柯文思(柯文思TED)

由中国外文局国际传播发展中心·解读中国工作室与中国国家创新与发展战略研究会联合策划制作的“读懂中国”主题演讲，邀请CBA北京紫禁勇士篮球俱乐部主教练、前美国职业篮球运动员斯蒂芬·马布里，两届奥斯卡奖获得者、英国导演柯文思，故宫博物院学术委员会主任、中国文物学会会长单霁翔担任演讲嘉宾。

三位嘉宾的演讲题目分别是：

马布里：从NBA到CBA，中国文化哲学如何影响了我

柯文思：四部纪录片带我漫游中国

单霁翔：文化的力量

今天推出第二期演讲《四部纪录片带我漫游中国》，演讲者为两届奥斯卡奖获得者、英国导演柯文思（Malcolm Clarke）。

以下为演讲内容全文。

四部纪录片带我漫游中国

Exploring contemporary China through the lens

△“读懂中国”主题演讲片段《柯文思：游历中国使我认识到其复兴之路势不可挡》

我来跟大家分享近些年我在中国执导的四部影片。故事的重点是这些影片如何改变了我对中国最初的印象，以及它们如何改变了我职业生涯的进程。

Tonight, I'm going to tell you the story of four films that I have directed here in China in the recent past. Really the story is about how these films changed my mind first about China and how they changed the course of my career.

△柯文思（Malcolm Clarke）

说出来你可能不信，我其实没那么老，但我确实1981年就来过中国了。最初来到这里的时候，我还是个非常年轻的电影人。

我在中国各地旅行了数月，1981年我所见到的中国是一个饱受贫困之苦的国家。那种贫穷是欧洲和北美国家的人自工业革命以来未曾见过的，那对我来说很震撼。更令我震撼的是，当我30年后再回来，看到在这段时间里中国发生的翻天覆地的变化。

Believe it or not, I'm really not this old. But I did come to China in 1981. I was a very young filmmaker when I first came here and I traveled around your country for months. And what I saw back in 1981 was a country that was still struggling with the ravages of poverty. The kind of poverty that we in Europe and in North America we hadn't really seen since the Industrial Revolution. It was a shock for me and it was an even bigger shock to return to China to see what you guys had achieved in the 30 years of my absence.

我花了30年时间在世界各地拍电影。我在2013年回到中国拍摄电影《善良的天使》。这部电影讨论的是中美两国未来的关系。

I spent 30 years making films around the world. I came back in 2013 to make a film called Better Angels. And it was a film that was about the future of the relationship between the United States and China.

还记得21世纪初的国际环境吗？当时的舆论集中在中美之间的激烈竞争。竞争是多方面的，如国际影响力、自然资源的开发利用和科技优势。这些都是不可忽视的领域。但在那时，两个国家都意识到他们需要彼此，他们是互相依赖的。所以回过头来看，当时那种认为可以拍一部强调双方合作而非对抗的影片的想法，并不完全是痴人说梦。

You remember in the what they call the odds in the 2000s there was a lot of talk about this kind of vigorous competition between China and America on many subjects on global influence on the access to natural resources on technical preeminent. All those questions were very much in play. Yet back then both countries acknowledged that they needed each other. They were mutually dependent. So in retrospect I don't think we were completely crazy to think that we could make a film about a future that was more about cooperation than confrontation.

2019年我们完成了《善良的天使》，确实是花了很长的时间。影片采用了一种不太一样的发散且乐观的反叙事和（西方的）人们普遍对中国的看法持相反立场。那段时间对我们来说非常艰难，我们所面临的批判和阻力非常大，在这之中关于影片内容的讨论非常之少，但对创作意图的探讨却非常多。

We finished our film in 2019. It took a long time to get it done. By the time we finished it, it was kind of a strange sprawling, optimistic counter narrative to everything that people were talking about with regard to China. It was a really hard time for us because the critical and political headwinds we faced were fierce. There was very little discussion actually about content but there was a lot of discussion about intent.

这四年中我了解到了关于中国的很多事。从这些经历中，我对这个了不起的国家和其人民的真正内核有了更加深刻的理解。实际上，只有极少数的美国人、极少数的西欧人、极少数生活在中国之外的人，真正了解今日的中国，更不用说对五千年前的中国。以及更重要的，对中国未来的前途有所认识了。

I learned a huge amount about China during those four years. And I came out of the experience far more enlightened about the true nature of this remarkable country and its people. The truth is few Americans few Western Europeans few people outside China really understand what China is today not to mention what it was 5,000 years ago but more importantly what it's likely to be in the future.

