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Light Chaser

8.020201h 38mHDSUB60,506 views

Director: 孙辉 / 冯冯 / 杨紫云 / 周全
Cast: 刘杨

Storyline

Everyone has their own story, and every land has its unique vitality. In the cold Arctic Circle in winter, during the polar night when the sun never shines, there is a group of people living for different reasons—for life, for ideals—shining in the vast ice field, emitting a unique light, either illuminating themselves or others. This film takes light as its theme, covering scientific light, human light, and divine light, and tells the stories of people living in Svalbard. Different races, cultures, and faiths blend here, passed down and continued in love and affection, showcasing the beauty of human nature between rationality and sensibility, and harmonious coexistence between man and nature—each of them is a 'Light Chaser'. In October 2017, Liu Yang, a Chinese space physics PhD, embarked on his second polar expedition. This time, he would be stationed alone at China's Arctic Yellow River Station, responsible for observing the polar space environment. The station is located in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway, at 78°55'N, 11°56'E. From October to March each year, Ny-Ålesund is in complete polar night, most suitable for continuous optical observations. The small town has research stations from different countries, and the Yellow River Station is a separate two-story building where Liu Yang will spend 120 polar nights alone. Loneliness is what Liu Yang must face every day. The town of only 30 people is an isolated small country, and his daily work is to turn on and off three all-sky aurora imagers and one aurora spectrometer, check data, and maintain two magnetometers and cosmic noise receivers. The town is like an orderly courtyard where everyone maintains friendly and appropriately distant relationships. Apart from gathering during daily meal times and weekly exercise times, they are mostly alone. In February 2018, Liu Yang will welcome the Chinese Lunar New Year alone, and he plans to use traditional Chinese customs and culture to warm the cold polar night of the small town. South of the town is Longyearbyen, where a group of cheerful 'northernmost residents of the Earth' live, with their lives having regular dark and light sides—they are another kind of...