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LA FRANCES HUI 05.01.12
China Through An Independent LensSix Experts Recommend Their Favorite Chinese Documentary Films
Chinese documentaries have gained global attention in the past decade or so, thanks
partly to the creative originality of young filmmakers and partly to a rapidly changing
China that fascinates viewers from around the world. Wang Bing’s nine-hour epic West
of the Tracks (2003), which chronicles the decline of state-owned industries in the city
of Shenyang, garnered multiple international awards. Hu Jie’s Searching for Lin Zhao’s
Soul (2004), which details the gruesome experience of one young woman speaking out
against Mao Zedong, led to its director’s becoming the subject of two chapters in Philip
P. Pan’s acclaimed book, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New
China. Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town (2009), about ethnic minorities in a small town in
Yunnan province, received a major premiere at the New York Film Festival. More and
more viewers rely on these documentaries to gain access to a real China, which is often
obscured by the fanfare surrounding the country’s growing economic stature.
These documentaries are independently produced films made outside of official
channels. In the P.R.C., filmmakers must submit their work to the censors for approval
before it can be commercially exhibited. Making films outside of the official framework
means that filmmakers not only cannot tap into mainstream financing but also cannot
screen their works in commercial theaters at home. Exhibition of these films is
currently confined to universities, small film clubs, and festivals with limited
spectatorship. There is, however, a demand for such works, as is evident in the
availability of pirated copies in the underground market.
Despite the obstacles, filmmakers are determined to express themselves and observe
their world through the camera lens. With China’s economy growing at breakneck
speed, many documentary filmmakers feel an urgency to record the unfolding realities
and the clash between the old and the new. They also tackle sensitive subjects that
constantly test the boundaries of their “underground” freedom, revealing social
injustice and chaos while giving voice to those who live on the fringes of society.
Chinese independent documentaries emerged around 1990. Some of the early works
include Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990), a film about
struggling artists in Beijing; Duan Jinchuan and Zhang Yuan’s The Square (1994),
which documents mundane daily activities in Tiananmen Square, just a few years after
the crushing of the student movement of 1989; and Jiang Yue’s The Other Bank (1995),
about the production of a theater performance. Rejecting the top-down, authoritative
tone dominant in state-approved newsreels and propaganda, independent
documentarians have adopted strategies to present the world they observe from the
bottom up, often paying attention to society’s underclass using vérité techniques such
as handheld camera and long uninterrupted takes. The stripped-down aesthetic
captures the immediacy and authenticity of what is in front of the camera with
minimal interference.
More than twenty years since the beginning of this revolution, independent
documentary filmmaking is still evolving. Few early practitioners received formal
training in filmmaking; some were associated with the television industry and had
access to equipment. The proliferation of economical digital technology in the late
1990s allowed many more aspiring documentarians to join the ranks. Today, young
people often seek to hone their skills at major films schools. They now have the means
La Frances Hui
La Frances Hui is FilmCurator at Asia Society NewYork. She has curated filmseries featuringcontemporary Chinesedocumentary and fictionfilms, New Wave Japanesecinema, Japanesedocumentaries,...More
Skip to the documentary films
recommended by:
Chris Berry
Goldsmiths, University of
London
Karin Chien
dGenerate Films
Jia Zhangke
Film Director
La Frances Hui
Asia Society
Zhang Xianmin
Beijing Film Academy
Yingjin Zhang
University of California, San
Diego
The Experts
Reporting & Opinion Blog Library Multimedia Topics Contributors
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and education to reflect on their approaches to making documentaries. Increasingly,
filmmakers are also widening their subject choices by moving beyond their immediate
environments. Although there are still many challenges at home, this trend of
documentary filmmaking is unstoppable, and will continue to go hand in hand with the
rise of China.