中国很不可思议，像一个谜。而当我们不理解一些事物的时候，非常不幸地，我们往往会产生恐惧。这也是为什么我决定留在中国，我看到了机遇，让我可以向整个世界讲出中国的故事。我的目标，我的愿望是，让我们制作的影片，在一定程度上变成两种文化之间的桥梁，让世界上其他地方的人，看到我所看到的，理解我所理解的，有关这个了不起国家的一切。

China is an enigma. It's a mystery. And frequently, when we don't understand something, unfortunately, we tend to fear it.

So that's why I decided to stay here in China. I saw an opportunity to tell Chinese stories to a wider world. I guess my ambition, my desire is that the films that we make can in some way act as a bridge between two cultures. Let other people around the world see what I have seen and what I have kind of come to understand about this amazing country.

为了制作这部电影，四年来我一直在中国到处旅行，当然也周游世界，去看在海外的中国人如何与这个世界相联系。我觉得我已经得到了一些结论，也学到了一些教训，我把它们都融进了《善良的天使》里面。其中一点是，中国人对自己民族伟大的过去，有一种强烈认同。同时也对，百年屈辱史，有深刻记忆。对于目前所走的路，正在发生的巨大变化，这三四十年中国的成就，整个国家和民族则深感自豪。21世纪将是属于中国的，对于这点我毫不怀疑。中国的复兴，势头强劲，势不可挡。中国作为世界上最卓越的文明之一，其复兴之路早已开始。

But after four years of traveling around China making this film and also going abroad extensively to see how Chinese abroad are engaging with the rest of the world. I think I've drawn some conclusions and maybe learned a few lessons. Those are what I tried to put into Better Angels.

One of the things I learned was that Chinese people kind of exist definitely with a sense of their past greatness also have a very bitter sense of the couple of centuries of humiliation, colonial humiliation.

And then there's what you're doing today because China and Chinese people have a real sense of the extraordinary changes that are happening the achievements that China has come to in the last 30, 40 years. The 21st century is going to be China's century. Of that I have absolutely no doubt. And the Renaissance of your country is both relentless and it's inevitable. China's restoration is one of the preeminent civilizations on the planet is already well underway.

△柯文思在“读懂中国”主题演讲现场

一位我非常欣赏的法国诗人，名叫夏尔·波德莱尔。他在自己的作品《Flaneur》里创造了一个概念，“漫游者”。波德莱尔写道他在众人心中安家的喜悦，“虽然远离家乡，但家却无处不在；虽然身处于某个地方，却又置身世外。”波德莱尔在做的是，当他描述"漫游者"时，也在精准地描述每一位纪录片导演的职责所在，也就是这些后来者，那也正是我在做的事情，也是每一位同行在做的事。我打定主意，中国就是我接下来要探索的世界，我（镜头下）的人群将会是中国人民。

A French poet that I admire enormously, a man called Charles Baudelaire who invented the concept in his literature of the Flaneur, the Wanderer. Baudelaire wrote of his joy at setting up house in the heart of the multitude of being away from home and yet at home everywhere. And seeing the world and yet remaining hidden from the world. Now what Baudelaire was doing when he described the Flaneur was effectively describing the job, description of every documentary filmmaker who was going to come after him because that's exactly what I do and everybody in this trade does every day.

So it was that I decided that China would be the next world that I'd explore and that my multitude would be the Chinese people.

我和我的中国制片人韩轶从2013年开始一起工作。我们正忙着为《善良的天使》做宣发的时候，有消息曝出，香港街头爆发了大规模的抗议，突然间中国见之于各大媒体头条。西方媒体纷纷涌入香港进行报道。于是我们回到了香港。

My Chinese producer Han Yi who I've worked with since 2013. We were busy doing press and publicity for the Better Angels film when news broke out of huge protests that were happening on the streets of Hong Kong. Suddenly China was very much in the crossheads. The Western press were pouring into Hong Kong to cover the story. So we went back. And even in those early days found it odd that the news coverage that I was seeing every day coming out of Hong Kong seemed to lack depth and substance.

从一开始我就觉得很奇怪，我每天看到的关于香港的报道，似乎都缺乏深度和事实根据。他们精心撰写着易于消化的故事，“英勇的学生示威者渴求民主，并与邪恶的超级大国中国进行对抗”。西方观众很容易相信这些故事，他们希望这故事是真的，但它不是。

What they were doing was an easy-to-digest confection of stories about heroic student protesters yearning for democracy and taking on the evil Chinese superstate. It wasn't difficult to sell that to a Western audience.

