Originally published on ArtinChina issue 3

Chinese version published on Contemporary Art and Investment, 2011 June issue

The International Conference “New Generation Chinese Cinema: Commodity of exchange” took place at King’s College London on 26^th and 27^th May 2011. It is regarded as the first international conference that focuses solely on contemporary Chinese cinema in the UK.

The conference focuses on how China’s market forces and new eco-political role on the global stage have impact on Chinese cinema from the year 2000 onwards. It aims to explore a diverse range of films, from commercial Chinese blockbusters to regional films; from popular genre waves to avant-garde art works; from ethnographic documentaries to amateur works that use digital filming techniques, to examine how these films are exchanged as commodities within the global and local film festival circuits and markets.

The conference was initiated by three PhD students researching on Chinese cinema in London: Keith Wagner and Luke Vulpiani from King’s College London, and myself Tianqi Yu, from University of Westminster. For both domestic and international audiences alike, Chinese cinema has played an indispensable and compelling role in understanding the rapid transformation of contemporary Chinese society. For international audiences, their encounter with Chinese cinema has gone through a discursive process. Typically, international audiences first got to know Chinese language films through the Hong Kong martial art films that dominated local video and DVD stores. Recent Chinese blockbuster films, such as Zhang Yimou’s Hero recaptured international attention on Chinese cinema in the new millennium. After the Kung Fu films and the ‘Fifth Generation’ cinema, the ‘Sixth Generation’ filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke refreshed the global view on Chinese cinema through international film festivals and art house cinema.

The political economy of film production and exhibition, as well as the film texts reflect the social economic transition brought about under the fundamental reorientation of Chinese economy to a neoliberal model. We believe it is time for a new conceptualization of Chinese cinema, to understand the new film culture. Throughout the conference, the four Chinese cinema experts lead the debates through inspiring and stimulating keynote speeches. These included Professor Chris Berry (Goldsmith College London/ IFK, Vienna), Professor Yomi Braester (University of Washington), Professor Zhang Zhen (New York University), and Professor Julian Stringer (University of Nottingham). Twenty-three scholars and PhD students presented papers in 7 panels. Mostly based in the UK or USA institutions, these scholars are mainly of Chinese, British, American, Italian and Korean nationalities. Two recent independent films, the award-winning fiction Good Cat (2008) by the young promising talent Ying Liang, and the experimental first person documentary Martian Syndrome (2010) by an amateur filmmaker Xue Jianqiang were screened to the delegates and local audiences.

Taking various perspectives, the conference papers examined new Chinese cinema both textually and contextually: some examined new aesthetics, new genres and directors, others explored the political economy of film (co)productions, and exhibitions that have forged new forms of cultural space and networks. As a co-organizer and a participant of this conference, I observed three main themes devolved from the discussions.

1. 1. Approaching cinema as a culture: New studies on Film Festivals, screening space, and film reception

The rise of trans-border Chinese cinema shaped by international film festivals in the PRC

Professor Chris Berry, one of the most well-known Chinese cinema scholars, and one of the first to introduce Chinese cinema studies to the Western academic world, gave a plenary keynote. He examined how international film festivals in the PRC have contributed to the emergence of Chinese trans-border cinema. This opening speech demonstrates one of the key features of recent Chinese film studies (also film studies in general), which is the shift from approaching film texts, to taking cinema as a culture. By positioning this ongoing study in the field of film festival studies, Berry argued that there has been a lack of scholarly publications on Asian film festivals. While most current scholarship developed from the Euro-American context, studies on film festivals in Asia need to examine more carefully the local forces and circumstances that have shaped them.

Berry started the talk by inviting the audience to reflect his recent observation, that this year’s Cannes film festival has no Chinese films nominated in the competition. In fact, this is the first time in almost twenty years. In addition to other possible reasons, he asked: “Could it be that Chinese-language filmmakers are finally beginning to shake their dependency on awards? On the one hand, the growth of the festival circuit and the associated decline and even death of the arthouse circuit means that awards often do not lead to distribution and income anymore. On the other hand, the days when there were no audiences for films in China and ticket prices were ridiculously low are over, and the local industry is growing very rapidly both in terms of box office and financial turnover.” Berry points out that this change may well signify some possible structural transformation in the Chinese language film world.

