Amid China’s epochal transformations over the last two decades, new documentary aesthetics emerged, as the overwhelming cultural and societal challenges caused by China’s transition to a free-market economy compelled professional and amateur filmmakers alike to capture new realities on screen. Working largely outside the state media apparatus, pioneer filmmakers like Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, and Duan Jinchuan provided bracing alternative visions of both society and filmmaking, with an ethos based on direct observation of reality and uncensored personal expression. This newfound fascination with unbridled realism also informed the work of filmmakers as disparate as Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke and artists like Ai Weiwei and Ou Ning. The proliferation of the “reality aesthetic” has led to more complex notions of what reality means and how it is represented.
This series aims to reflect the evolution of documentary practice in China over the past 25 years, revealing the growth and ever-increasing influence of nonfiction film and media. The selections, encompassing a wide expanse of Chinese film and media, including state-approved productions, underground amateur videos, and Web-based Conceptual art, provide a vivid look into a society in perpetual transformation. Some screenings will be presented by the filmmakers and scholars.
Related Film Screenings
Upcoming
Shang fang (Petition (long version))
2009. China. Directed by Zhao Liang. Filmed over the course of 12 years, Zhao Liang’s landmark documentary explores the world of petitioners who travel to Beijing to seek justice back in their hometowns. Zhao uses secret cameras to capture a bureaucracy that leaves people waiting for years for their cases to be heard. The film takes a startling self-reflexive turn when Zhao becomes entangled in a heartbreaking tragedy that unfolds between a petitioner and her daughter. This is a stirring achievement in both journalistic dedication and documentary ethics. This 5-hour long version of Petition captures in greater detail and complexity the stories of the many petitioners who seek justice. Courtesy of Zhao Liang. 30 minute intermission. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 310 min.
Liu lang Beijing (Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers)
1990. China. Directed by Wu Wenguang. Shot before and after the Tiananmen Square incident, Wu Wenguang's portrait of five artists eking out a life in the nation's capital is considered the birth of the Chinese independent documentary movement. The film's open, observational structure and handheld camera work are hallmarks of the movement today, as is its self-reflexive awareness of the documentarian's role, with a sense of intimacy and solidarity between filmmaker and subject. Courtesy of Wu Wenguang/China Independent Documentary Film Archive. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 70 min.
Lao ma ti hua (Disturbing the Peace)
2010. China. Directed by Ai Weiwei. Artist and social activist Ai Weiwei has made several documentaries about his activities, but nowhere is he as prominent as in this chronicle of his troubles with local authorities during a trip to Chengdu in 2009. Traveling to support a detained civil rights advocate investigating corruption related to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Ai is assaulted in his hotel room and arrested by police. His subsequent investigation is both an unprecedented object lesson in civil rights self-defense and something akin to performance art, as he confronts the justice system to a breathtaking degree. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio. In Mandarin, Sichuan dialect; English subtitles. 78 min.
Cha fang (The Questioning)
2013. China. Directed by Zhu Rikun. As a producer, festival programmer, and distributor, Zhu Rikun has long served as a bastion of China’s independent documentary movement. On July 25, 2012, he visited three human rights workers in Jiangxi province and was questioned by local police. Zhu turns their encounter into a real-time demonstration of civil disobedience, deconstructing the logic of interrogation. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 22 min.
Wo hai you hua yao shuo (When Night Falls)
2012. China. Directed by Ying Liang. Through his four narrative features and numerous shorts, Ying Liang utilizes low-budget digital video and observational documentary techniques to produce withering portraits of ordinary Chinese caught in webs of injustice. Inspired by the 2008 case of a young man’s murder of six Shanghai police officers, Ying’s newest feature focuses on the killer’s mother, whose own life is thrown into disarray by both the brutality of the criminal justice system and the netizens who oppose it. Uncommonly attentive to its mostly mute heroine, the film is a quiet plea for humanism amid forces that breed its opposite. Courtesy of the Jeonju International Film Festival. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 70 min.
Xianshi shi guoqu de weilai (Disorder)
2009. China. Directed by Huang Weikai. Assembling footage from a dozen amateur videographers, Huang Weikai presents a unique anti-city symphony of urban dysfunction that is alternately hilarious and horrifying. Pigs racing down a busy highway, government VIPs swimming in a polluted river, a hit-and-run victim being bribed to leave the scene, and an abandoned baby gawked at by passersby are all stranger-than-fiction visions that could never be aired on Chinese state television. These images represent both an alternative media culture of amateur videographers and viral video netizens, and the chaos seething through the cracks of a society in rapid transformation. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. In Mandarin, Cantonese; English subtitles. 58 min.
