Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
2006933053
A sincere debt of gratitude is due to my advisors, Gene Mustain and Doreen Weisenhaus,
for their unflagging enthusiasm and support, and for encouraging me to take this project
much farther than I would have left to my own devices. I would also like to thank the
JMSC’s Jim Laurie and David Bandurski, for their invaluable insights and contacts.
I was fortunate to have met many great people on this journey, who took the time to
explain, to confide, to debate and to laugh. Their passion and perseverance is an enduring
inspiration.
And to Gary and Tata, for always urging the pursuit of dreams.
ECLECTIC SHADOWS:
Stepping out of Beijing’s Capital Airport a couple of days before the Labor Day holiday
on May 1, I was confronted by two giant LCD screens. Each played identical, utopian
scenes of the city’s mobilized masses preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games: a young
man with long hair and a bucket cleans the vast, empty stands of an arena; masses of
children wave cuddly stuffed versions of the games’ official mascots; paramedics stand at
reality. However, I had traveled from Hong Kong to seek out something along the lines of
its opposite: a developing alternative to the state media among the new generation of
week, several distinct sets of film screenings were scheduled across the capital, promising
some very different versions of reality— that experienced by ordinary people from
various walks of life, living in a country undergoing massive social, economic and
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This momentous period of transformation in Chinese history is being recorded by a
recent affordability of digital video (DV) technology, which opens the filmmaking door
to amateurs and hobbyists, and new avenues of distribution such as DVDs and the
Internet.
China not often seen in the popular media. The narratives are often those of struggle: for
survival, against authority, and for the freedom to live lives of one’s choosing, no matter
how puzzling (the performance artist with a penchant for taking off his clothes and
And while China’s state-censorship machine continues to run along its familiar course, it
is neither infallible nor all-powerful, as new media outlets and modes of organization
pose an ongoing challenge to state hegemony -- one story, one viewer at a time.
Monday, April 30 marks the start of the week-long “Golden Week” holiday. The skies are
blue and all of China is on vacation. My first destination is the Songzhuang Art Center, in
the far eastern suburbs of the city, host to the fourth annual Chinese Documentary Film
Festival.
I had only decided to come to Beijing barely a week earlier, in a last-minute decision
brought about by the cancellation of another documentary film festival that I had planned
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to attend in the southwestern city of Kunming.
That festival, known as Yunfest (short for Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival), had
successful runs in 2003 and 2007. As the major Chinese film festival devoted exclusively
hundreds.
But on March 26, ten days before its scheduled opening, Yunfest 2007 was suddenly and
indefinitely postponed on official orders. Filmmakers selected for the festival received a
brief email message from the event’s organizers, advising them not to purchase air or
train tickets to Kunming until further notice. The organizers said that they would liaise
with the “relevant officials” in hopes of getting the festival back on track.
someone is always watching lest certain lines be crossed, and the relationship between
filmmaker and government is often testy. In the case of Yunfest, the line was apparently
crossed by the festival’s inclusion of a documentary about the early casualties of the
Cultural Revolution, When I am Gone (Wo sui si qu), by Hu Jie, a former painter for the
Hu’s film was only one of several potentially controversial choices scheduled to screen at
Yunfest. Among the films in the main competition, several offered skeptical portrayals of
eponymous Beijing district as they fought contractors determined to raze their homes,
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while Street Life (Nanjing lu) presented a searing indictment of police brutality in its final
scenes of a homeless bottle collector gone insane after several stints in detention for petty
crimes.
Shortly after hearing about Yunfest, I received an invitation to attend the Chinese
classified as films festivals, the event was called a “documentary exchange week” in
Chinese). Intrigued, I could find no information about the films that would be screened.
But seeing that it was being organized by some of the leading figures in the documentary
That is how I found myself waiting for a bus next to the construction site of the new
CCTV headquarters, its two half-built towers leaning precariously toward each other.
Boarding the crowded bus to Songzhuang, I paid a staggering 5 RMB (probably the most
I’ve ever spent on public transportation in China) for an hour-long ride in fits and starts.