He analysed the transformation of the current two most important international film festivals in the PRC: the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) and the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), (realising the Beijing International Film Festival that just launched in Spring this year, “may well have the aim of eclipsing both SIFF and HKIFF”). For Berry, these two film festivals have played an important role in transforming Chinese-language filmmaking from “territorially separated cinema systems to a transborder network”. Regionality, as Berry argued, has emerged as a strong force among East Asian film festivals. Berry observed that Both the HKIFF and the SIFF increasingly became market places, where film deals could be made. While HKIFF focuses on more independent Chinese new talents, SIFF focuses more on the mainstream commercial. Berry pointed out that “HKIFF makes the most of its ability to screen the independent Chinese films and the Taiwanese films that could not be screening at SIFF, bringing along the filmmakers and creating opportunities for them to meet each other and international guests. SIFF, on the other hand, has the advantage of a film market that at least appears to offer a way into one of the largest and most rapidly growing film markets in the world, and a venue where international guests can hope to meet all the major players from the Chinese film world. Furthermore, although it cannot screen independent films, it’s “Pitch’n’Catch” sessions can be used to fund new projects by well-known independent filmmakers trying to transition into more mainstream cinema.”

Instead of celebrating this transborder Chinese film production culture, formed by the Chinese international film festivals, Berry raised the question: ‘what new kinds of filmmaking will this lead to?” In the Q&A, Berry points out the challenge facing Chinese language cinema is how to find new formats that work in the international art house, and new formats that work for commercial audiences, whilst catering for the demand of the domestic market.

To further expand it, I see this is not only a challenge facing Chinese cinema but also other cultural and art products. This challenge becomes complicated in an era when the international flows of capital, people and information become more and more intensive, as it is difficult to define the clear cut of an international and a regional market. The Cannes phenomena and the rise of regional international film festivals may also indicate that the forces that have shaped the taste of good film also become more complex.

Responding to Berry’s talk, I observed another phenomena that may indicate the change of Chinese cinema’s ‘international relations’. While there was no Chinese language films that had entered the competition in Cannes this year, new festivals have been run by Chinese people outside China, such as the China Image Film Festival in London. This film festival aims at promoting the newly reborn Chinese commercial films as commodities to the international mass audience. Such Chinese-run film festivals are not like European rooted film festivals where symbolic capitals – recognition, reputation and fame, can be gained through competitions determined by the Western tastes. Like their HK and SH counterparts, the London China image film festival works toward a market place where international capitals and people can meet together for transnational coproduction film deal.

The emergence of domestic independent film festival circuts, and other exhibition and distribution network

As an expansion to Berry’s keynote on film festivals, a panel on the 27^th May was dedicated to film Festivals and Emerging screening space. Ma Ran (Osaka University), Luke Robinson(University of Nottingham) and Jeesoon Hong(University of Manchester) discussed independent film festivals in China and the emerging ‘ScreenSpace’.

Luke Robinson presented his ongoing research in the field of independent Chinese documentary film festivals. He pointed out that independent Chinese documentary filmmakers have always faced the challenge to reach the audience, given the ‘alternative’ status of such independent productions. He observed that during the 1990s, there was a high dependence on overseas film festivals and the domestic state televisions, since the late 1990s, there has been more dependence on the minjian ‘film clubs’ and the growing domestic film festival circuit that has emerged in less than a decade. Ma Ran’s paper focuses on the growing domestic Minjian independent film festivals. She observed that while these independent film events, named as ‘Forums’ and ‘Exhibition Week’, have gained some freedom in the programming, they are usually confined to a cultural ghetto, such as Song Zhuang art district in the suburban of Beijing . Hence the difficulty in reaching a wider audience. Nevertheless, Ma Ran argued that such festivals have carved out a new social space for independent cinema in China.

