On the author label of the fruit shell, Gao Xiaojun's self-introduction is: a master's student in sociology at East China Normal University who is temporarily aside from academics.
She left academics for a while, because after graduation she became a trading broker in the chain family. "How did you become a real estate agent?" This is the most frequently asked question by Gao Xiaojun.
The planned path is that when the master's degree is graduated, several academic papers are successfully published, the language is tested, and then the doctoral offer arrives as scheduled. The yin and yang mistakes of life and the recurrence of the epidemic have pushed the road that was already under Gao Xiaojun's feet into the distance.
Another trajectory was unfolded, and through the "Navigator Plan", Gao Xiaojun entered the chain home, and his eyes turned to the ivory tower to the community alley.
In Xiaojun's body, this seemingly jumpy choice essentially still follows the values precipitated by her many years of sociological background: to do work that can create a deep connection with people, "to be close to life, not always separated from society."
But every road is not a smooth one.
She has the determination to be a good agent, and she sorts out and studies the real estate communities she has run in an academic way. But the sudden cold market after joining the company made her feel frustrated for a while.
She confirms that she has to connect with others, but looking at communities with significant aging characteristics, she can't find a suitable way to "access". For a while, the elderly often saw a girl with a green badge and a camera around her neck in the neighborhood, saying that she wanted to take pictures of them.
Anxiety continued to spread, and when she was studying, she rarely spoke again, especially when she said about her work, "The environment in which everyone is in is different, and the challenges I face are difficult for others to empathize with." ”
Fortunately, this state did not last long, and an encounter became a turning point.
2 months after Xiaojun became an agent, ShiMenqun's friends received a "special" sharing, this time, she sent a lot of photos, wrote a long text, as if she finally found the incision with people, but also found an outlet to release emotions.
She was talking about her own mobile phone class for the elderly.
Two graduate students of East China Normal University, with Gao Xiaojun, the chain agent, as the protagonist, followed the "I will teach you to use the mobile phone" project for a month, recording the touching stories of her and the elderly, and the process of her gaining a sense of identity and value from the project.
"Teaching the elderly to use mobile phones", which at first glance does not sound like much imagination space, how can it become a turning point for Gao Xiaojun's professional cognition and even his sense of personal value? With this question in mind, two master's sisters of Gao Xiaojunhua Normal University picked up the camera and followed the teacher's class for a month.
Chen Detian, who lost his wife and daughter ten years ago and faced the rest of his life alone, Mao Xiaoling, who always wants to buy the latest model in the middle of his life, Uncle Feng and his wife who took the subway through Shanghai just to sing K with their old classmates... And on the podium, this sociology master real estate agent, very different life story lines intertwined here.
The creators named this film "Machine, Yuan", the English name The Old With The New, trying to provoke everyone to think about the many profound propositions behind this simple scene between people, between people and times, and between generations.
For Gao Xiaojun and her sisters, perhaps life is a large-scale fieldwork, and we have completed our observations in each encounter. After the film was completed, director Zhang Han and the later Yashi restored the behind-the-scenes story of Xiaojun and her old man's mobile phone class through handwriting.
The encounter between people and people / Zhang Han
In November 2021, Xiaojun and I passed through Yutian Community, and an aunt came to Xiaojun in a hurry and eagerly "threw" her mobile phone in front of Xiaojun, "My good sister wants to call me On WeChat, why can't I get it?" "You should not have added her as a friend yet." Before I could react, Xiaojun had already answered. "I've already added it, don't I have her WeChat?" Because of anxiety, she was somewhat incoherent. "Let me help you operate it", Xiaojun took the mobile phone and signaled me to go first. I walked for a while and looked back, Xiaojun was holding the mobile phone and comparing, the aunt frequently nodded, they shoulder to shoulder, the distance disappeared, and the tense atmosphere before disappeared.
Xiaojun is my sister who is two years older than me, after graduation, I went to the chain family as an agent, and when I asked her why she chose this job, she replied that she could support herself and contact fresh people. One day in September, she shared several photos with the elderly in the group, and she looked energetic. After graduation, she rarely shared things at work, about this mobile phone public welfare class, she shared a lot, she taught the elderly weChat plus friends, send a circle of friends, was called "little high teacher" by a group of 70 or 80-year-old people, she said "I did not expect to have this kind of treatment as an intermediary", "This should be the happiest day since I worked", she said at the end.
At first, I did not think of the mobile phone public welfare class as the theme of documentary shooting, in my opinion, teaching the elderly to use mobile phones is not a new thing. The state strongly advocates "crossing the digital divide", and for individuals, everyone may experience moments to help their elders solve mobile phone problems. Mobile phone public welfare classes are also based on this logic.
Until later, when I talked to Xiaojun about that "chance encounter", I joked that the aunt was a student of your mobile phone public welfare class, and Teacher Xiaogao was also pulled to "make up the class" after class. But Xiaojun said that they had not met before, and she speculated that the aunt was a resident of the surrounding community, and may have seen the publicity of the chain family's public welfare course or heard the discussion of other students. It seems that in the eyes of the aunt, the chain home no longer only represents the professional label of "real estate agent", but "the person who can help him solve the problem of mobile phones". In addition to "teaching" and "teaching" in the classroom, more unexpected influences and connections also occur in the classroom. This made me rethink the fact that in teaching the elderly to use mobile phones, what is important is the interaction between "people" and "machines", or the connection between "people" and "people" radiated through the classroom.
