Old movie enthusiast in NE China
By Wang Zhen
2016-02-23
Zhao Bingcheng walks into the spacious room in his house in Changchun, Jilin province, picks up a roll of film and loads it into an old motion picture projector as usual and sits down with delight to watch the images unfold up on the wall just as he's done time and time again.
The 51-year old Zhao's enthusiasm for old movies seems to know no bounds and he explains that it goes back to his childhood at a time back in the 1960s, when leisure activities were limited and incomes were low and watching a movie outdoors on a concrete screen was considered the life of luxury in China.
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Zhao Bingcheng has given a tremendous amount of attention to old movie projectors. [Photo by Lan Yang/365jilin.com] |
He goes on to explain that he spent his childhood with his four siblings in the city of Songyuan, in Jilin and his father was the sole breadwinner and, "My dad earned just about 19 yuan a month and had to support a big family, so movies were considered extravagant even though a ticket cost about 5 to 10 cents." But he would go as often as he could with his young friends to outdoor movies whenever he had managed to save a tiny bit of pocket change.
But, he says he often felt frustrated after walking all the way to site with the out-of-doors concrete benches and concrete screen, because, for one thing, the films never showed up on schedule down there in the countryside. He says that he still remembers teasing the people who were in a hurry to watch the same old movie, and would say to them "a waste of time", and that they were "running for nothing" and might as well be "star gazing".
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Zhao showing a reel of old film to the reporter.?[Photo by Lan Yang/365jilin.com] |
Zhao watched each and every one of the movies available at that time, and sometimes dreamed of having his own cinema one day but, was limited by his surroundings. So, of course, when video players began showing up in the mid-90s, Zhao leapt at the chance of collecting the discs and later moved on to DVDs, most of which were old movies. Not long after, he was able to get a sort-of home cinema where he could watch movies at will. Nonetheless, the electronic device left Zhao feeling as if something were missing, something he couldn't put his finger on.
Then a few years later, Zhao was browsing through a local antiques market and chanced upon an old movie projector that instantly took him back those outdoor movie experiences, the long walk down a dirt road to the site, the big concrete screen, and the old stories. He had to grit his teeth in forking over nearly 1,000 yuan for the old, worn-out Yangtze ("Changjiang") projector, but he was determined to have it and spent another month getting it back in shape.
Then, the first thing to do was to realize his childhood dream --- watching a movie at home on a projector. Next he formed the habit of watching a movie a day even though he was thoroughly familiar with the content. Over time, Zhao collected 200 reels of film and his interest in projectors grew as well and he collected around 200 of them all in good shape.
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The private studio room holds around 200 projectors.?[Photo by Lan Yang/365jilin.com] |
Then, in 2012, Zhao arranged his own studio room working with another collector in Changchun and got a new understanding of old movies and the "souls" of actors and actresses, then went a step further.
"Because they [the stars] were aging, I felt a real need to talk to them," he recalls, saying that he later interviewed 70 movie stars from the Changchun Film Studio, a major Chinese movie producer, in the second half of the 20th century. And, he was able to record the oral histories of these movie-makers who shared their stories with him.
Now, the old movie buff is a busy man as he often shows old movies in the community or in nursing homes, and adds that he expects to open a private movie museum this year and, "I'll put my collections, interviews, and movie props on display."
Zhao concludes, meditatively, "I want more people to feel the spirit and history of old movies."