First, a highway out of the main urban concentration of Beijing, then a long slog through
practically in the countryside. The bus turns into a field and coughs out its last handful of
passengers as the ticket lady shouts at me to get off. Behind us stretches an expanse of
red brick and glass modernism, a shining new art museum in the middle of nowhere.
In a corner of the museum’s ground floor, young artist and student types mill about in a
glass-enclosed coffee shop. I look for Zhao Dayong, Street Life’s director, who I’d been
introduced to via email by a mutual friend. I spoke with him on the phone earlier and he
had instructed me to look for a half-bearded man in a shirt with English words on it. But
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in this crowd of trendy Chinese, it looks like at least half the men could meet the
description.
After standing around conspicuously for a few minutes, hoping that Zhao will recognize
me (“foreign girl in a red skirt”), I find a reception desk offering festival catalogues for
sale. Scanning the contents, I recognize a number of titles that were on the Yunfest
schedule. So far, so good. But no mention of Hu Jie or his Cultural Revolution film,
which has started showing up on YouTube during the last few weeks.
And there’s no schedule of screenings, only a list of today’s films, handwritten onto a
piece of paper taped to a glass wall by the entrance. I ask about this as I purchase the
catalogue, and the cheerful young woman behind the counter explains that daily
schedules will only be available each morning, right before the day’s screenings.
Under the impression that the first film is about to start, I rush up to the theater, but find it
nearly empty. The placards taped to the seats in the first several rows catch my eye. These
note that the seats are reserved for the directors, judges and other VIPs. Zhu Rikun, Li
documentary scene.
Contented at my good fortune in finding myself at what seems like the epicenter of a
small universe, I take a seat behind the one reserved for Zhao Dayong. I compare the
people entering the auditorium to his photo in the catalog. But his seat remains empty.
Eventually all the seats but his fill up, then the aisles as well, and a woman takes Zhao’s
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chair.
The lights dim and the organizers take the stage to introduce the event. Zhu Rikun is up
first. A slight and youthful man who favors plaid button-downs, Zhu is founder of Fanhall
Studios, one of the few independent film studios in China. His company, established in
website, and arranges screenings and film festivals, and lectures -- in short, whatever it
In his opening remarks, Zhu openly alludes to the difficulties faced in putting on this
year’s program, briefly, matter of factly, as if apologizing for the late start. “It is better to
say less, but please forgive us if the arrangements seem hurried and simple,” he says.
negotiation with relevant authorities to get this event on track, a constant tug-of-war to
draw the boundaries of what is permissible in China today, a country where many things
are in flux.
Zhu introduces his co-organizer, Li Xianting, who is one of the most important art critics
in China today, and the man credited with much of the worldwide acclaim enjoyed by
China’s avant-garde artists over the last decade. The white-bearded impresario says a few
Hu Xinyu’s Sister (Jiejie) has been selected to open the festival. Hu’s last film, The Man
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(Nanren), about his misogynistic and unemployed friends, took the top prize at Yunfest in
2005. Hu says his focus on male protagonists was questioned for its lack of balance, so
now he has turned his lens onto the life of his sister, who moved to the United States after
a bitter divorce, remarried, and is struggling to deal with a difficult teenage daughter who
thinks everything is better in China. Hu spends a month with the family and inserts
himself as a character in the film, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes with his brother-
I call Zhao Dayong after the film and we find each other outside in a slight rain. Zhao is
annoyed by the difficulties that the festival has faced this year. “The authorities are
making it harder this year, and we really didn’t know what would happen until the last
minute.”
He is also incensed by the recent cancellation of Yunfest, where his film was slated for
the main competition. “Hu Jie’s film was about something that happened forty years ago.
version of Yunfest took place. Dozens of filmmakers made their way to the picturesque
town of Dali, 300-plus kilometers west of Kunming, in early April for an informal
Zhao introduces me to Hu Xinyu and Jiang Zhi, one of the judges of the Songzhuang
competition, and he quickly suggests grabbing a bite in the hour before the next
screening. There is only one restaurant near the isolated arts center, and we are soon
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joined by several other filmmakers, who excitedly talk shop throughout the meal.