Robinson’s case study on this year’s Yunfest (Yunnan Multi-Culture Visual Festival, one of China’s most established festivals) suggests some possible changes of power dynamics among different agents – the festival, the sponsorship and the public space – that have shaped the festival. This changing power dynamics may suggest some possible future changes of the Chinese independent festival circuit in general. He observed the changes in the sponsorship and exhibition spaces. Robinson stated that the festival had private sponsorship for the first time, from diverse areas:  “a Kunming-based construction company (KCC) a Beijing-based media company (Heaven Pictures); a computer company; and the actress Zhao Tao, who’s acknowledged in all the programme materials (credited through Jia Zhangke’s production company, Xi he Xing hui”. Interestingly, he pointed out that a central commercial cinema complex has been used for some screenings. This included the screening of Jia Zhangke’s new documentary Yü Lu about China’s high-achieving people, which is “not the kind of film you’d expect to see at YunFest.” Robinson analysed that using the commercial cinema complex may be a way to approach wider audience, especially the bourgeoisie audiences in the neighbourhood, but the screening of Jia Zhangke’s documentary in this venue might be a result of accepting sponsorship from some of the other private entities. If they really are, Robinson stated, it adds another layer to the dynamic of how different agents are at work.

In addition, he argued that the separation of “the ‘artistic’ model of documentary”, and “the ‘community media’ model of ethnic participatory videos in two different venues (the provincial library and the Yunnan University campus) has to some extent created different regional identities and reflects ‘pre-existing intellectual divisions arising from different investments in different kinds of filmmaking”. Robinson argued with great insight that “independent documentary is no longer marginal in the way it was 20 years ago: in some ways, it’s become the mainstream of alternative film production in China… There’s increasingly a festival circuit, round which people and films move, rather than a number of isolated events; and there’s a critical infrastructure to accompany this, with professional curators and arbiters of taste.” However, as a consequence, new tensions have also emerged, such as “those between regional centres of production and their differing investments in documentary”.

In addition to Chinese international and independent film festivals as places where new forms of film cultures are shaped, urban film clubs, cinema space, online ‘cinemaphila’ communities, and pirate DVDs also forge new film cultures and critical space, for public discussion and individual expression. Jeesoon Hong introduced the term ‘ScreenSpace’ to examine the experience of cinema-going as commodity for the urban middle class. In terms of film reception, Ralph Parfect (King’s College London) observed the discussion of the online cinemaphila communities such as Duban, on Zhang Yimou’s Under the Hawthorn Three. He noticed that the urban audiences regard the materialism, sexual infidelity and corruption of postsocialist society as reasons why the idea of ‘purity love’ (ganjing[de]aiqing), promoted in the film could never exist in today’s China. From the perspective of film practice, Gao Dan regarded film piracy as a significant part of cultural reality in post-socialist China. She stated that filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke and Yingliang reference daoban die [pirated DVD] as important factors in the distribution and viewing of their own works. Through examining some independent films and practices, she analysed “how they are either symptomatic of or reveal a genealogical root in piracy culture and the infrastructure that surrounds it”.

1. 2. Catching up for ‘the next big thing’, or creating new alternative? – Jia Zhangke as the alternative ‘big thing’

Jia’s alternative response to the discourse of urgency in Chinese film world

Professor Yomi Braester’s keynote speech echoed Berry’s question of new kinds of filmmaking. He pointed out that ever since China’s entry to the WTO, if not even earlier, there has been a discourse of urgency in Chinese cinema. Braester took the term ‘the next big thing’ to start a conversation on how filmmakers respond to the ongoing discourse of urgency in Chinese cinema. As he stated, the success of Hollywood production Titanic(1997) in the Chinese market stimulated the domestic producers and critics to hold up the blockbuster model and required filmmakers to catch up to ‘the next big thing’ in the beginning of the new century. Recently in 2010, Avatar also re-provoked the mainstream anxiety of catching up. Filmmakers like Feng Xiaogang regard 3D and CGI technology as ‘the next big thing’ that they aim to surpass. Professor Julian Stringer’s keynote on the relations between Dolby Consultants and Chinese Film Industry also illustrates this tension and anxiety of catching up.