To highlight some of the most significant work in this genre, I have invited a group of
experts to recommend independent Chinese documentaries (from the P.R.C.) made
since 1990. Chris Berry and Yingjin Zhang are film scholars who have done extensive
research and published widely on this topic. Karin Chien is the president of dGenerate
Films, the premier US distributor of independent Chinese films. Zhang Xianmin,
curator, producer, and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, is on the ground working
with and promoting independent filmmakers. I had wanted to include a filmmaker, but
it would be quite a challenge to identify a suitable candidate, at the risk of alienating the
others. Jia Zhangke became the clear choice for being part of the independent scene but
also one step removed from it. His fiction films, such as Xiao Wu (1998) and Platform
(2000), made him the first Chinese independent filmmaker recognized internationally.
Although since his 2004 film The World he has made films within official channels in
order to gain a wider home audience, Jia has maintained that the independent spirit is
still his guiding principle. Having made both documentaries and fiction films
employing a realist aesthetic, Jia remains someone we cannot ignore in any discussion
of the evolution of independent Chinese filmmaking.
Each participant has recommended three to five documentaries and explained their
choices. I want to thank them for their contributions and hope that you will enjoy the
selections.
—La Frances Hui
References and suggested readings:
Berry, Chris, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel eds. New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the
Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010.
Nornes, Abé Mark, “Bulldozers, Bibles, and Very Sharp Knives: The Chinese Independent
Documentary Scene,” Film Quarterly, 63: 1, Fall 2009.
Pickowicz, Paul G. and Zhang Yingjin, eds. From Underground to Independent: Alternative
Film Culture in Contemporary China. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.
Zhang, Yingjin, “Styles, Subjects, and Special Points of View: A Study of Contemporary Chinese
Independent Documentary,” New Cinemas, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2004.
Chris Berry
Chris Berry is a professor of Film and Television Studies at Goldsmiths, University of
London. He is also a Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research
Centre. He obtained his MA and PhD in Theater Arts (Film & TV) from the University
of California, Los Angeles. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export
Corporation in Beijing. Since then, he has been teaching about film and media in
various universities in Australia, the US, and the UK, and his academic research is
grounded in work on Chinese cinema and other Chinese screen-based media. In
September 2012, he will become Professor of Film Studies at King’s College, London.
Crime And Punishment (罪与罚 Zui yu Fa)
Zhao Liang, director (2007)
Like the best of Frederick Wiseman’s films, this observational
takes us into the bureaucratic absurdities of a social institution—in
this case, a police station in Zhao Liang’s hometown in Northeast
China. Watching policemen naively letting him video them as they
try to beat a confession out of a deaf mute is both one of the most
shocking and funny moments in recent Chinese cinema.
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Mask Changing: A Letter To Antonioni (变脸:致安东尼奥尼的一封信 Bianlian—Zhi Andongniaoni de Yi feng Xin)
Pan Jun, director (2004)
During the Cultural Revolution, Michelangelo Antonioni made a
documentary, Cina (1972), that was immediately banned. When it
came out on DVD in China a few years ago, Pan Jun went back to
where Antonioni shot, found the people in his film, and showed
them the clips. Not only do we get some truths behind the film,
but we also witness the sheer joy and excitement of Antonioni’s
subjects as they see precious footage from their past.
Meishi Street (煤市街 Meishi Jie)
Ou Ning, director (2006)
Cycles of demolition and construction have affected every Chinese
urban citizen. The government owns the land, so they are
powerless to stop the developers. But as Meishi Street shows, they
do resist. Ou Ning gave restaurant owner Zhang Jinli a camera,
and he uses it as a weapon in the battle for the control of speech in
public space that the film shows is central to the campaign
Though I Am Gone (我虽死去 Wo Sui Si Qu)
Hu Jie, director (2007)
Hu Jie’s Though I Am Gone is an exceptional achievement
because it combines remarkable testimony with a self-reflexive
meditation on documentary. Hu pioneered the trend for politically
sensitive oral history films. Here, he interviews the husband of
Bian Zhongyun, principal of a Beijing middle school beaten to
death during the Cultural Revolution by her own students. Told
his wife was dying in hospital, he grabbed his camera. Hu’s film
not only interrogates the Cultural Revolution, but also the compulsion and need to
witness, document, and record.
