本文以胡涛创作的非虚构影像《地洞》 (The Burrows, 2021) 为核心文本, 从其视听语言与叙事策略出发, 试图提出一种“从散文到装置”的譬喻性阅读路径。不同于传统以类型分类为基础的纪录片分析, 本文将“散文性”与“装置性”视为非虚构影像的形构倾向, 用以探讨《地洞》如何在记忆书写、影像语法与感官场域中展现其独特的创作姿态与伦理意识。首先, 《地洞》立基于新冠疫情期间家人为长辈修建坟墓的事件记录, 但胡涛在片中透过画外音进行自述, 将自身与画中人的关系、童年回忆、梦境、神话等记忆片段向着观众娓娓道来, 形构出近似散文电影的开放叙事结构。这种非线性、情感化的语言, 呈现出画中时空与画外时空的往复对话, 建构出主观且多声部的时间感。其次, 影片在疫情期间聚焦于修坟、祭扫等空间行动的记录, 营造出具有装置性潜能的影像场域。这种视听空间不再只是叙事背景, 而成为可供经验的感官场所, 容纳了作者对于生死观念、地方信仰与文化记忆等方面的纷繁遐思。最后, 面对人的记忆的模糊与破碎, 影片选择保留作者断裂的语句, 并未以纪录的真实为目标, 而转向记忆伦理的实践, 展现对被遗忘者与不可述创伤的尊重与陪伴。本文认为, 《地洞》虽仍处于在电影院银幕上放映的展演框架之中, 但其叙事语言与空间实践已展现出迈向诗性、感官与伦理的非虚构影像新形态。从散文到装置, 从记录到场域, 《地洞》开启了一种结合影像叙事实验与个人记忆书写的行动性影像实践。

Taking Hu Tao’s nonfiction video work The Burrows (2021) as its central text, this paper proposes a metaphorical reading of “from essay to installation” based on its audiovisual language and narrative strategy. Diverging from traditional documentary analysis grounded in genre classification, it considers “essayistic quality” and “installationality” as formative tendencies of nonfiction cinema, through which to examine how The Burrows articulates a unique creative stance and ethical consciousness within the realms of memory inscription, cinematic syntax, and the sensory field. First, while rooted in the documentation of a family constructing a tomb for an elder during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film employs the author’s voice-over to narrate—in an essayistic manner—his relationship with those on screen, fragments of childhood memory, dreams, and myths, thereby constructing an open, non-linear narrative akin to the essay film. This affective, non-linear language fosters a dialogue between the diegetic and extra-diegetic spaces, crafting a subjective and polyphonic sense of time. Second, by focusing on recorded spatial actions such as tomb-building and ritual visits during the pandemic, the film creates an image-field endowed with installational potential. This audiovisual space ceases to be a mere narrative backdrop; it becomes an experiential sensory site that accommodates the author’s multifaceted reflections on life and death, local beliefs, and cultural memory. Finally, in the face of memory’s inherent ambiguity and fragmentation, the film chooses to retain the author’s fractured utterances. It does not aim for documentary truth but instead turns toward the practice of memory ethics, demonstrating respect and companionship for the forgotten and the trauma that resists articulation. This paper contends that although The Burrows remains within the presentational framework of theatrical projection, its narrative language and spatial practice already point toward a new form. of nonfiction cinema that is poetic, sensory, and ethical. From essay to installation, from documentation to field, The Burrows initiates an activist video practice that merges cinematic narrative experimentation with personal memory inscription.