If only it had been true which it wasn't.

根据我们的经验，这种叙述与事实相去甚远。那是一种精心组织、刻意剪辑的群体思维，在我们看来，当时的香港街头几乎每天都被催泪弹、胡椒喷雾、双方互相投掷的汽油炸弹包围。有大量的事实没有被报道出来。所以我们想要客观地，不偏不倚地记录发生的事情，这也让我们成为众矢之的。因为我们是极少数讲述真相的人。

The problem was that from our experience that narrative only had a glancing relationship with the truth. It was a carefully curated, selectively edited group think and from our perspective and we were on the streets pretty much every day with the tear gas, with the pepper spray, with the petrol bombs that were being thrown around by both sides in the conflict.

There was a huge amount that wasn't being reported. So our intention which was to objectively memorialize what was happening without bias for either side was casting us in voices in the wilderness because we were very much in the minority telling that story.

香港事件后不久，又出现了关于另一条重大新闻的传言。一座中国城市受到了一种潜伏的致命病毒的攻击。当时外面的人很难进入武汉。韩轶和我都知道，这将是在未来可预见的大新闻。中国政府做出艰难的、具有政治风险的决定：封锁一个有1100万人口的城市。西方媒体都在大声谴责中国的防疫措施，称这些措施十分严苛。事后看来中国的做法是符合常识的，封城使病毒无法找到新的宿主，进而无法繁殖传播。这方法效果明显且有效。

Shortly after we were in Hong Kong rumors began to circulate about another huge story. A Chinese city under siege because of a virulent and deadly virus. At that time it was very difficult to get into Wuhan and both Han Yi and I knew that was going to be the big story for the foreseeable future.

The moment the Chinese government made the tough and politically risky decision to lock down a city of 11 million people. The Western press all howled condemning the measures. They called it draconian. And yet in hindsight what China did was common sense and the simple expedient of denying the virus hosts so that it could not thrive and it could not spread proved to be both obvious and extraordinarily effective.

我和我的团队在武汉见证了非凡的英雄主义，我们目睹了人民的刚毅和勇敢。其中有42000名医生和护士，他们中的很多人都非常年轻与你们同龄，也看到了40000个建筑工人。所有这些人在几天之内就来到了武汉进行支援。我们在那里观察着一切，看着人们忍受封城的痛苦，看着武汉的人们。他们当然不喜欢封城，但是他们相信自己的政府，而且因为他们的政府相信科学家。

My team and I witnessed tremendous heroism in Wuhan. We saw fortitude and bravery and just these extraordinary scenes of 42,000 doctors and nurses many of them very very young, your age, and also another 40,000 construction workers. All those people descended on Wuhan in a matter of days and we were there through it all watching these people endure the lockdown watching the citizens of Wuhan, who, I'm sure, were not happy to be locked down, but because they trusted their government and because their government trusted their scientists.

这样我们就能在短短的76天后，记录在武汉的人们庆祝封城结束的场景。那真是个无与伦比的时刻。在那几个月的拍摄中我们所目睹的一切，让我们所有人都深为感动。我们看到了中国人最好的一面，在我们制作的那部电影中，我们试图不带偏见地、诚实地讲述他们的故事。关于那段经历我唯一的遗憾就是，时至今日只有太少的人，在中国还好，但在国外真的太少人了解中国的抗疫成就，如果其他人也能够看到我们每天在武汉看到的景象就好了，不仅仅能看到初出茅庐的医生护士们的英雄般的行为，也能看到他们的恐惧与迷茫。通过这一切，看到他们勇于直面并战胜病毒的奉献精神。我不会自欺地说，我们做的工作会改变世界，但总得有人尝试报道这些大事件。如果你要报道它们，你就必须公正、诚实、不偏不倚。这就是我选择做最近这部电影的原因。

We were able to after just 76 days be there when the lockdown was lifted and the celebrations happened.

It was an extraordinary moment.

What we witnessed during those months of shooting was for all of us profoundly moving. We saw the best of the Chinese people and in the film that we made we tried to tell their stories honestly and without bias.

My only regret from that experience is that still today far too few people in China to some extent

but abroad to a great extent know the truth of China's achievement and if only people could have seen what we saw in Wuhan on a daily basis. Not only the heroism of young inexperienced doctors and nurses but also their fear and confusion. And through it all, their dedication to meet head on and beat a deadly challenge.

