Shu Haolun's "No. 89 Shimen Road" won the top prize at CIFF, but wasn't shown on Awards Night.

The Nanjing-based China Independent Film Festival (28 October-1 November 2011), unlike the Beijing Independent Film Festival described previously, benefited from a substantial degree of official and semi-official “cover”. Unlike BIFF, there is a certain amount of practical compromise with official bodies and officially approved cinema: purity isn’t such an issue.  Co-sponsors include the Nanjing University School of Journalism and Communication, The Communication University of China (Nanjing) and the RCM Museum of Modern Art. The second day of CIFF includes a forum attended by local propaganda department officials. A sidebar of the festival (nicknamed the “Longbiao Section” for the dragon-headed insignia that appears at the beginning of all officially approved film prints in China) included screenings in a luxurious commercial cinema of several films that that are strictly speaking non-independent (i.e. censor-approved) but are made in a spirit of independence. These films would not appear at BIFF, for example, but might show later in official venues like Beijing’s Broadway Cinematheque MOMA, where approved “arthouse cinema” (i.e. non-commercial) finds a refuge in Beijing.

The core of CIFF, though, consists of four sections of new “unapproved” films: the feature film competition; a carefully curated set of documentary features — split in two, a “Top 10 Documentaries of the Year” section, and a set of new documentaries (the next ten best?); 2 sets of short fiction films; and two programmes of experimental films. Other sidebars included four films from Caochangdi Workstation’s Folk Memory Project and a Goethe Institute-sponsored set of films from the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

Pema Tseden's "Old Dog" was screened in place of "No. 89 Shimen Road"

As with BIFF, CIFF’s selection of new features was problematic: there has been a worrying dearth of excellent, festival-worthy new Chinese indie fiction features the past year and a half (with a few notable exceptions: in particular a mini flowering of Tibetan language features led by Pema Tseden and Sonthar Gyal). And I think the awards reflected this. The jury (directors Wu Wenguang & Zhang Ming, NYU professor Angela Zito, novelist Sun Ganlu, and curator/critic Li Xianting) gave their Grand Prize to Shanghai director Shu Haolun’s bold first fiction feature No. 89 Shimen Road. That film’s direct evocation of the June 4 1989 Tiananmen protest movement, however, may have caused a slight programming hitch. The winning competition film is usually given a final prominent screening following the awards ceremony. This time, CIFF replaced it, for “technical reasons”, with one of the Jury Prize winners: Pema Tseden’s very fine Old Dog. The other jury prize winner was Wang Chao’s welcome return to independent filmmaking Celestial Kingdom, a rather conceptual work of fiction infused with a kind of cold moral fury at Chinese society’s moral collapse.

Though there were some stunning experimental features (expect to see a few at prominent international film festivals coming soon), most of the action and controversy revolved around the new documentaries. This is where heart and soul of Chinese indie filmmaking lives today. There is what one could call a mainstream school of Chinese “realistic” documentaries — let’s call them ultra-realistic docs — that dominates today, both in film festivals in China and overseas, and that preoccupies the academic, theoretical, critical discussion that has flourished around Chinese documentary filmmaking.

Briefly (and I know I’m oversimplifying, but I plan to write more extensively on this later), this school is derived from direct cinema, under the aegis of the cinemas of Frederick Wiseman and Ogawa Shinsuke. These filmmakers strive for a seemingly transparent, so-called direct representation of “truth” and “reality”, unmediated by authorial (i.e subjective) intervention. Their inspiration can be historical, archival or ethnographic, with filmmakers immersing themselves for months or even years in the lives of their subjects, then emerging with often very long documentaries that transform their experiences into cinema with minimal “subjective” distortions. Issues of ethics then emerge: the relative positions of the filmmaker and subject (are filmmakers intellectuals looking down on grassroots subjects from a position of “superiority”?); issues of consent and (mutual, explicit, endorsed) exploitation; the ethics of representation of the other; and the rights of audiences, directors, subjects, and so-called experts to challenge all these things. A refreshingly different school, recently activated in Chinese indie doc circles and in evidence at this year’s CIFF, takes documentaries as strictly personal, autobiographical, even prima facie solipsistic texts, and films and edits accordingly, highlighting the presence of the filmmaker and the interaction between what’s in front of and who’s behind the camera. This obviates a host of problems outlined above, but introduces its own very different issues of aesthetic criteria, social relevance, and moral obligation.

The filmmakers' declaration posted at CIFF (photo: Cinemascope Magazine)

These issues boiled over in a striking way at CIFF. As I reported in Cinemascope, a seminar on documentary ethics, attended by theoreticians, critics, and filmmakers, drew the lines, as directors struck back (verbally, though forcefully) at the academics for attempting to control the discourse around their films. The next day, we had something like a dazibao moment: dazibao are literally “big character posters”, like the kind Chinese Maoist youth used to use to denounce their counterrevolutionary elders 40 years ago or, perhaps more to the point, like the posters that appeared denouncing lack of democratic progress at the Democracy Wall during the so-called “Beijing Spring” in late December 1978. Many of the documentary directors, along with festival staff and audience members, worked to produce a two page declaration rebutting what they saw as an unwelcome academic hegemony over their art. The manifesto (titled Shamans · Animals) was posted outside the closing ceremony hall and distributed by hand (I translated the document into English at Cinemascope). And the controversy continues: someone else will have to summarize the final chapter of this continuing debate. Those of us attending the CIFF closing ceremony cum late-night party could see, through a glass door, an intense meeting taking place in an adjacent room, where the filmmakers and critics were still at it, continuing to hash out and perhaps resolve some of their differences.