San Yuan Li
2003. China. Directed by Ou Ning, Cao Fei. China’s rapid modernization literally engulfs the village of San Yuan Li within the surrounding skyscrapers of Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people. The villagers, who move to a different rhythm, thriving on subsistence farming and traditional crafts, resourcefully reinvent their traditional lifestyle by tending rice paddies in empty city lots and raising chickens in makeshift rooftop coops. Led by visual artists Ou Ning and Cao Fei, a dozen videographers, including Huang Weikai, who went on to direct Disorder, collaborated on this highly stylized village-in-a-city symphony, exploring the modern paradox of China’s economic growth and social marginalization. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. No dialogue. 45 min.
Chunmeng (Longing for the Rain)
2013. China. Directed by Yang Lina. With Siyuan Zhao, Jia Fu, Pong paz roj Dej. Over the last 15 years, Yang Lina made her name as one of China’s most notable women documentarians. Her first narrative feature, in which a Beijing housewife is seduced by a mysterious phantom lover who threatens to destroy her comfortable middle-class life, is a daring hybrid of genres, mixing an erotic ghost story with a deeply personal religious quest. Yang’s surreal depiction of female sexuality is made even stranger by moments of social documentary, yielding a highly original vision of subjective desires commingling with China’s contemporary reality. Courtesy of Chinese Shadows. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 98 min.
Yi chang ge ming zhong hai wei lai de ji ding yi de xing wei (Some Actions which Haven’t Been Defined Yet in the Revolution)
2011. China. Directed by Sun Xun. This complex, beautifully rendered woodprint animation—made using a method that was popular in the decades following the 1949 formation of the Peoples Republic of China—presents a dark portrait of the contemporary world. No dialogue. 13 min.
Wo sui si qu (Though I Am Gone)
2007. China. Directed by Hu Jie. The documentaries of Hu Jie, China's most fearless historical filmmaker, probe lost stories of the nation’s revolutionary past. His profile of 85-year-old Wang Qingyao reveals how Wang extemporaneously performed the role of documentarian when his wife, the school teacher Bian Zhongyun, was beaten to death by her students as an accused reactionary during the Cultural Revolution. Wang’s photos of the incident emerge as a historical precursor to the contemporary documentary movement in its efforts to record social injustices and marginalized figures. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 68 min.
Jiu zu fan bao de cun (The Satiated Village)
2011. China. Directed by Zou Xueping. Wu Wenguang’s Folk Memory Documentary Project, which encourages amateur filmmakers to investigate the hidden histories of their home villages, gave rise to Zou Xueping’s first feature, The Starving Village, for which Zou interviewed residents of his hometown about their experiences during a famine that killed tens of millions. In this follow-up, Zou tries to screen the film in her village, only to meet resistance from family and neighbors fearful of official reprisal. Undeterred, Zou uses her camera to mediate her hometown’s ability to confront its tragic past, with near-miraculous results. Courtesy of China Independent Documentary Film Archive. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 88 min.
Niu pi er (Oxhide II)
2009. China. Directed by Liu Jiayin. In 2005, a 25-year-old Beijing film student issued her startling debut film, Oxhide, a stylized feature film starring her parents as themselves, shot entirely in their tiny apartment. Her self-sufficient follow-up, Oxhide II, takes her highly formalized approach to everyday life even further, depicting her family’s preparation of a dumpling dinner in real time, set across nine distinctly positioned shots around a multi-purpose table. A work of great precision and intimacy, Liu’s film probes deep into deceptively banal surfaces to reveal the sublime mysteries of a Chinese family. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. In Manadarin; English subtitles. 133 min.
Er shi si cheng si (24 City)
2008. China. Directed by Jia Zhangke. With Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen, Liping Lu. Throughout his distinguished career, Jia Zhangke has blurred the boundary between documentary and fiction like no other Chinese director. At a state-owned factory being demolished to make way for a luxury apartment complex, Jia explores the history of the site from the 1950s to the present through nine documentary-style interviews. Five are with actual residents of the site; four are fictional stories delivered by professional actors. Through this hybrid storytelling mode, Jia exposes the fictional constructs behind documentary factuality, and reflects on the performative aspects of history and memory. Courtesy of Cinema Guild. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 107 min.
Cao ta ma de dianying (Fuck Cinema)
2005. China. Directed by Wu Wenguang. This unflinching x-ray of show business, worthy of Billy Wilder, is an odyssey through the dark side of Chinese underground cinema. The film follows a young man from the countryside trying to break into the movies as an actor and screenwriter, a series of young women auditioning for the coveted role of a movie prostitute, and a pirate DVD seller hounded by the police. With this fresh crop of lost dreamers seeking success in the culture industry, Wu offers a pointedly cynical update to his Bumming in Beijing while exposing the exploitive undercurrent of Chinese independent filmmaking—including his own. Courtesy of Wu Wenguang/China Independent Documentary Film Archive. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 150 min.
