Marker 10 Moments

There are a number of instances that had made me realize that Professor Shi’s video, 10 Moments, is a tribute to Marker’s 1956 film because of certain elements of the later film. For instance, Professor Shi also captures the record of everyday life experiences and interactions as Marker did in his film. It may not picture the 1950s, but it did have similar everyday experiences. The video was a tribute to emphasize more on what he deemed as important or intriguing in everyday life or just city life in general. We see in Marker’s video how Beijing in the 1950s was still growing as an economic power and in Professor’s Shi’s video we see the change as he captures calming moments of everyday in the urban city. He does this by creating the video
in a slower pace, allowing certain points of the city and people to be highlighted. Meanwhile, Marker’s film was more fast-paced and was very general. The voice-over also contributed to the general feeling of the film because Marker was informative and expressed how at awe he was about his travel.
In addition, the fast-pace of certain routines in Beijing are different from Professor Shi’s video, since we see that he pictures the donkey calmly on the side of the street at night, highlighting the calming mood and the change from the 1950s, while Marker’s video only depicts the donkeys quickly moving along the street. In this particular scene, we see that in 1950s there was major economy rising as the donkeys pass through the city. Another difference or change that Professor Shi emphasizes is the children. Marker says that the children on 5:13-5:20 had an “appearance that is so charmingly traditional” and they wear more vibrant colors and braided hair than the adults. They are also shown as having fun in the playground making noise, while in 10 moments the girls in the beginning of the film are calm and some are on their phones. They are only similar to the 1950s children by the colorful clothing and the somewhat similar hair styles. Some still have short hair and two braids. Therefore, it could be possible that Professor Shi’s a tribute to the Marker’s film by emphasizing the change in Beijing society and some similarities (things that have not changed since the
1950s). Thus, one of them is children’s fashion. It is a tribute because he is inspired by particular scenes, such as 10 moments may not have been an expository film with a voice-over but it was somewhat a poetic (and observational) style of documentary because the music and speed of the video create the alluring and calming mood. It was more so observational because it grasped particular scenes of Marker’s film and made them larger and more important.

There are various details from Marker’s film that resonate with the reading about Beijing in the 1950s in Chapter 6 of Li et al.
One very evident detail that is hard to miss is the fashion of people in the 1950s. The film clearly depicts what the book describes about the men and women wearing “simple blouses and solid-color slacks” to express “political conformity” (pg. 191). Throughout the video, I saw that the popular colors were white, black, navy, gray, and dark green. This is shown mostly on 5:20 and 16:10. Even when the adults are with the children on 5:13, they wear solid colors and slacks. This demonstrates the political appropriation of their clothing at the time. Another fashion detail I gathered is the women and girls still wore their hair short or in two braids. In the video, it was most common to see it on children, but there were some elderly with braids. This is because most of the people that are shown in the video are probably just workers or peasants because Marker goes through the city’s crowded areas and markets. Also, the men seem to wear some version or similar style of “Mao Jackets” because they all wear this shirt that is button down with pockets. The only contradiction is that everything is colorful according to the video, but the book made me think that there was not much color because it showed political
preference.
Another detail I gathered is Marker mentions the “whole town is a display stand for ancient china” and in the streets there were a display of “all the treasure of Peking” on 10:46 which made me think of the line that said, “in Liang’s eyes, Beijing was an architectural treasure that belonged to the world, not China” (pg. 175). This emphasizing that the extraordinary physical transformation of Beijing and how it stands as a display of China’s culture and past. There is also an example around 4:16 where I caught a glimpse of a red building where there is a festival going on. I believe it is the Tienanmen Square, in which the book mentions that it was a iconic place and was an “open space for political activity and visual presentation” (pg. 179). I may be wrong and the festival might not be happening on Tienanmen Square in the video, but the detail resonates with the reading.