It’s striking to see how critically engaged cinematic discourse is with Chinese politics and culture at the present moment: when nervous, insecure officials feel the need to interfere; and where practitioners and analysts engage with anger and passion. After just a month watching movies in China, it’s hard to imagine a national cinema where the stakes are higher right now.

Relevant Classroom Use

Contemporary Chinese-Language Cinema, Nov 9-13, 2011

with Peggy Hsiung-ping Chiao, distinguished Taiwanese scholar and film producer, alumna and recipient of the 2011-12 William Randolph Hearst Fellow Award from the College of Communication, The University of Texas at Austin

Public Lecture: Chinese-Language Cinema – The New Image
Nov 11 (Fri) 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. Legends Room, the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center

Award Ceremony will be held at the end of the lecture and followed by the reception

Master Class: Filmmaking in China: From Art Cinema to Commercial Production
Nov 10 (Thur) 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. CMA 4.128

Public Screenings of Films Produced by Peggy Chiao

Buddha Mountain Nov 9 (Wed) 7:30 p.m. CMB Studio 4D (CMB 4.122)
Beijing Bicycle Nov 10 (Thur) 7:30 p.m. ART 1.102

Taiwan Cinema of the 2000s In Celebration of the Founding of the Taiwan Academy

Reception
Nov 11 (Fri) 5 p.m. -7:30 p.m. Legends Room, the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center

Public Screenings of Films Made in Taiwan

7:30 p.m. CMB Studio 4D (CMB 4.122)
Hear Me Nov 11 (Fri)
Blue Gate Crossing Nov 12 (Sat)
Yang Yang Nov 13 (Sun)

Please see the websites below for more details:

http://rtf.utexas.edu/events/contemporary-chinese-language-cinema

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/eastasia/events/19939

Relevant Classroom Use

"Disorder" compiles numerous videos capturing social disharmony in China

In an age where surveillance videos serve as a kind of documentary and internet gossip supercedes mainstream news cycles, the idea of tragedy is spun into a new place and time.

Several weeks ago, a surveillance camera in Foshan’s Guangfo Hardware Market captured an incident wherein a small van ran over a two-year-old child left roaming alone in the market. The footage, now viewed by millions on youku and other video-sharing sites, has incited a national uproar and, for many Chinese, something of an identity crisis. The video not only graphically documents the gruesome hit and run, but the footage also reveals the apparent apathy of numerous passersby subsequently ignoring the injured child on the ground. After being hit, two-year-old Yue Yue lay as the passed-over object of little pause by eighteen workers, shoppers, a mother and child, and an additional truck that crushed her feet. Not until a trash-collecting ayi encountered the child was help sought and Yue Yue rushed to a local hospital, where her condition is unknown.

The video’s stark presentation of the hit and run and ensuing parade of indifference is shocking to behold and has now inspired outrage and questioning—of both social responsibility and of an existential, moral depth—on the part of Chinese netizens and beyond. On one hand, the hit and run has unleashed a debate on the ethical fabric of Chinese society, a kind of national “soul-searching” that begs at the emotional “numbing” of Chinese citizens. But the practical concerns of involving oneself in such a loaded situation have also surfaced in defense of the passersby. The threat of court corruption, false accusations, and complicated legal procedures may have deterred those who declined to help the child. In a recent article for The Guardian, Tania Branigan cites a netizen who admitted he’d not have offered assistance if given the opportunity, his pragmatism outweighing popular reactions of pathos and horror:

“Would you be willing to throw your entire family’s savings into the endless whirlpool of accident compensation? Aren’t you afraid of being put into jail as the perpetrator? Have you ever considered that your whole family could lose happiness only because you wanted to be a great soul?’” he wrote.

In the film Disorder, Huang Weikai’s 2009 digital documentary collage, the action splices in and out of crime and punishment, malaise and passion in contemporary Guangzhou. The documentary presents a pastiche of the ineffectual jostling the ineffable through scenes of highway mayhem, escaped pigs running amok, and the victim of a car accident who may or may not be “faking it.” “This is fraud, don’t sympathize with him,” cries the offending driver, stuffing reparations cash in the injured man’s pockets. Huang’s urban wilderness is one of automobiles, water, animals, and civil disobedience that may be neither civil nor truly disobedient, but all represent cycles—of traffic, of gossip, of corrupted nature, of spectacle—running their course. In one particularly prescient fragment, a crowd comes upon an infant abandoned on a roadside. This child is no Moses in the reeds, nor is the baby an object of scorn, but simply a curiosity or a problem without a particularly interesting solution. After a period of some passive speculation, the passersby leave the frame and the fate of the infant unknown while the action of the film barrels forward.

What Disorder’s mode of representation shares with the now widely-discussed Foshan hit and run incident is a mode of documentation that occurs within a whirl of chaotic movement.  But while Huang’s subjects remain immortalized without context or consequence, the hit and run has made waves in the most incendiary, but most fleeting pool of public judgment: online message boards.