After reviewing the discourse of urgency in the mainstream film industry, Braester focused on how alternative strategies have been applied by other filmmakers, such as Jia Zhangke, a leading Chinese filmmaker, or one of the ‘big things’ in Chinese cinema now. Having achieved success through international film festival circuits and recognition by Chinese officials, Jia plays a different card in the discourse of urgency. Braester quoted Jia’s comments on Avatar that “technology knows no borders, Chinese filmmakers should not undermine its power and show lack of confidence in its own culture”. In Braester’s observation, Jia uses CGI differently to achieve his own cinematic real and cinematic illusions (Later in the Q&A, Braester reinforced that Jia’s cinema is not about reality but about the cinematic real).

Through reading Jia’s new documentary I wish I knew (2010), Braester analysed Jia’s alternative strategy to the discourse of catching up, which is putting history at the centre. When the majority look into the future leaving no time for the past, Jia however, chooses to engage with what already happened and how we remember them. In Braester’s understanding, Jia uses archives from other films that have shaped the collective memory of Shanghai, as well as oral histories given by 18 interviewees that have different kinds of relationships with Shanghai. I wish I knew, in Braester’s reading, becomes a conjunction where memories are met and created, as a kind of history that is made possible through films. Braester stated that Jia injects himself in the mainstream discourse of catching up but he shifts emphasis, rather than simply saying no. His strategy to achieve ‘the next big thing’ is through a “cinema of slowness”. I wish I knew, according to Braester, refers to “the return to the historically conscious cinematic discourse”.

Braester’s notion of ‘Next Big Thing’ is however, questioned by professor Zhang Zhen, another keynote speaker at the conference. Zhang responded that ‘next big thing’ might be too much an umbrella term for describing such paradigms, quantitative practices and institutions. Zhang agreed that Jia has become an alternative institution given his achievement in re-writing the aesthetic of realism, but Jia is different from the industrial based mass audience discourse.  Indeed, Jia is not that much ‘big’ as in the film industry. He is more as an alternative.

Interestingly, Zhang Zhen’s keynote also examined Jia’s I wish I knew. Different from Braester’s perspective of positioning this film as Jia’s response to the discourse of urgency, Zhang paid attention to how this official sponsored film re-imagines Shanghai history, through individual memories and oral history. She analyses this film together with Wang Quan’an’s Apart Together, an award-winning melodrama which is also set within the context of the Shanghai World Expo 2010. Zhang analysed these two films’ “disparate uses of the historical legacy of the cosmopolitan city, for reimagining the split between China and Taiwan after 1949 and a tension-ridden prospective ‘reunion’.”

These two keynotes encouraged me to further reflect Jia’s role in Chinese cinema. Perhaps the official acknowledgement of Jia Zhangke as one of China’s leading director may indicate some structural change in the Chinese film world. Jia started his career by making underground film and earned recognitions through A-list international film festivals. Gradually being recognized by Chinese officials and mainstream media, he has now established his position as an important director and representative of the cultural elite in China. Some people argue that Jia has surrendered to the official and the market. Taken differently, as both Yomi Braester and Zhang Zhen analysed in their keynotes, Jia is indeed trying to bring up a new narrative, new aesthetics to the Chinese mainstream cinema. Zhang regarded Jia as an ‘quasi-official, transnational’ filmmaker. In this view, he is trying to break into the field of Chinese film industry that pre-occupied the market driven blockbuster films and commercial genres. Jia’s participation in the Chinese film world is by trying to raise a different voice and bringing something different to the table. To some extent, one can argue that Jia is setting up hope for new generation of independent filmmakers, by making visible an alternative way. His success as a ‘big thing’ is not only in the sense of having access to the mainstream market, but more in the way how he manages different eco-political forces in and outside China, and still maintains relatively high autonomy of his own artistic creation.

