Eclectic Shadows: Independent Documentary in a Changing China

By

Nilda Sky Canaves

2006933053

A Master’s Project submitted

in partial fulfillment of the

Degree of Master of Journalism

Journalism and Media Studies Centre

The University of Hong Kong

August 30, 2007

Acknowledgements

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:

INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY IN A CHANGING CHINA

By Nilda Sky Canaves

Introduction: Alternative Realities in Contemporary China

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

the ready, equipped for any athletic mishaps, and so on.

The images, replayed continuously, represent an officially sanctioned view of China’s

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

independent documentary filmmakers.

Independent documentary filmmaking is in full bloom in China. During the upcoming

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

cultural change over the last two decades.

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This momentous period of transformation in Chinese history is being recorded by a

burgeoning movement of independent filmmakers. Their work is made possible by the

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.

The resulting proliferation of independent documentaries creates a fascinating view of

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

breaking into headstands springs to mind).

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.

A Golden Week for Chinese Documentary

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.

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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

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

to documentary works, Yunfest typically drew 70 to 80 filmmakers from across China,

plus an international audience of artists, students, and academics numbering in the

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.

While independent filmmaking in China is tolerated by the authorities to a certain extent,

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

People’s Liberation Army.

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

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Chinese authorities. Daguanying depicts the tense struggles of residents in the

eponymous Beijing district as they fought contractors determined to raze their homes,

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

Documentary Film Festival at Songzhuang (mindful of the restrictions on events

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

film world, I made plans to attend.

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

traffic-choked suburban streets, then another stretch of highway. Finally, we are

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

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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

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.

Tomorrow’s selections haven’t been decided yet, she says.

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 Xianting, Wang Bing, Hu Xinyu: a veritable who’s who of China’s contemporary

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

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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

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 2001, invests in low-budget independent films, hosts a popular Chinese-

language website, and arranges screenings and film festivals, and lectures -- in short,

whatever it can do to promote independent film in China.

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.

“This was not our original intention.”

Audience members nod sympathetically, knowingly. There has been an ongoing

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

words and takes a bow, and then the show begins.

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Hu Xinyu’s Sister (Jiejie) has been selected to open the festival. Hu’s last film, The Man

(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-

in-law, mediating between a battling mother and daughter.

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.

What does that have to do with the present?”

Notwithstanding the official cancellation, Zhao tells me that an abbreviated, “private”

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

version of original festival.

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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

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

plays the host, treating everyone to dinner.

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,

and drank beer,” says Zhao.

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, which chronicles an African church in Guangzhou.

Meaning and Evolution of Chinese Documentary

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

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office at the back, smoking and shooting the breeze. When the afternoon screening is

about to begin, we head up to the theater together.

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, an attempt to understand his historically conditioned legacy.

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

powerful and gripping, provoking tears in the audience.

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

film, then wanders out of the theater.

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.

His comment underscores a wider problem in Chinese documentary—the lack of editing,

part and parcel of directors’ wishes to provide unmediated access to reality as they see it.

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And for Chinese who were raised on a steady diet of propaganda films, the express

reluctance to edit and comment is itself a sort of revolutionary act.

The man largely responsible for the pervasiveness of this filmmaking philosophy is Wu

Wenguang, At Caochangdi Workstation, Wu has established a center for documentary

film and performing arts center along with his partner, Wen Hui (a prominent

choreographer who founded China’s first independent dance company).

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

marathon viewing of documentaries in Caochangdi’s extensive archive.

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

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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

become essentially “vagrants” (mangliu). The themes of art, urbanization, and survival, in

varying manifestations, have been germane to the subsequent generation of independent

filmmakers in China.

Wu sums up his view of documentary film as: no narrative, no voiceover, minimal

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

most dedicated viewers with running times in excess of three hours.

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”

whenever possible, as Wu did.

“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

transformed documentary filmmaking in China.

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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

encouraging independent documentary filmmaking in China. During the Golden Week

holiday, Wu and Wen Hui are hosting an interdisciplinary celebration of international

film, dance and theater at Caochangdi.

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

testament to commercial success and western excess.

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

impressions of village governance. The project, funded by a collaborative European

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Union-China program on village governance, provides an especially stark illustration of

the power of new technologies to transform ordinary Chinese (in this case, peasant

villagers) into filmmakers capable of commanding audiences around the world. To

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

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

made an effort to vote.

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.

To Agneta Mogren, director of Stockholm’s Tempo Documentary Festival, watching

such 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

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films for the next Tempo festival in March 2008, which will be devoted exclusively to

films from China.

Deeply Personal

“My objective is to communicate, not to authenticate.”

-- Shao Yaozhen, village filmmaker.

The personal, descriptive nature of China’s independent documentaries contrasts sharply

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

understanding of the subjectivity of the documentarian’s task, in choice of subject,

filming and editing, that belies any claims to objectivity.

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

problems, but of the problem of human being.”

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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

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

avant-garde. It is a testament to the striking difference that a generation has made in a

deeply transitional society, highlighting the persistent coexistence of contradictions in the

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

Chinese film, including an entire section devoted to Chinese documentary films.

Despite the museum’s state-of-the-art features, including an IMAX theater, the

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

disappointed to find no sign of the independent documentary movement that I have

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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,

2007, University of Hong Kong.

Tobias Berger, curator, Para/Site Art Space. April 24, 2007, Para/Site Art Space, Hong

Kong.

Gu Yaping, documentary filmmaker, April 30, 2007, Jianwai, Beijing.

Hu Jie, documentary filmmaker. March 23, 2007 and March 26, 2007, University of

Hong Kong (Q&A sessions with students).

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.

Hama Haruka, coordinator, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. May 1,

2007, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing.

Li Hongyu, journalist, Southern Weekend. May 1, 2007, Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing.

Jim Laurie, director of broadcasting programme, Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

March 23, 2007, University of Hong Kong.

Agnes Mogren, festival director, Tempo Documentary Festival. May 2, 2007,

Caochangdi Workstation, Beijing.

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Wu Wenguang, documentary filmmaker. March 17, 2007 and May 2, 2007, Caochangdi

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,

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Lu, Xinyu. Jilu Zhongguo: dangdai zhongguo xin jilu yundong (Recording China: The

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Stevens, Nathaniel M. “Together With Migrants: Chinese Contemporary Art and Social

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China Independent Documentary Film Archive http://www.cidfa.com (accessed July 28,

2007).

Da Zha Lan Project http://www.dazhalan-project.org (accessed July 29, 2007).

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Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

http://bc.cinema.com.hk/adhoc/hkaff2006/docupower03.html (accessed July 29, 2007).

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28, 2007).

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