Web-based gossip and discourse are nothing new in China, though the knee-jerk severity of the Foshan tragedy has unleashed a more prolific discussion than most. For the past several years, the Chinese internet has evolved as a kind of free-for-all public forum, with message boards boasting snarkily opinionated criticisms of strangers’ untoward behavior. The phenomenon of the renruosousuo, or “human flesh search engine,” wherein netizens pass judgment on issues as private as adultery or sexual fetishes, made headlines in 2007 when a group of enraged netizens physically attacked a couple accused of marital infidelities. The renruosousuo, a kind of online-based kangaroo court, mines the internet for instances of moral ambiguity and, enacting a previously unseen brand of merciless vigilante justice both on and offline, rebukes those offenders seen as immoral or representative of a corrupt society. While the renruosousuo phenomenon persists, despite criticisms that the accusing netizens should keep their noses—and blogs—out of strangers’ personal affairs, the discussion over the hit and run may represent a new moral debate. While calls for punishment of the truck driver and unmoved crowds have prevailed, the internet population has rarely exhibited such shock and awe, such thorough examination of what the incident says about morality in Chinese society, legal procedures, and human nature.

The intended meaning of Disorder’s English title (The Chinese title Xianshi Shi Guoqu De Weilai, while ambiguous and thought-provoking in its own right, lacks the direct binary of the English title) has been widely discussed as referring to “disorder” meaning the absence of order, but also a “disorder” as a disease or ailment of some kind. In both interpretations, Huang’s title seems relevant in examining the hit and run tragedy and ensuing debate over a crisis in social responsibility and power. A mutilated child ignored by disaffected masses seems almost hyperbolic in its sensation—fodder as familiar to Eisenstein and Lang as might be exploited in a soap opera—but this melodrama is rendered uniquely odious in a news report. As in Huang’s vignette with the abandoned baby and the paralysis of decision surrounding another innocent life, the world’s abandonment of Yue Yue smacks sick with disorder. Here is a situation with no established code of legal or ethical decorum to follow, and implicated in another disorder, a sickly fear of interfering in the wrong business or simply getting mixed up in what is, for whatever reason, inexplicable.

The thesis of Huang’s film is a current, movement and migration of people and ideas and society. From the minutiae of film grains dancing across the print to the drive of automobiles and bodies through space, Huang’s conveyance creates something more powerful than a mere questioning of society—he shows us the way it is, broken apart, irregular, and in flux. To stop and focus on a particular incident in nearly impossible in the tide of Huang’s montage, much in the way the ebb and flow of news stories grab widespread attention and then fade away. The hit and run story is no doubt a topical tragedy, but the pace of society and internet gossip may likely see it soon eclipsed by a fresh news cycle. This moment of “soul-searching” for Chinese society has been a formidable one, but time persists as the real driving force here. As Huang’s montage shows us, even the most outrageous disaster, the most absurd calamity and outcry, will be pushed back by a new story, a new set of images, a new time for questions.

Relevant Classroom Use

The Sixth Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF) has had to switch venues twice following pressure by the police, obliging the organisers to inform festival-goers of the last-minute location changes.

BIFF, now in its sixth year, is showing over 50 cutting-edge feature films, documentaries, experimental works and animations in Songzhuang, a village on the outskirts of Beijing which is known as a hub for its avant-garde artistic community. The meddling by the authorities – while stopping short of shutting down the festival itself – has thrown into the spotlight the heavy scrutiny that the independent arts face in China by the one-party state.

Karin Chien, founder of dGenerate Films, a New York-based distribution company that specialises in distributing independent Chinese film to audiences worldwide, says she that was not surprised by the most recent interference from the authorities.

“Authorities caused BIFF to change venues twice, to the point where screenings were being held in the festival’s headquarters,” Chien, who was present at the launch event, wrote to IPS in an email. ‘So when the police showed up to stop the first screening, it wasn’t a surprise. The documentary version of BIFF was canceled by the authorities in May, so I suppose we were all holding our breath to see what would happen this time.”

Read the full report at IPS

Click through to access the full program of The 6^th Beijing Independent Film Festival

(compiled by Genevieve Carmel)

General Program Curator: Hao Jian

Art Director: Wang Hongwei

General Programmers: Hao Jian, Gan Lin, Liu Yonghong, Wang Hongwei

Forum Hosts: Zhu Rikun, Hao Jian, Yang Yang

Fiction

HELP Hu Yichuan

ADULT MAGAZINE Zhao Xianzu

WINTER SPRING Chen Zhimin

THE SENTIMENTAL ANIMAL Wu Quan

HUAN HUAN Song Chuan

THE DITCH Wang Bing

LOST IN THE MIRROR Ruoban

TOO MUCH CO² Lai Jinkun

HEAT WAVE Qi Zhonghua

EMBRACING NOT SLEEP YongLee

THE TOWER OF IMMORALITY Zhao Kai

FOLLOW THE SHADOW Xiao Han

BLIND WHITE  Sun Shi

THE HEDGEHOG Shi Nuo

FOUR COWARDS Mai Mai

TWENTY DOLLARS Lam See Chit

FLYING TRAIN He Suosi

TRIBULUS TERRESTRIS Deng Li

MY FATHER Li Pisen

Documentary  (Programmed by Zhu Rikun and Wang Hongwei)

25 WORDS Liu Shen

APUDA He Yuan

NO COUNTRY FOR PRIVATE HOUSES He Liren

DOCUMENTARY

PATHWAY Xu Xin

THE NEXT LIFE Fan Jian

BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE Wang Jiu-liang

SHATTERED Xu Tong

A VILLAGE WITH TWO Zha Xiaoyuan

THE HULLING RICE RECORD Gui Shuzhong

THE COLD WINTER Zheng Kuo

THE OPAQUE GOD Gu Tao and Zhou Yu

THE JOURNEY OF POETRY AND DISEASE Geng Jun

GAS Lin Xin
WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS Ji Dan

THE UNFINISHED HISTORY OF LIFE Cong Feng

MOTHER WANG PEIYING Hu Jie

PORTABLE OCCUPATION Xiao Ben

5+5 Xu Xing and Andrea Cavazzuti

FADING REFLECTIONS Sha Qing

MY MOTHER’S RHAPSODY Qiu Jiongjiong

SOLEMN TRANQUILITY Zhang Zanbo

A VIEW OUT OF MY WINDOW Yu Wenhao

MOST BEAUTIFUL DAY Yu Wenhao

Experimental (Programmed by Zhang Haitao)

