote intangible cultural heritage, the organizing committee also invited inheritors of eight different types of intangible cultural heritage from Pingyao, including polished lacquer craftsmen and traditional clothing makers, to perform their techniques on site.
Geng Baoguo, a 70-year-old inheritor of Pingyao’s polished lacquer making, a national intangible cultural heritage, believes modern technology can help better preserve and promote his craft.
“Fewer young people are willing to take up the craft. It’s good to let people know more about what we do through these documentaries,” says Geng.
Cultural Inheritor.