Zhongguo cunmin yinxiang jihua (China Villagers Documentary Project)
2005. China. Various directors. Wu Wenguang and filmmaker Jian Yi trained 10 villagers from across China to make films documenting electoral processes in their home villages. Pursuing the ideal that anyone can become a documentary filmmaker, this project sparked a new model of Chinese participatory documentary, with community members depicting their own lives. The resulting works—surprisingly humorous, and filled with their own local flavor—vividly reveal the realities of village life and democracy in action. Courtesy of China Independent Documentary Film Archive. In Mandarin, various Chinese dialects; English subtitles. 95 min.
Shang fang (Petition (two-hour version))
2009. China. Directed by Zhao Liang. Filmed over the course of 12 years, Zhao Liang’s landmark documentary explores the world of petitioners who travel to Beijing to seek justice back in their hometowns. Zhao uses secret cameras to capture a bureaucracy that leaves people waiting for years for their cases to be heard. The film takes a startling self-reflexive turn when Zhao becomes entangled in a heartbreaking tragedy that unfolds between a petitioner and her daughter. This is a stirring achievement in both journalistic dedication and documentary ethics. This succinct two-hour version of Petition, edited for international festivals and television, offers a dramatically condensed version of Zhao’s five-hour investigation, revealing how the observational aesthetic is reconfigured for general audiences. Courtesy of Cinema Guild. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 124 min.
Jiao dai (Tape)
2010. China. Directed by Li Ning. Avant-garde dancer Li Ning documents five years of his struggle to balance his career as a choreographer with a dance troupe of committed college students, and his responsibilities as a son, husband, and father. The artist’s life becomes intertwined with the film and with his own obsessions. Tape utilizes a variety of approaches, including first-person documentary, guerilla street video, and even homemade CGI, to produce an uncanny portrait of a private life enacted in public. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. In Mandarin; English subtitles. 120 min.
Past
Jiu zu fan bao de cun (The Satiated Village)
2011. China. Zou Xueping. 88 min.
Zhongguo cunmin yinxiang jihua (China Villagers Documentary Project)
2005. China. Various directors. 95 min.
Cao ta ma de dianying (Fuck Cinema)
2005. China. Wu Wenguang. 150 min.
Heshang (Presenting River Elegy)
1988. China. Xia Jun, Mi Ling Tsui. 58 min.
i.Mirror by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei) Second Life Documentary Film
2007. China. Cao Fei. 28 min.
Baring Your Stuff: An Evening with Wu Wenguang
Since his landmark 1990 feature Bumming in Beijing, Wu Wenguang has exerted a profound and lasting influence on Chinese documentary and independent cinema. Whether through his own documentaries or his grassroots initiatives with emerging and amateur filmmakers, Wu espouses a fearless ethos that challenges the divisions between public society and the private self. In a conversation with Kevin B. Lee, Wu shares his experiences working at the vanguard and reflects on the future of the independent scene in China.
Liu lang Beijing (Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers)
1990. China. Wu Wenguang. 70 min.
Mama
1990. China. Zhang Yuan. 100 min.
Bi an (The Other Bank)
1994. China. Jiang Yue. 140 min.
Bajiao nanjie shiliu hao (No. 16 Barkhor South Street)
1996. China. Duan Jinchuan. 100 min.
Hui dao feng huang qiao (Out of Phoenix Bridge)
1997. China. Li Hong. 120 min.
Lao gou/Khyi rgan (Old Dog)
2011. China. Pema Tseden. 88 min.
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Parts 1 and 2)
2003. China. Wang Bing. 370 min., plus 60 min. intermission at 185 min.
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Part 3)
2003. China. Wang Bing. 186 min.
Beijing de feng hen da (There's a Strong Wind in Beijing)
1999. China. Ju Anqi. 50 min.
Xi wang zhi lu (Railroad of Hope)
2002. China. Ning Ying. 56 min.
An Evening with J. P. Sniadecki
Yumen
2013. China/USA. Huang Xiang, Xu Ruotao, J. P. Sniadecki. 65 min.
San Yuan Li
2003. China. Ou Ning, Cao Fei. 45 min.
Xianshi shi guoqu de weilai (Disorder)
2009. China. Huang Weikai. 58 min.
Er shi si cheng si (24 City)
2008. China. Jia Zhangke. 107 min.
Niu pi er (Oxhide II)
2009. China. Liu Jiayin. 133 min.
Jiao dai (Tape)
2010. China. Li Ning. 120 min.
Wo hai you hua yao shuo (When Night Falls)
2012. China. Ying Liang. 70 min.