A CERTAIN PERSON ON A CERTAIN DAY AT A CERTAIN TIME AT 798 ART DISTRICT Bai Budan

ARCHITECTURE Xu Ruotao

STRUCTURE OF CRYSTAL II Zhao Yu

THE EMPTY ROOM Hu Yangyi

A WORM Han Qiang

I TRAVEL THROUGH TIME TO MEET YOU AGAIN Yang Zhengfan

YOU SAVED ME ON YOUR HAND Chang Po-Yang

DISAPPEARING IN GREEN GRASS, WILD GRASS, AND DUCKWEED Zhang Zanbo

DUST Peng Xiang

AROMA Peng Xiang

Animation (Programmed by Wang Bo)

CITY INTRODUCTION Wang Zhan

THE BLUE HOUSE Gao Siyang and Yang Tianheng

FACE Zhang Tongyue

THE WALL Gu Zhihai

APPLE PICKING Chai Mi

TOGETHER FOREVER Ma Manjie

CHASING Wu Chao

African Section (Programmed by Gertjan Zuilhof and Zhu Rikun)

LI XIA’S SALON Omelga Mthiyane

SNAKE Samson ‘Xenson’ Ssenkaaba

FIRE FLY Caroline Kamya

ZUT! Amour Sauveur Memy

Retrospective Section about Satoh Makoto (Programmed by Zhu Rikun and Hiroki Nakayama)

LIVING ON THE RIVER AGANO Satoh Makoto

MEMORIES OF AGANO Satoh Makoto

OUT OF PLACE MEMORIES OF EDWARD SAID Satoh Makoto

Special Screening Section

CELESTIAL KINGDOM Wang Chao

Relevant Classroom Use

"The Transition Period" shows the inner workings of local politics in China

U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke’s recent arrival in Beijing generated intense discussions among Chinese nationals about how Chinese civil servants compare unfavorably to their American counterparts. As reported in a September 20th article in The Wall Street Journal’s blog “China Real Time Report,” the central government and its affiliated media bodies such as the Guangming Daily and the Xinhua News Agency tried to cast aspersions over the political motives behind the U.S. government’s choice of a Chinese-American ambassador. But Chinese online netizens focused on something entirely different. After seeing photos of Locke buying his own coffee and carrying his own bags, and learning that he flew coach to China, Chinese web commentators assailed their civil servants for squandering taxpayers’ money on ridiculously extravagant meals, cars, and the like, and for shirking physical work and other chores that they consider to be below their dignity.

Zhou Hao’s 2011 documentary The Transition Period, which will be playing next Monday in Chicago’s Doc Films series on Chinese independent cinema, looks at the working life of one typical Chinese civil servant by the name of Guo Yongchang before his transfer to a new post within the Chinese government. Shot over the last three months of Guo working as the party secretary of the Committee of the Communist Party of Gushi County in Xinyang Municipality of Henan Province, this documentary presents different facets of Guo’s work as a medium- to low-level Chinese civil servant in a leading position. This article aims at laying out some groundwork in China’s political system and its political environment for first-time viewers of the documentary, as sometimes the stories in the documentary are more complicated than their presentations. (Spoilers may follow.)

Gushi County has a population of about 1.6 million and a total of 32 towns. Like every other county in China, it is governed by both its county government and county party committee, with the latter having more power over the former. You may read the translation of a popular online joke below to learn about the different roles and levels of clout of five main constituents of the Chinese government:

An eighth-grader asks her mother about the Chinese government, “What does the government do?”

“The government is like me, your mom,” she replies. “I cook for you, wash your clothes, and make your bed. I do all the hard work in this house.”

“What does the party committee do?”

“Well, the party committee is like your father,” Mom replies. “He makes all the important decisions and orders me around to carry them out.”

“What does the People’s Congress do?” the girl continues.

“The People’s Congress is like your grandpa,” Mom replies. “He strolls around with his bird cage every morning but never does anything.”

“What does the Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference do?”

“Well, the Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference is like your grandma,” Mom replies. “She complains about everything, but she has no power to change anything.”

The girl asks her last question. “Then what does the commission of discipline inspection do?”

“The commission of discipline inspection is like you,” Mom replies. “You are sheltered, clothed, and fed by all of us, but all you do is check on us.”

For Guo Yongchang, since he is the party secretary of Gushi County, he has more power than Gushi County’s County Chief Fang Bo, who belongs to the county government. This explains why at the beginning of the documentary, many people, including businessmen and petitioners, are seen to go directly to Guo’s office to elicit information, seek advice, and beg for help. At one point in the documentary, Guo likens the role of a party secretary to that of a godfather. The analogy is not a stretch in reality.

A number of instances in the documentary support this analogy. For example, Guo half-suggested half-instructed a two-man envoy about their construction project that instead of building a 26-story building, they should make it 33-story to get his approval. For another, he visited the Bureau of Letters and Calls of Gushi County and approved visitors’ requests without consulting the proper procedures used by the bureau.