The cinema of Jia Zhangke

In another sense, Jia has become ‘the mainstream of the alternative’, or the representative of Chinese art cinema. This is not only through his increasing publicity in the mainstream media, but also through the enormous scholarly and critical attention he has captured. In addition to Braester and Zhang’s keynotes on the discussion of Jia’ new film, a panel dedicated to Jia’s cinema. Young scholars Eddie BVertozzi (SOAS), Corey Schultz (Goldsmiths College), and Jinhee Choi (University of Kent/King’s College London) provided different readings on Jia’s cinema. Eddie BVertozzi closely analysed Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006), as representative of Chinese art film produced since 2000. He aimed to explore what realism means in the twentieth first century China. For him, directors such as Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, Jiang Wen challenge the notion of jishizhuyi (on-the-spot realism). “By utilising visual elements these works mark a shift in terms of the perception of authenticity, which does not coincide with a documentary approach anymore, but rather with the expression of the director’s individual sensibility”.

Corey Schultz focused on the visual representation of the class and social stratification in Jia’s films. He observed that ‘much of the contemporary Chinese public and academic discourse on class and social stratification is marked by an unequivocal acceptance of the market economy with suggestions for welfare reform to assist those most devastated by the economic divide, and an unwillingness to blame the state for the non-socialist reforms that have led to this growing inequality”. On the contrary, “Jia’s films offer the viewer imagery that counters the teleological state discourse of a positive economic trajectory and modernisation path”. In his reading, Jia’s discourse is predominantly based the physical and metaphorical ruin, that is “the ruin of the environment, the community, social relationships, and the physical body”, and his characters are ‘victims of reform’. He argued that Jia’s films “position these characters as agents who, although not patronised to the extent that they are in the popular melodramatic films, are unthreatening and worthy of assistance”.

Jinhee Choi, on the other hand, paid attention to the architecture represented in Jia’s oeuvre, which she argued, has multiple functions: “from a miniature of the globalised world (The World, 2004), to an allegory of the changing economic policies of the People’s Republic of China (Still Life, 2006), to a visual record of (and contrast to) the persistent memory of factory workers (24 City, 2008)”. In her presentation, she specially focused on Jia’s 24 City, and compares it to a video projection artwork Weimar Villa (2010), by London-based artist Bernd Behr. Through reading these two films on the destruction and reconstruction of a city, she argues that cinema has a constructive role in the remembering the history. She observes that “in 24 City film mediates between the destruction of the physical environment represented in the soon to disappear factory and the memories, both real and fabricated, of the urban subjects. Weimar Villa offers a visual reversal an ‘un-digging’ of a construction site that is already deteriorating.”

1. 3. New directors and new strategies in two parallel film worlds: the independent ‘personal cinema’ and mainstream commercial cinema.

Despite much scholarly attention paid to the cinema of Jia Zhangke as the alternative ‘big thing’ at the conference, a number of young scholars examined new alternative practices by the emerging young and/or independent documentary filmmakers, as well as new strategies of commercial fiction features taken by established filmmakers and propaganda films.

The independent ‘personal cinema’

Independent documentary practice captured enormous attention at this conference. Building on the New Documentary Movement that flourished among a small group of filmmakers in the early 1990s, DV-film-making has been encouraging and enabling self-expression across a much larger population since the late 1990s, during a neoliberal period that follows two decades of economic reform. In addition to the papers on the independent documentary film festivals and the influence of piracy culture on the independent filmmakers I discussed earlier in this report, two panels focus on DV documentary practices. Keith Wagner (King’s College London/LSBU), Matthew Johnson and Tianqi Yu (Univeristy of Westminster) examined the role of cinema and camera in China’s modernization process, from different perspectives.

Keith Wagner and Tianqi Yu primarily focused on contemporary amateur documentary practice proliferated in the twenty-first century China. Yu pointed out the amateur filmmaking practice in China is in fact very new. This is different from the long history of amateur filmmaking outside the majority of socialist and former-socialist countries. Cinema and the camera apparatus in China were strictly controlled by the government from the beginning of the socialist era in 1949 till before the 1990s. Undeniably, the mini DV camera plays a significant role in facilitating personal and self-reflexive forms of expression that depart from official state sanctioned productions.