Zhao and Hu met in Dali, and they have since become fast friends. They share a
mischievous irreverence and smoke often. Hu curses like a sailor. Zhao is attentive and
A month later, those who attended the informal Yunfest gathering in Dali are still
reminiscing about the experience. “We watched films all day, discussed them afterwards,
Zhao and Hu chide the others who missed out on the event. “You really should have been
there,” Zhao often says. And he can’t wait to return. Although Zhao has lived in the major
metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, he has little affection for any of these
cities. Instead, he longs to move to Kunming as soon as he’s wrapped up his latest film,
Traffic is much worse the following day, May 1, and after an hour and a half on the bus to
Songzhuang I have missed much of the first screening. I wait in the coffee shop, chatting
with a film critic from the influential Southern Weekend and a representative from a
Japanese film festival. Zhao Dayong hangs out with Hu Xinyu in a makeshift office at
the back, smoking and shooting the breeze. When the afternoon screening is about to
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The film, San Li Dong (Three Mile Cave), marks another turn towards historical
interpretation, intertwined with a story of personal reconciliation. Its director, Lin Xin,
interviews a unique group of retired coal miners who worked in the San Li Dong coal
mine in Shaanxi province. In 1955, these young men were among hundreds of patriotic
youth from Shanghai who heeded Mao’s call to develop China’s northwestern
hinterlands, volunteering to leave their homes to become coal miners in a distant land.
Lin Xin’s father was one of these youths, and his death in 2005 spurred his son to make
The film is somber, shot in black and white, contrasting the unforgiving machinery of the
coal mines with the creased and dignified visages of the remaining survivors. It is
But Zhao is tired, having stayed up all night in animated discussion with his fellow
directors. As a result, he sleeps through most of the first half of the nearly three-hour
After the screening, Zhao confesses that he is often bored by Chinese documentaries. “In
a whole film festival, there are maybe one or two films worth watching,” he says.
part and parcel of directors’ wishes to provide unmediated access to reality as they see it.
And for Chinese who were raised on a steady diet of propaganda films, the express
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The man largely responsible for the pervasiveness of this filmmaking philosophy is Wu
film and performing arts center along with his partner, Wen Hui (a prominent
Located within a fledgling arts district in the far northeast corner of Beijing, just outside
the city’s fifth ring road and close to the National Film Museum, the Caochangdi
Workstation is a large grey complex built with modern materials in the traditional Beijing
courtyard style. I first came here months earlier to meet with Wu and engage in some
At his computer in the unheated room, Wu sat cocooned in a thick turtleneck and long
padded coat, in dark, earthy shades that match the shades of the studios. Born in 1956 in
Yunnan, Wu moved to Beijing in 1988 after stints teaching high school in the far west of
Xinjiang province and writing for television in Kunming. In the capital, he landed a job
directing documentary programming for CCTV, the country’s only national broadcaster.
For nearly two years, Wu took his employer’s cameras and equipment during off-hours to
film the seminal Bumming in Beijing: the Last Dreamers (Liulang Beijing: zuihoude
zuomengzhe, 1991), widely heralded as the first independent documentary film made in
China. The black and white film, shot entirely in interview format, chronicles the lives of
a group of photographers, artists and writers – all friends of Wu -- who arrived in the big
city of Beijing to pursue their dreams. None of the artists profiled had a coveted Beijing
residence permit, or hukou, and their voices often lament the basic problem of wanting to
live in the nation’s capital, cultural as well as political, where they are unwelcome by the
government. The film shows what happens when people leave their work units—they
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become essentially “vagrants” (mangliu). The themes of art, urbanization, and survival, in
filmmakers in China.
editing. Today’s independent Chinese documentaries often follow this dictum, and
occasionally take it to extremes in films that lack any use of spoken language, provide no
context or background information, or are overly long, testing the patience of all but the
When Wu started, it was hard to break into documentary filmmaking. At that time
cameras were expensive and people were poorer, so most filmmakers had to have some
connection to the state media companies that owned such equipment, “borrowing”
“In the 1980s there was no digital video. Because of the technical limitations, only people
who were part of official television stations could work on documentaries,” said Wu. But
over the last decade, affordable DV technology and rising disposable incomes have again
The result has been at least a tenfold increase in the number of independent
documentaries circulated in China. “Ten years ago, we would see two to three
independent documentaries a year,” said Wu. “Now dozens can be viewed each year.”