West of the Tracks (铁西区 Tiexi Qu)
Wang Bing, director (2001)
Wang Bing’s nine-hour elegiac epic is a strange echo of the
Lumière brothers’ much shorter Leaving the Factory (1895).
Instead of workers happily coming off their shifts, the three parts
of West of the Tracks trace the death of an iconic Mao era heavy
industrial zone and show people leaving forever. Smoky,
snow-covered, and dark, it made me think of the Zone in Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) as I sank into it and became immersed
in its thoughtful nostalgia.
Karin Chien
Karin Chien is an independent film producer and distributor based in New York City.
Karin has produced ten independent feature films, including most recently
Circumstance, the winner of the 2011 Sundance Audience Award. Karin is also the
2010 recipient of the Independent Spirit Producers Award. Karin is the president and
founder of dGenerate Films, the leading distributor of independent Chinese cinema in
North America.
Meishi Street (煤市街 Meishi Jie)
Ou Ning, director (2006)
A landmark in activist filmmaking in China, Meishi Street shows
ordinary citizens taking a stand against the planned destruction of
their homes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The subjects were
given cameras to film their firsthand confrontations with
the authorities.
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Disorder (现实是过去的未来 Xianshi Shi Guoqu de Weilai)
Huang Weikai, director (2009)
Huang Weikai’s one-of-a-kind news documentary captures, with
remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence, and seething anxiety
animating China’s major cities today. Made from more than 1000
hours of amateur footage, Disorder reveals an emerging
underground media, one that has the potential to truly capture the
ground-level upheaval of Chinese society.
Ghost Town (废城 Fei Cheng)
Zhao Dayong, director (2009)
A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its
cultural past while its residents piece together their existence. The
first Chinese independent documentary to screen at the New York
Film Festival, Ghost Town elevated the Chinese digital
documentary movement to new levels of poetry.
Crime and Punishment (罪与罚 Zui yu Fa)
Zhao Liang, director (2007)
A prime example of how independent documentaries are on the
vanguard of Chinese cinema, Crime and Punishment is an
unprecedented look at the everyday workings of law enforcement
in the world’s largest authoritarian society. With penetrating
camerawork, Zhao Liang patiently reveals the police methods used
to interrogate and coerce suspects to confess crimes—and the
consequences when such techniques backfire. With a cold,
objective eye, Zhao’s artistry withholds judgment in this cinematic slice of reality.
Jia Zhangke
Jia Zhangke, Chinese director, writer, and producer, was born in Fengyang, Shanxi in
1970. He began his career as a screenwriter and director in 1995 while studying
Screenwriting and Cinema Studies at the Beijing Film Academy. In 1998, his first
feature film, Xiao Wu, won the Wolfgang Prize and Netpac Award at the 48th Berlin
International Film Festival. In 2006, Jia’s Still Life received the Golden Lion Award in
the 63rd Venice International Film Festival. In 2009, he was awarded the Officer
Order of Arts and Letters of France. In 2010, he received the Leopard of Honor of the
63rd Festival del film Locarno. Jia Zhangke’s main filmography as director includes:
Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World, Still Life, 24 City, and I Wish I
Knew. Jia’s writings include: Jia’s Thoughts, Interviews with Chinese Workers, and I
Wish I Knew—A Record of the Film. He lives in Beijing.
West of the Tracks (铁西区 Tiexi Qu)
Wang Bing, director (2001)
The film depicts a panoramic scene of the decline of China’s
state-owned factories following the failures of its planned
economy. Landscapes of desolate factories and portraits of people
living in difficult predicament reflect a poetic sorrow.