Wagner’s paper focused on how these “unskilled” amateur filmmakers archive what the government regards the dissenting activities, such as juvenile violence. Keith observed that these filmmakers usually take a loose aesthetic approach, while self-reflexively reveal the “regionally-based” realities, including “subjects of criminal activity involving jobless males”. Taking Xue Jianqiang’s short documentary Three Animals (2009) for close reading, Wagner observed that the filmmaker’s choice of filming the “worn and dilapidated spaces” in his remote hometown has set him apart both aesthetically and politically. However, Wagner questions the ethics of this practice, as in this film, Xue recorded his subjects’ delinquent behaviour of beating up and robbing other teenagers. He asked “in China’s neoliberal climate are discourses over responsibility and objectivity being replaced by notions of triviality and films made ‘just for fun’? ”

Admitting the problematic ethical issues involved in such practices, Yu, however, regarded this action of turning the personal camera on the social space reflects individuals’ growing awareness of public citizens, rather than socialist workers in Mao’s China(1949-1976). In her paper, Yu focused on a small number of amateur filmmakers who turn the camera inwards to film the selves, which she regarded as the first person DV documentary filmmaking. She pointed out that the first few amateur DV documentaries in China were in fact of first person narratives, such as those by Tang Dan Hong, Yang Lina and Wang Fen. In the age of participatory media, more first person narratives documentaries emerged, such as those by Hu Xinyu, Wu Haohao, Li Ning and also the contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, for his activist documentary ‘Laomayihua’(2008). In Yu’s opinion, Chinese first person DV filmmaking is an important individual critical thinking expression and social participation that helps to reconstruct political values and reactivate the political space in China, in what Wang Hui regarded, the ‘depoliticalised’ era. Yu provided a close reading of Hu Xinyu’s ‘Family Claustrophobia’ (2009), which records the conflicts and transitions of his parental familial space, a 60 square-metre socialist working class flat over a period of seven years. Yu analysed how the first person filmmaker Hu inscribes himself the ‘seer’, the ‘seen’, the ‘speaker’ and the ‘editor’. In Yu’s reading, Hu Xinyu is playing the role not only as a filmmaker, a family member, but also an individual who expresses his critique to the society through filming the very imitate space of his own family.

Matthew Johnson also studied a kind of first person filmmaking practice which is the ongoing China villager documentary led by filmmaker Wu Wenguang. He analysed how this alternative documentary production model functions as ‘cinema of improvement’. He compared two figures who have worked closely on the documentation of village-level social and political improvement projects: the little known educational cinematographer Sun Mingjing in China’s ‘Nanjing decade’ (1927-1937), and the contemporary documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang in post-WTO China (2001 and onwards). He observed that both filmmakers publicised experimental reforms conducted by the Chinese state, with additional links to transnational philanthropic institutions (the Rockefeller Foundation) of the former and international partnerships (the China-European Union Village Administration Training Program) of the latter. Through this comparison, he demonstrated that the relationship between philanthropy, public spending, and documentary representation has created a possible alternative to the dominant “festival – and commercial distributor – centred production models”.

In addition, an invited keynote speaker Lu Xinyu (Fudan University), and three other young scholars, Jia Tan(University of Southern California), Wang Chi (Communication University of China) and Sabrina Qiong Yu (University of Newcastle) also submitted paper abstracts on the discussion of independent documentary practice from diverse perspectives. However, due to personal issues, these four scholars could not attend the conference. Nevertheless, this indicates the increasing scholarly attention to the documentary practice in contemporary China.

In contrast to the amount of attention paid to independent documentary practice, few papers actually discussed the independent fictions films of post Jia Zhangke generation. To some extent, this unbalanced scholarly attention to independent documentary and fiction filmmaking may also indicate the changing structure of the Chinese film world. It seems that there are two parallel film worlds.