Now, I don't delude myself that the work we're going to do is going to change the world. But someone has to try and cover these big stories and if you're going to cover them you have to cover them honestly in a fair and balanced way.

That's the reason that I chose for my last film.

△柯文思在“读懂中国”主题演讲现场

实际上它也不是一部电影，是由四部短片组成的《柴米油盐之上》系列纪录片。

Actually, it wasn't a film. It was four short films called A Long Cherished Dream.

我对中国建设小康社会，也就是脱贫工作很感兴趣。这是中国前几年发生的事，几乎没有被西方关注过，但却是一项了不起的成就。从1949年起中国已经使6.5亿人口摆脱贫困，这是一项非凡的成就，这很了不起，非常值得称赞。我查过数据，从我出生到现在，中国在人类历史上最短的时间内，最大幅度地改善了最多数量的人口的生活水平。很不错。

I got very interested in this kind of initiative in China, called Xiaokang, poverty alleviation. Something which has happened over the last few years in China has been barely even noticed in the west, but it's an extraordinary success.Since 1949 China has lifted 650 million people out of poverty. That is extraordinary. It's amazing and it's laudable.

I checked the numbers and, in my lifetime, China's delivered the biggest improvement in living standards to the largest number of people in the fastest time in history.

Not bad.

但是到了2010年这还是不够。因为时至今日，仍然有1亿人生活在赤贫中，主要是在西部的农村地区，但是也存在于全国各地。今天我很高兴地说情况不再是这样。在过去的几年中，生活在极端贫困中的中国人，都被赋予了人生难得的机会，他们有机会从偏远的农村搬迁，他们也就可以摆脱极端恶劣的经济环境，并搬进新建的家园当中，住有所居，病有所医，学有所教，劳有所得。可以养活自己，可以照顾家人。追踪了这些一直生活在赤贫之中，然后被赋予了很好的生活机会的人，他们抓住了机会。这一切都需要极大的勇气，我不认为我可以做到这一点。

But by 2010, it wasn't enough because there were still 100 million people living in abject poverty mostly in the west, in rural areas but in pockets all over the country.

Today, I'm glad to say that's no longer the case. During the past few years anyone living in extreme poverty in China was offered the opportunity of a lifetime. They would be relocated from their remote rural communities they'd be able to leave the extremely harsh economic circumstances they were living in and move to newly built communities where they would be given a place to live, hospitalization and education for their kids, job creation so that they could learn to fend for themselves and look after themselves.

We track those people that had been given a huge lifeline after living a life of abject poverty. They took the opportunity which required a huge amount of bravery. I don't think I could do it.

这是一个非常感性的系列，但是对一个电影人来说，没有什么比制作的影片，有一个欢喜的结局更令人满足。在这个系列里，之前毫无指望的人们，突然间有了筑梦的自由，有1亿人获得新生，带着他们的能量、乐观、热情和想要成功的意愿加入社会。所有这些人开始"上线”，融入中国社群，而这些变化发生的时间不过十年。《柴米油盐之上》是一个展现了，当政治意愿让某事发生的时候，究竟什么会发生的系列纪录片。

It was a very emotional series, but for a filmmaker, there's nothing quite as satisfying as being able to make a film with a happy ending and this series showed that people with nothing left to hope for were suddenly given the freedom to dream. It's 100 million people newly liberated joining society with all their energy, their optimism, their enthusiasm and their will to succeed. All those people came online, if you will, on stream to join the Chinese community. And this happened in less than a decade.

A Long Cherished Dream was a series that showed

what could happen when the political will existed to make it happen.

现在让我来总结一下，说说对自己未来的展望。就是我想要一直作为，波德莱尔口中的"漫游者"而存在，做一个没有偏见的观察者，向世界展示中国人如何面对，并拥抱正在发生的巨大变化，同时为过上更有意义和更有价值的生活而奋斗。

Now I'll conclude by saying that my hope for myself is that I can continue to be what Baudelaire called a flaneur an unbiased observer showing the world how Chinese people confront and embrace these huge changes that are happening while struggling to live more meaningful and productive lives.

任他鼓鸣狗吠，中国行进的车轮，在我看来只会滚滚向前。因为根据我在中国这些年来的所见，没有什么能比得过中国，坦白来讲，也没有什么能追得上中国。谢谢！

Although the drums may roll and the dogs may bark the caravan that is China I think will still proceed and progress and move on successfully. Because from everything I've seen during the time I've spent in your country there's nothing to match it, and quite honestly there's nothing to catch it.

Thank you！