Over the last several years, Wu has turned more of his attention to teaching and
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encouraging independent documentary filmmaking in China. During the Golden Week
I visit Caochangdi once more in early May on a brilliantly hot day, my last in Beijing.
Young Chinese, many of them Wu’s students, spill into the courtyard of the complex,
laying in tidy squares of grass and sitting on benches at picnic tables. One of Wu’s
assistants escorts me to a small building at the center and pulls back a heavy black curtain
over the doorway. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness. The single room is
packed with folding chairs, the audience raptly watching God is My DJ, a Dutch
documentary about the European rave party scene and its golden-boy promoters. After
my heavy exposure to China’s roughly hewn independent films, the technical polish and
narrative arc of the Dutch film appear extremely foreign. The subjects of the
documentary are too photogenic, they look like actors, and even the tragedies of death
and drug abuse appear to have been glossed over. Ultimately, the film strikes me as a
It is a far cry from Wu’s most recent documentary project, which gave video cameras to
Chinese villagers, many of whom had never used a camera before, to record their
the power of new technologies to transform ordinary Chinese (in this case, peasant
curious foreign observers, the films also present a more direct and unsettling portrayal of
contemporary China than what is typically encountered through the filter of the overseas
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press.
From the first film, a fairly routine recording of a village election, the series of short
villager documentaries unfolds to reveal the many complexities and disputes surrounding
village governance. The second film shows a village election gone sour, with results that
are ultimately retracted due to flawed election procedures. Other films openly depict
disputes between villagers and various authorities over issues such as local enterprises,
land reform and compensation. The series ends with a young Zhejiang villager who asks
young migrants in cities whether they had ever cast their votes back home. Not one had
The villager’s documentary project received widespread attention both at home and
abroad, thanks to Wu’s profile and connections. The series was ultimately picked up by
CCTV and it has been screened at universities and film festivals in Europe and North
America.
documentaries has been a shocking experience. “They expose just how limited my view
of China was, when I relied on the Western media for images of China,” she said. After
seeing the films in Europe, Mogren and a colleague traveled to Beijing to seek out films
for the next Tempo festival in March 2008, which will be devoted exclusively to films
from China.
Deeply Personal
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“My objective is to communicate, not to authenticate.”
with the prescriptive norms found in state media. Recent films show how outmoded are
any conceptions of Chinese society as collectivist and lacking in the concept of the
individual (so fundamental to Western notions of liberty, democracy and human rights).
Time and time again, filmmakers proclaim the highly personal nature of their work.
Of course, their claims of purely personal interests may serve as a foil to counter any
potential claim of the political in their works. Yet there is also present a deep
According to Wu Wenguang, the biggest impact of digital video is that it has enabled
such personalized takes on the production of films. “Before DV, it was necessary to shoot
documentaries in teams. Now it is possible for one person to work alone, to work
personally,” he said. “Each filmmaker can express his or her own view, not only of social
But in China, the personal and political, subjective and social are often inextricably
linked. Films such as Sister and San Li Dong reveal the intersection of the personal and
political through explorations of family history, a theme that cropped up again in the last
film I saw at Caochangdi, Cao Fei’s Father. The film details the work processes of the
filmmaker’s father, an “official” artist, as he creates a statue of Deng Xiaoping for a new
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revolutionary museum. His works, in the social realist model, could not be more different
from those of his daughter, a prominent multimedia artist at the forefront of China’s
modernizing nation.