Before the Flood (淹没 Yan Mo)
Yan Yu, directors (2005)
The Three Gorges Project is about to bury the thousand-year-old
ancient city of Fengjie in rising water. With their cameras in hand,
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the directors linger on the old town of Fengjie, in the process of
being demolished. Anticipating the monumental changes, people
here are trapped in a web of complex conflicts. With the city
submerged, will the memory of it endure?
Petition (上访 Shang Fang)
Zhao Liang, director (2009)
Petitioners from around the country carry their grievances to
Beijing, hoping to attain the justice that they have been deprived.
But in Beijing, their personal sufferings inevitably
become politicized.
La Frances Hui
La Frances Hui is Film Curator at Asia Society New York. She has curated film series
featuring contemporary Chinese documentary and fiction films, New Wave Japanese
cinema, Japanese documentaries, Thai cinema, and Iranian cinema.
Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (流浪北京Liulang Beijing)
Wu Wenguang, director (1990)
Considered the godfather of independent Chinese documentary
filmmaking, Wu Wenguang documents the life of struggling young
artists in Beijing. This film provides insights into how
contemporary Chinese artists whose works now fetch millions at
international auction houses might have begun their careers.
Disorder (现实是过去的未来 Xianshi Shi Guoqu de Weilai)
Huang Weikai, director (2009)
Filmmaker Huang Weikai meticulously assembles footage taken
by amateur videographers documenting chaos, violence, and
absurd happenings on the streets of China to create this pointed
essay of urban mayhem.
Petition (上访 Shang Fang)
Zhao Liang, director (2009)
How does justice work in China for the powerless? Zhao Liang
follows petitioners as they fight their causes all the way to Beijing
from all over the country, only to find themselves locked in an
unending limbo.
Railroad of Hope (希望之旅 Xiwang zhi Lü)
Ning Ying, director (2002)
Filmmaker Ning Ying is a rare breed among independent Chinese
filmmakers, not only because she is a woman, but also because she
attended the Beijing Film Academy alongside 5th generation
filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who decidedly do
not share the same aesthetics, concerns, and economic paradigms
as their younger counterparts. In this film, Ning follows seasonal
workers on their annual three-day gruesome train ride from
Sichuan to Xinjiang to work in the cotton harvest.
Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂 Xun Zhao
Lin Zhao De Ling Hun)
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Hu Jie, director
(2004)
The most fearless of all independent filmmakers, Hu Jie tackles
some of the most taboo subjects in China. This film documents the
life of a bright Beijing University student Lin Zhao (1932-68), who
was banished during the anti-rightist movement for her
outspokenness. In jail, Lin continued her defiance and wrote
critical commentary aiming at Mao Zedong on prison walls and any scraps of paper she
could find using her own blood. Lin died tragically and forgotten during imprisonment.
Zhang Xianmin
Zhang Xianmin is a film producer and critic, an organizer of the China Independent
Film Festival, and a leading figure of the independent film scene in China. Since 2005,
he has produced feature films such as Raised from Dust and Fujian Blue (best film in
the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2007). He is the author of two books—All
About DV and Invisible Images. An actor since 1994, he has starred in Rainclouds over
Wushan, Summer Palace and Raised from Dust. Zhang is also executive officer of the
Heaven Pictures Indie Cinema Fund.
Using (龙哥 Long Ge)
Zhou Hao, director (2008)
Zhou Hao always works on several productions simultaneously.
While making Using, he was also filming other documentaries,
including one about the cotton industry and another about young
athletes. The central character in Using is known as Brother Long
by other social outcasts. Originally from Northeast China, he
makes his living dealing drugs in Guangzhou, and eventually he is
trapped in drug addiction himself. He helps others, but also
requests help from others all the time, especially from the filmmaker Zhou. But what
Zhou offers cannot save him. The story is astonishing and thrilling.
Bing Ai (秉爱 Bing Ai)
Feng Yan, director (2007)
Feng Yan spent seven years in the Three Gorges region following a
peasant woman, Bingai, who refused to give up her land [for new
development]. Feng is greatly moved by Bingai’s uncompromising
personality. Feng says that most Chinese people give up their land
too easily, like losers. Meanwhile, the extraordinary effort Feng
puts into making this documentary is comparable to Bingai’s
perseverance. In this sense, the filmmaker and her subject are
mirror image of each other.