In fact, the latter incident echoes Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao’s generous donation of 10,000 yuan to a two-year-old boy suffering from leukemia. Premier Wen was said to have met the body’s poverty-stricken parents at Tianjin Train Station during an inspection trip to Tianjin in September 2009. Although both Guo and Premier Wen have helped the victims in these cases, such single acts of heroism will not bring structural changes to China’s political system.

"The Transition Period"

This is why Guo lives in contradictory terms with himself. In one of his reflective moments, he said that he supported a new policy by the standing committee of both the municipal and the provincial party committees in China, which was to handpick party officials with law degrees to join their league. He believed this to be a positive change because China should follow the rule of law, rather than the rule of people.

However, his words do not often match his actions. The biggest breach to his own words are probably the dinner parties and drinking parties that he has frequently attended. At one of the meetings, he urged the civil servants in Gushi County to help cut government spending by drinking less. According to the government report, Gushi County’s income amounted to 280 million yuan in 2008, but its spending surpassed 12 billion yuan in the same year. Yet, these reminders about frugality were never taken seriously, even by himself. Every time he was at a party, we see him emptying glasses after glasses and cups after cups of alcohol.

But as Zhou points out at the beginning of the documentary, Chinese civil servants have two major responsibilities, one being that of attracting investors. To do so, they often need to drink excessively at meals as drinking is an integral part of socialization, and deals are broached and sealed in drinking parties.

This convention inevitably applies to Guo. He confessed in a farewell party with the People’s Congress of Gushi County that he had big ambitions for Gushi when he was appointed its party secretary. He chose to socialize with businesspeople because he wanted to convince them to invest in Gushi.

In the same confession statement that Guo made in front of the retired officials, he said in tears that the work that he had done for Guishi had never been for his own career advancement. In fact, it all harmed his career. What he meant was that the central government would likely consider him a corrupt official who spent much without making a profit because Gushi’s spending far exceeded its income. However, the businesspeople he had entertained at various meals and parties thought differently. They considered Guo the best government official to work with and Gushi the best place to invest. Why? It is probably because Guo showered them with many forms of government concessions and subsidies.

Sadly, Guo’s understanding of government concessions and subsidies is rather limited. He told a story twice in the documentary to illustrate the relationship between government and businesses. The story goes that in 1958, heavy deforestation in Huzu Town of Gushi County caused a local reservoir to slowly dry out, and subsequently it stopped migrating egrets from coming. However, in the 1990s, after trees were planted back, the birds also came back. In Guo’s negotiations with businessmen, he usually offered money-related incentives as a welcome sign, be it a waiver on electricity or a generous monetary gift. If this is not an overstatement, then he seems to have naively treated trees as a metaphor for money in his story.

Yet money cannot buy everything. Local governments are supposed to bring systematic improvements to their districts, counties, etc. Human capital and infrastructure are only two examples of the areas that local governments can help improve.

Director Zhou Hao

Guo planned to leave his office before the Chinese New Year in 2009. News of his transfer naturally caused unease in the county government as well as in the municipal and provincial party committee because new officials needed to be appointed. Who would get appointed in what positions was always a potential source of resentment in the Chinese government and it could obstruct work within the government.

This can be reflected in a complaint made by Guo’s secretary. She mentioned that a civil servant working at the grassroots level did not want to be transferred to the committee of people’s political consultative conference because he would have no future there. Instead, he expressed wishes to work in the general office of the party committee or in the local labor bureau, which has become the ministry of human resource and social security today.

A complication is also involved in such transfers. Guo spoke jokingly about a personal encounter. He said that one time when he was in Beijing, a high-ranking government official met him and some others for dinner. After the meal, he saw him packing up all the food and riding off with his bicycle with many bags. Compared to the official, a county-level party secretary or a county chief lived much better materially.

It is certainly not true that all high-ranking officials are as thrifty as the one in Guo’s story. But most Chinese will agree that Chinese civil servants are not as egalitarian as Gary Locke. As some of you have probably read the following quote by Mencius: “One either does mental work or manual work. The one who does mental work rules, and the one who does manual work is being ruled.” The idea that a civil servant must not labor physically like a physical worker is deeply entrenched in the Chinese mentality. This explains why in the documentary, when the buses and cars that some officials rode got stuck in the New Year snow, they only helped with clearing the icy road begrudgingly, if they did so at all. They returned to their comfortable seats soon after making some gestures of help. County Chief Fang, who later becomes Party Secretary, even exclaims, “This is hard work!”

For the construction workers who blocked the government building of Gushi County to protest not getting paid for their hard work, they certainly have an indisputable screen image of “being ruled.” Outside the government building, they openly argue with Guo about their delayed payment. But once inside the government building, and their number reduced from a big group to a small clique of five representatives, they appear tamed, docile, and very quiet. Party Secretary Fang lambasts them for blocking the gates and obstructing government work, and he threatens them with tougher measures if they refuse to cooperate. The representatives leave with promises from Fang, though Fang seems more motivated to save his job than to help them with their problems.

For those who are curious about Guo Yongchang and want to find out more about his life, his Baidu entry states that he works at the bureau of letters and serves as an inspector now. However, he himself has been inspected by the State Bureau of Letters and Calls and the Ministry of Inspection under the State Council for corruption, and he was found to have received bribes of 740,000 yuan and an additional 10,000 USD. This may puzzle those who’ve seen the film, because in one secretly filmed scene he actually orders someone to return the money that had been sent to him as a bribe. Perhaps he returned some bribes and kept others; how he decided which to accept is left undisclosed. The reality is always more complicated than it seems.