To see how all of this activity registers in the official image of Chinese filmmaking, I pay
a visit to the new China National Film Museum, near Caochangdi. The museum, which
opened late last year, is a monolithic black structure with an enormous star-shaped entry,
rising out of bare concrete surroundings and dwarfing the infant trees planted in the
immediate vicinity. Inside, there are few visitors, and the dark and cavernous main hall is
offset only by the changing colors of the light panels that line the Guggenheim-style ramp
spiraling to the top. Off of the ramp are various exhibit rooms tracing the history of
exhibitions follow the stale curatorial pattern typical of Chinese museums. There are
photographs and descriptive texts and little else. In the documentary rooms, I rush
through the glories of revolutionary communist films and into the modern era, but am
witnessed flourishing all around. I make a hasty exit, rushing down the circular ramp. As
I leave I feel sadness at the deep contrast between the dark hollowness of the museum
and the emotion and sunlight of Songzhuang and Caochangdi. Enough to make me blink
in the light, and wonder at China’s multiple versions of reality, living right next door to
each other.
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References
Interviews
David Bandurski, research associate, China Media Project. Dec. 8, 2006 and March 9,
Tobias Berger, curator, Para/Site Art Space. April 24, 2007, Para/Site Art Space, Hong
Kong.
Hu Jie, documentary filmmaker. March 23, 2007 and March 26, 2007, University of
Hu Xinyu, documentary filmmaker, April 30, 2007 and May, 1, 2007, Songzhuang Art
Center Beijing.
Robert Iolini, sound and video artist. April 28, 2007, Foo Tak Building, Hong Kong.
Jian Yi, filmmaker, March 16, 2007. Wangfujing Sanlian Bookstore Café, Beijing.
Li Hongyu, journalist, Southern Weekend. May 1, 2007, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing.
Jim Laurie, director of broadcasting programme, Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
Agnes Mogren, festival director, Tempo Documentary Festival. May 2, 2007, Caochangdi
Workstation, Beijing.
Wu Wenguang, documentary filmmaker. March 17, 2007 and May 2, 2007, Caochangdi
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Workstation, Beijing.
Ruby Yang, documentary filmmaker. March 23, 2007, Cyberport Hotel Meridien, Hong
Kong.
Zhao Dayong, documentary filmmaker. April 30, 2007 and May 1, 2007, Songzhuang Art
Center, Beijing.
Zhu Rikun, film producer. April 30, 2007, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing.
Books
Lu, Sheldon H., and Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, eds. Chinese Language Film: Historiography,
Lu, Xinyu. Jilu Zhongguo: dangdai zhongguo xin jilu yundong (Recording China: The
Pickowicz, Paul G., and Zhang, Yingjin, eds. From Underground to Independent:
Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2006.
Articles
Bandurski, David. “Digital anti-heroes.” The Weekend Standard, July 16-17, 2005.
27, 2007).
Boustany, Nora. “U.S. Filmmakers Help Bring AIDS Out of the Shadows in China.”
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Cooper, Caroline. “Capturing China’s Problems on Film.” Asia Times, November 29,
Lee, Maggie. “Behind the Scenes: Documentaries in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong
Li Hongyu. “Nongmin zizhi, nongmin zipai.” (The villagers rule themselves, the villagers
Lu Xinyu. “Ruins of the Future: Class and History in Wang Bing’s Tiexi District.” New
Qi Wang. “The Ruin Is Already a New Outcome: An Interview with Cui Zi'en.”positions:
Reynaud, Berenice. “Dancing With Myself, Drifting With My Camera: The Emotional
at http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/chinas_new_documentary.html
Shen, Rui. “To Remember History: Hu Jie Talks About His Documentaries.” Senses of
Stevens, Nathaniel M. “Together With Migrants: Chinese Contemporary Art and Social
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Voci, Paola. “Quasi-Documentary, Cellflix and Web Spoofs: Chinese Movies’ Other
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/41/other-chinese-movies-pleasures.html
Websites
2007).
28, 2007).
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