Crime And Punishment (罪与罚 Zui yu Fa)
Zhao Liang, director (2007)
Zhao Liang documents the routine work of a small police station
in Northeast China (on the border between China and North
Korea). He is a local there, but has lived in Beijing as a conceptual
and visual artist for many years. Despite what the film title might
suggest, the lively daily events captured do not provoke deep
reflection. But the arrangement of events, including the omission
and lengthening of certain plot materials, as well as the
philosophical investigation of the possibilities in human relations are all important
issues that face contemporary documentary making.
Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂 Xun Zhao
Lin Zhao De Ling Hun)
Hu Jie, director (2004)
One of the most primordial Chinese documentaries, it marked the
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beginning of the citizen documentary movement in China.
New Castle (新堡 Xinbao)
Guo Hengqi, director (2010)
New Castle depicts the current condition of rural China. It is
groundbreaking both in depth and breadth. A member of the
post-80s generation, Guo Hengqi is a younger and lesser-known
newcomer that I want to recommend.
Yingjin Zhang
Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese Literature at University of California, San
Diego. His English books include Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998), Screening
China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), From Underground to Independent
(2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), and A
Companion to Chinese Cinema (2012).
Fuck Cinema (操他妈的电影 Cao Tamade Dianying)
Wu Wenguang, director (2005)
A pioneer of Chinese independent documentary, Wu Wenguang
follows an impoverished migrant worker who is desperately
pitching his amateur screenplay in Beijing. Wu sometimes places
himself in front of the camera and is relentless in depicting the
film world as more deceiving than alluring. His critical
self-reflexivity establishes the film as both documentation and
performance, thereby encouraging the view to explore a new ethics
of the self vis-à-vis the other.
Last Train Home (归途列车 Guitu Lieche)
Fan Lixin, director (2009)
A compelling picture of large-scale migration in contemporary
China, this documentary enumerates the human costs of
globalization by tracking both long-distance journeys and daily
routines in the industrialized city and the hinterland countryside.
Stunning images of huge crowds outside the railroad station
during the spring festival and the persistent tension—even
physical violence—between a teenage daughter and her parents
raise serious questions regarding traditional value and human dignity in a
changing society.
Petition (上访 Shang Fang)
Zhao Liang, director (2009)
Shot over a decade, this documentary contains so many disturbing
images that keep the viewer on edge all the time. Concepts of
human rights and social justice appear so powerless—yet all the
more crucial—when petitioners are forced to live in a miserable
condition in Beijing. Perseverance and bravery on the part of
petitioners and activists are contrasted with the dismissal and
violence from the bureaucracy in a world of irrationality
and absurdity.
Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂 Xun Zhao
Lin Zhao de Ling Hun)
Hu Jie, director (2004)
China Through An Independent Lens | ChinaFile https://www.chinafile.com/china-through-independent-lens
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This audacious, heart-wrenching work challenges a culture of
indoctrination and oblivion by investigating a case of political
persecution in the early decades of the PRC. By retrieving writings
done with the victim’s own blood and interviewing her former
acquaintances, the film demonstrates that the past is not forgotten
and justice still awaits redress in China.
West of the Tracks (铁西区 Tiexi Qu)
Wang Bing, director (2003)
This epic 9-hour deliberation on the decline of massive industrial
manufacturing in northeast China compels the viewer to confront
the ghostly ruins of giant machines and deserted factories. The
soon-to-be-unemployed workers’ uncertain future evokes the
nightmare rather than the glory of socialist legacy and human
civilization. The slow-moving train that punctuates the film bears
witness to a science fiction-like world where even the machine is
abandoned in an industrial wasteland.
Topics: Arts
Keywords: Film, Documentary Film, Film and Television
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