Relevant Classroom Use

Participating filmmakers at the 2nd Annual Beijing New Youth Film Festival (photo: Genevieve Carmel)

The 2^nd annual Beijing New Youth Film Festival was held from September 9-18. Organized by the Trainspotting Culture Salon, this young festival makes space for new directors to showcase their work, connect with more experienced filmmakers, and receive feedback from peers and critics. Screenings and discussions were held at CNEX, Trainspotting, and the Wenjin International Art Center at Tsinghua University. The jury included a diverse team of authors, creators, and art critics, in addition to Fifth Generation filmmaker Lv Yue, who was the director of photography for works including Zhang Yimou’s To Live and Feng Xiaogang’s Aftershock.

The festival was divided into three program sections: An invitational section featuring new work by distinguished directors, a competition section for new directors, and an Austrian section, programmed by the Austro Sino Arts Program. The opening and closing films of the festival were Pema Tseden’s Old Dog and Zhao Liang’s Together, respectively.

This year’s New Youth Image Award was given to the early Li Xianting Film School graduate Zheng Kuo for his second documentary The Cold Winter, which follows the 2009 artist demonstrations against the demolition of art districts surrounding Beijing’s 798 art zone. The New Youth Image Award was also bestowed on painter-turned-filmmaker Tao Huaqiao for his partly dramatized documentary Luohan, about gang culture in his Jiangxi Province hometown. The animated film Piercing Me by Liu Jian and the documentary Mirror of Emptiness by Ma Li received Distinguished Technical Awards. Mirror of Emptiness, about a Buddhist monastery on the Tibetan Plateau, also won the Special Jury Award. Finally, Deng Bochao’s documentary Under the Split Light, about the disappearance and preservation of Hakka cultural traditions on Hainan Island, received the Humanitarian Award.

The following is a full list of films screened at the festival:

Annual Invitational Section

OLD DOG (2011), Pema Tseden

GAS (2010), Lin Xin

5+5 (2011), Xu Xing and Andrea Cavazzuti

SHATTERED (2011), Xu Tong

POETRY AND DISEASE (2010), Geng Jun

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS(2011), Ji Dan

A MONK’S TEMPLE (2010), Shen Shaomin

LAST CHESTNUTS(2010), Zhao Ye

MY MOTHER’S RHAPSODY  (2011), Qiu Jiongjiong

TOGETHER (2010), Zhao Liang

New Youth Competition Section

OLD DONKEY (2010), Li Ruijun

LUOHAN (2009), Tao Huaqiao

CHINESE CLOSET (2010), Fan Popo

THE COLD WINTER (2011), Zheng Kuo

UNDER THE SPLIT LIGHT (2010), Deng Bocha

APUDA (2010), He Yuan

EIGHT-INGREDIENT PORRIDGE (2010), Li Dong

THE DAYS (2010), Wei Xiaobo

MIRROR OF EMPTINESS (2010), Ma Li

LOST WALL (2010), Pan Zhiqi

MANGO (2011), Xu Zhipeng

STARVING VILLAGE (2011), Zou Xueping

SATIATED VILLAGE (2011), Zou Xueping

STRAY HOME (2011), Bai Zhiqiang

PIERCING ME (2009), Liu Jian

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH THREE WOMEN (2010), Zhang Mengqi

WANG LIANG’S IDEAL (2010), Gao Xiongjie

Austrian Section

INSIDE AMERICA (2010), Barbara Eder

OCEANUL MARE (2009), Katharina Copony

KAFKANISTAN (2007), Lukas Birk

FOLLOW ME (2010), Johannes Hammel

SOCIALISM FAILED, CAPITALISM IS BANKRUPT. WHAT COMES NEXT? (2010), Oliver Ressle

A DAY IN THE FACTORY (2010), Nico Mesterharm

EVERY SEVENTH PERSON (2006), Ina Ivanceau and Elke Groen

OUR DAILY BREAD (2005), Nikolaus Geyrhalter

CORE OF FLOCK (2009), Barbara Husa

ABENDLAND (2011), Nikolaus Geyrhalter

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Assembly line workers at Foxconn manufacturing facility subcontracted to Apple (photo: Kotaku)

A man, a plan, an empire: the death of a CEO can signify so much. Honorific accounts of the late Steve Jobs have been in no short supply since the Wizard of Apple’s passing last week. A tech developer and designer of the highest order, Job’s passing leaves a legacy of stunning innovation amid a complex corporate structure and a few harder-edged questions about what it truly means to change the world.

Among the litany of Jobs tributes, it might have been easy to miss Mike Daisey’s critical appraisal of Jobs’ legacy in The New York Times.  While acknowledging Jobs as a genius possessed of a “brutal honesty,” Daisey addresses the often-overshadowed underpinning of the Apple operation, such as the crowds of young Chinese migrants whose tireless, anonymous work built iPhones and MacBooks in factories throughout southern China. Referencing the 2010 spike in suicides at Shenzhen’s Foxconn factory, a manufacturer of popular products by Apple, Dell, and Sony, Daisey addresses Apple’s recent history in the now infamous manufacturing region:

As recently as 10 years ago Apple’s computers were assembled in the United States, but today they are built in southern China under appalling labor conditions. Apple, like the vast majority of the electronics industry, skirts labor laws by subcontracting all its manufacturing to companies like Foxconn, a firm made infamous for suicides at its plants, a worker dying after working a 34-hour shift, widespread beatings, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet high quotas set by tech companies like Apple.

