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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

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China Through An Independent Lens | ChinaFile https://www.chinafile.com/china-through-independent-lens

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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)


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.



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)


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.



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 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.


Lin Zhao De Ling Hun)


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.



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.


Lin Zhao de Ling Hun)



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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.



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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