Putting aside the previous presets, the group and I took the cameras to find answers to the questions. Filmed from the end of November to the end of December, participated in four mobile lessons. We are both photographers and volunteers, as photographers, observing and experiencing their joys and sorrows in the mobile phone world, and as volunteers, we can feel the importance of understanding and listening from each interaction. In my opinion, what matters is not how much knowledge is taught through mobile phone classrooms, and the oblivion brought about by aging is inevitable, but in the process, learning to understand the mobile phone world in their eyes. On the basis of understanding, more inclusion and support also occurs.
During the filming process, I often remembered a line from the movie "Big Buddha Plus": It is now the space age, people can take spaceships to the moon, but they can never explore people's inner universe. In the age of technology, mobile maps can be used as a guide to where we want to go, but they can't pull us when we fall. It takes a pair of warm hands. No amount of convenience can replace the moments when "people" and "people" meet.
The last shot shot is after the "graduation ceremony", when the old people leave the classroom, I asked, will you come next time? As they walked out the door, they waved to the camera and said they would come back next time. These clips did not appear in the documentary, but they were deeply rooted in my heart.
The course is over, and the stories of people and people continue.
The production process of the documentary "Machine Edge" is fragmented / Lin Yashi
The first time she met Xiaojun in Yutian Village, she mentioned Chen Detian. She said he interacts particularly aggressively in mobile classes. Although he lived alone, he was always optimistic; he didn't like to be called grandpa by others, and he liked to be called by his first name, and these details aroused our interest in Chen Detian.
The festival on the day of the winter solstice was a fortuitous opportunity for us to learn about Chen Detian's life. At that time, Xiaojun learned that Chen Detian's classmates wanted to go to the cemetery to meet his wife and daughter because of his daughter's dream, so he invited us to accompany Chen Detian to go with him.
It was my most memorable day in the process of making a documentary.
As soon as he got on the bus, he enthusiastically told us his life story. An old man, who has experienced all kinds of misfortunes in life, here, instead of complaining about the pain these misfortunes has brought to him, he is grateful to the kind people who helped him to overcome the danger. "So I've always talked about being a good person and doing good things." It is the sense of life that he constantly emphasizes during his trip to the cemetery.
I remember walking slowly with his arm in my arms that day, regaining my patience to be thrown away by the fast pace. When I saw him come to his wife's grave, wipe the tombstone with a rag, and choke up and say, "Wife, I've come to see you." "My heart is also aware of his sadness, and I sincerely hope that he can live every day well. At that time, I thought that our spiritual strength comes from genuine concern for others.
Before using his smartphone, Grandpa Chen took his hand-drawn map and spent three or five hours to find the hospital he was going to by asking passers-by. He's glad that his smartphone has the ability to navigate, but the phone does nothing more to him than guide, and there's no way to make his legs and feet sharper. Along the way, he was grateful for the company of our group, and he told how he took the subway alone on the rainy winter solstice last year to get to the place where his wife and daughter slept.
Aunt Pan was a mirror engineer and a photography enthusiast before she retired. She believed in Ostrovsky's wise saying that "when one looks back on the past, one does not regret his wasted years, nor is he ashamed of his inaction." In her spare time, she has been enriching herself by learning online classes. Before using her smartphone, she used photoshop software on her computer to retouch her photos, and when we set up the camera to prepare for the interview, she would come forward to find out what brand of camera we used.
Aunt Mao, a businessman in the advertising industry, uses her smartphone to photograph the beauty she encounters on her travels and shares it with her good sisters. She took mobile classes to catch up with her good sisters. The elderly machines specially designed for the elderly on the market have long been out of line with the needs of this elderly group.
Chen Detian also said in the interview that although he received two elderly machines, he never used them because the functions of the elderly machines were very monotonous. The elderly machine reflects the designer's monolithic imagination of the elderly group, presupposing that their physical and cultural conditions are limited and cannot be integrated with the Internet society.
There are also some elderly people whose learning progress is relatively slow, either due to limited knowledge or due to the decline of memory can not grasp new knowledge. When Grandpa Xiang operated his mobile phone in class, he encountered many difficulties: first, the mobile phone was slow, resulting in the inability to successfully download the software; and the mobile phone's input method recognition was not sensitive, he repeatedly wrote his name several times, and the mobile phone could not generate the corresponding text. When we ask them if they will ask their families for advice, their expressions and words will be tinged with regret or helplessness: "Asked, but forgot." They're usually quite busy. ”
These experiences reminded me of my grandmother, my grandparents. In the past few years, I have gradually left my hometown and gradually lost my intersection with their lives. They live in villages and towns, have a very different life experience from the elderly living in Shanghai, and are derailed from the life of smartphones. One of Grandpa's favorite pastimes at home was Spider Solitaire on Windows, which he could play in his room all afternoon without talking to anyone; other than that, his favorite was to tease children. I thought, if he had a smartphone, what would he do with him? Or does he really need a phone? It was as if the smartphone was just a tool that could not make him resist loneliness.
Shell to find a house Qingdao station thank you for watching.