Daisey has a poignant encounter with one worker “whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads:

“I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, “It’s a kind of magic.”

The worker is among the millions of Chinese who have flocked to the factories of southern China seeking a better life through job opportunities, but their quality of life is belied by Shenzhen’s grueling factory culture, which made global headlines in a tragic rash of suicides in 2010. One year later, the abuses these factories, bosses, and local governments remain largely unreformed, while corporations remain complacent with the current conditions.

Shu Haolun’s 2001 documentary Struggle calls attention to some of the most egregious damages enacted by the factory system: the neglect of wounded workers. After arriving in Shenzen as idealistic young job seekers, the three subjects of Shu’s film suffered similarly careless factory accidents brought on by overwork-induced exhaustion that robbed them of their limbs, rendering them jobless and powerless to retaliate against their former employers. With the help of an altruistic lawyer, Zhou Litai, a former factory worker and devoted advocate for migrant rights reform, the three victims have sought compensation, but the climate for injured migrants remains resolutely crooked. The supply of workers in China far outweighs the demand, Zhou reasons for atrocious working conditions and a lackadaisical approach to injured workers, and people become disposable.

Films like Struggle and media coverage of incidents like the Foxconn suicides—as well as a recent documentary project entitled Dreamwork China offering a more personal portrait of the ambitions and travails of ba-ling-hou and jiu-ling-hou (born in the 80s and 90s) Foxconn workers—endeavor to increase public awareness of this manufacturing framework as a human rights necropolis steadily cranking out goods for global consumption, but much responsibility is being shirked by the very corporations who commission these goods. Steve Jobs was a busy man with a future to design, but, by most recent accounts, he was not a man shy of self-aware, self-critical reflection. As a CEO, Steve Jobs served a symbol of his company: the Apple with a missing bite embodying the lowliest workers to the Silicon Valley bigwigs to the products they so proudly turned out. Remembering a man whose life and work made such strides to connect people and use technology to improve lives, it’s also worth recognizing the intense hardships— coupled with an undeniable struggle for basic human rights, voices, and social progress—withstood by those who supported the most essential infrastructure of his corporation. As Daisey concludes of Jobs:

If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,” in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers.

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Disorder (dir. Huang Weikai) tied for most mentions in PBS' poll of essential documentaries about China

Last month the acclaimed documentary Last Train Home, about migrant laborers in China, made its US television premiere as part of the POV series on PBS. As part of the film’s online promotional efforts, POV polled several filmmakers and experts in Chinese cinema to recommend top documentaries and features about China. We were pleased to see that Disorder tied for most mentions among all films, including a recommendation by Last Train Home director Fan Lixin. Fan writes of Disorder: “A powerful and utterly honest mishmash of the most bizarre images from contemporary Chinese society, with an almost cynical sarcasm. I’ve never seen anything quite like it!”

Other documentaries receiving multiple recommendations: Petition by Zhao Liang, whose Crime and Punishment is distributed by dGenerate, and Up the Yangtze by Yung Chang (who also took part in the poll). Strangely, Blind Shaft also tied for most mentions in this “documentary” poll, even though it is a narrative feature.

Not surprisingly, Jia Zhangke was the most recommended filmmaker, with six mentions spread across five titles. His documentary Dong is distributed by dGenerate.

All the recommendations can be found at the POV website on PBS.

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Mr. Zhao’s evolution from a filmmaker hounded by the government to one whom it celebrates offers a window into hard choices that face directors as they try to carve out space for self-expression in China’s authoritarian system. Like Mr. Zhao, many seek to balance their independent visions with their desires to live securely and win recognition.

Listen to a podcast interview with Wong from the Sinica podcast on Popup Chinese.

We interviewed Wong about his experience reporting this story and its broader relevance on art and culture in contemporary China.

dGF: What attracted you to report on this story?

Edward Wong: While living in Beijing, I had watched and greatly admired two of Zhao Liang’s films, “Crime and Punishment” and “Petition.” In November 2010, I met him at a dinner in the 798 arts district with Karin Chien, the founder of dGenerate Films. At that time, he was working on “Together,” a documentary that the Health Ministry had commissioned as a public service announcement about people with HIV/AIDS. For the film, he had just recorded a song by Peng Liyuan, the celebrity wife of Xi Jinping, the man who is expected to become the next leader of China. Zhao also told me about how he had used social networking websites to track down interview subjects with HIV/AIDS. This new project sounded interesting. We talked a lot too about the making of “Crime and Punishment,” and about how he had lied to police officers to get access to their station house in northeast China.

I found Zhao to be an engaging person, and I thought that he might make an interesting profile. As I spent time with him, I found he had a lot of interesting things to say not only about making films, but also about the role of artists and intellectuals in China.

dGF: Given that this story is part of a series on Culture and Control in China, do you see the issues and challenges that Zhao Liang faced common to other cultural sectors or artists in China?

Wong: Yes, the challenges that Zhao Liang confronts every time he makes a film are familiar to artists across China. The question I keep hearing from artists here, especially those who work in a mass medium like film, is: How do you maintain your artistic integrity and get your work seen without bowing too much to government restrictions? In the American system, it’s often market forces, represented most powerfully by studio executives, that hold sway over filmmakers. Here, the government can have great influence over a film if the filmmaker wants wide distribution for it. Filmmakers who want their films seen in theaters both engage in self-censorship and negotiate with censors over scripts and rough cuts.

Even though Zhao went through that process on “Together,” the documentary still turned out to be a socially committed film, and Zhao doesn’t seem to have bought into the system – he told me his next film will be made in an independent manner, outside the censorship process and with foreign financing. But if he does go the independent route, which is a familiar one for him, he’ll have to live with the fact that the film almost certainly will not be seen by many Chinese. During our interviews, he told me repeatedly that he makes films for a Chinese audience.

Gu Changwei, a supervising director on “Together” and a much more prominent filmmaker than Zhao, has chosen to make movies within the system. On every production, he has to negotiate with representatives of the state. He told me the film bureau and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or Sarft, are “the most conservative – there’s no way to be more cautious than they are.” This is what many artists working in different media across China face: negotiating their work and their relations with conservative censors and officials, many of whom come from an older generation.

dGF: What were the most significant ways that working on this article changed or enhanced your understanding of independent films and filmmakers in China?

Wong: The most interesting aspect of researching this article was seeing the dialogue between filmmakers with an independent spirit and the state. During the reporting process, I learned in detail from Zhao Liang, Gu Changwei and others about the negotiations that take place between filmmakers and representatives of the government, particularly with censors from the film bureau. I felt privileged to get a glimpse into the way the system works. Zhao described for me some of the discussions he had with censors and officials over content in “Together.” It was interesting for me to hear what roles various government bodies played – the Health Ministry, the Central Propaganda Department and the film bureau of Sarft.

Gu had an interesting story about navigating the system in order to get approval from the film bureau for “Love for Life,” the narrative fiction film that was a companion piece to “Together.” Once Gu had the idea for the film, he had to first get support from the Health Ministry before film officials would approve the project, since it was on a topic (HIV/AIDS) that some officials still consider sensitive, and it was based on a banned book. Once health officials had agreed to back the project, the film officials knew they could shift the blame to the health officials if anything went wrong, so they granted approval. This process of constant negotiation was fascinating to me.

As for as filmmakers working outside the system, I found in my reporting that independent directors and producers are dedicated to their visions of society and work together in a community to realize those visions even when there is little financial backing and no official support. Despite the constant attempts by the state to control the industry, that fierce spirit makes me optimistic about Chinese film.

dGF: How would you characterize the response to your article, especially in comparison between Chinese and non-Chinese readers?

Wong: The response has been consistently positive. Many Western readers told me they find Zhao Liang compelling and thought the narrative revealed to them the intricacies of artistic creation and political dialogue in China. My Chinese friends who have read the article in English said it accurately shows the nuances in making choices that relate to the state.

If you’re an intellectual in China, these are choices and decisions you grapple with all the time, in ways big and small, and I think many intellectuals in China get frustrated with how Westerners often frame those choices: as a duality between being a complete rebel or being a sellout. For many foreigners, Ai Weiwei, for better or for worse, has come to represent the ideal of an artist in China. Zhao Liang and many Chinese intellectuals do not follow Ai Weiwei’s lead. They take a more pragmatic path. Certainly they create art or start public conversations that make many officials uncomfortable, but they sometimes acquiesce to demands by officials too. And the government and the Communist Party are not monolithic. There are officials who quietly support even some of the more controversial work by these artists. There’s a fluidity in China, and people move in both directions. One Chinese friend wrote this to me in an email: “The piece did a good job showing the readers the dilemma artists like Zhao are facing in China today, and that agreeing to work within the system can have many subtle implications and is not as black-and-white as ‘going over to the dark side.’” Last time I checked, there wasn’t much response from readers on Zhao Liang’s microblog, but one person commented that the story was the most complete one he or she had read on Zhao, and that Zhao was “niubi” which is Chinese slang for ultra-cool.

dGF: Reading about Zhao Liang being caught between two worlds (the independent network and the state apparatus), I couldn’t help wondering if it was analogous to your own position as a reporter working in China for a U.S. newspaper. What sort of challenges do you experience in your role as a foreign reporter? Does working for a major publication like the NY Times bring any kind of stigma (positive or otherwise) to your interactions in China?

Wong: Working for a Western news media organization in China draws a wide range of reactions from ordinary Chinese. It really can vary, so I don’t want to generalize. From my experience with the central government and with local authorities, Chinese officials are at best ambivalent and at worst downright hostile to foreign journalists. That reaction can change from region to region, or as broader political trends in China shift.

I wouldn’t say my situation is analogous at all to that of Chinese artists and intellectuals. The fact that I have foreign citizenship makes a big difference in my relationship with the Chinese state, obviously. I don’t feel the pressures from the state as keenly. Also, I work in the American mass media system, which has much wider latitude for freedom of expression than mass media in China.

That said, I do think that whenever you work in an institution, you become bound by the limits of that institution, and that’s where I would say my experience might have some overlap with that of Chinese artists and intellectuals. As is obvious to anyone who reads it, The New York Times has strict formats in which news is presented and rules that govern how reporters write their stories. It can be something as simple as choice of words, for example, or it can have more to do with judging what crosses the line between so-called objective reporting and opinion. These are things that all reporters at The New York Times and in other news media organizations negotiate everyday. I have great respect for The New York Times and its role in public discourse in the United States, but there are boundaries that reporters are always trying to navigate and limits that they are testing. I believe this situation helps me empathize with Chinese artists and intellectuals, though the world in which they operate is a much tougher one, and they are much braver souls than me.

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BIOGRAPHY

Li Ning is a dancer, sculptor, performance artist, and filmmaker based out of Jinan, China. His first film is the documentary Tape.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Tape
2010, 168 min, documentary

- Official selection at the 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2011
- Official selection at the 4th Reel China Film Festival at New York University, United States, 2008

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