The changing film policy in the post-WTO era has made it legal for the individuals and private sectors to produce films without state sector cooperation (though the state-sponsored film production still occupies the majority of the sale). As the state lowers the barriers to film production and exhibition, more and more independently produced films are directly aimed at domestic box office rather than competitions at international film festivals as in the early years of underground filmmaking (late 1980s and 1990s). The directors, including the former Sixth Generation, and younger filmmakers, do not entirely regard themselves as independent, a term that has been usually associated with ‘unofficial’, ‘marginal’, ‘political sensitive’. Instead, they are more willing to submit themselves in the new film industry where films are packaged and exchanged as commodities.

However, this does not mean the early concept of ‘independent’ auteur film has entirely disappeared. In fact, a group of new generation filmmakers, such as the young uprising talent Ying Liang, maintain a high autonomy for artist creation, and do not take market as the ultimate goal. They regard ‘independent’ as an attitude and a political gesture. They inherit some features of early ‘underground’ cinema, such as relations with international film circuits. Different from the early independent cinema, these films have gained some exposure inside China through domestic independent film festival circuits and screening communities, but still cannot be seen in the mainstream cinemas. As a co-organizer in the team, I am also responsible for programming the screenings on the evening of 26^th May. I deliberately chose to show two films that demonstrate this independent gesture, Ying Liang’s Good Cat and Xue Jianqiang’s Martian Syndrome. These two experimental and avant-garde films represent ‘the independent auteur cinema’, or the cinema of one’s own.

While Chris Berry identifies the emerging ‘transborder Chinese cinema’ that is largely shaped by the domestic international film festivals, I argue that there is also a kind of independent ‘personal cinema’ emerged in the discursive and conflicting development of Chinese film culture. Both the independent amateurish one-person documentary practice, and the small crew low budget fiction film production are important modes of this ‘personal cinema’. This is also cinema without a mainstream audience and has limited screening opportunities. People get to see these films mainly through the domestic independent film festivals and film clubs that Luke Robinson and Ma Ran discussed. However, this ‘personal cinema’ consists of an indispensable important part of new Chinese cinema culture, that not only contributes to the development of new aesthetic cinematic languages, but also contributes to the activation of critical space in contemporary China.

Films with mainstream commercial success

Though few papers discussed the independent avant-garde fiction films, six papers examined films that have passed Chinese government censorship and attained commercial success. These include the commercial art house films made by the established ‘Urban Generation’, and the newly emerged filmmakers such as Ning Hao. How these films represent the radical social differentiation, and the marginal social and geographical identities was the main theme of discussion. In addition, changing strategies of political propoganda (zhu xuanlu) films and new genres have also been studied.

Xiao Liu (University of California at Berkeley) presented an intriguing paper on one of the most eye-catching cultural phenomena in 2010 – Let the Bullets Fly (2010), the latest film by an established art house director Jiang Wen. The film received a huge commercial success with box office sales of 700 million RMB. For Liu, this film’s “ostentatious visualisation of the unabashed fetishism of money poses as the director’ sarcastic gesture to avenge his previous box-office failure (in The Sun Also Rises).” She examines how the narrative of revolution and Eros in The Sun Also Rises is revised by the ubiquitous presence of money in Let the Bullets Fly. She argued that the ‘netizens’ read the film as an allegory of revolution: “the whole film is soaked in the “lightness” and frivolity of performance and role-play… Every name and identity is a mask which anyone can try on.” Liu not only focuses on the film text, but also how its audience responded to this film across media networks. She argued that through the transmedia networks which function as a space for the exchange of both information and capital, “the film became a pastiche of simulacra, a remediation of mediation. The “familiarity” of the film text through remediation keeps the audience engrossed in identifying and reviewing each “familiar” fragment from other media. It also creates a “realist” look of the film, through which social life becomes media events re-circulated into the circular system of consumption and replay.”

Several papers discussed the representations of the social and geographical marginal. Yi Jie Zou (University of Edinburgh) studies two successful comedies Crazy Stone (2006) and Crazy Race (2009) by a new commercial filmmaker Ning Hao. In his reading, the films create indigenous folly, and capture the emotion of the migrant workers, through the humorous expressions and comic body language of the transient labourer characters. Through this, Yi argues that the films illustrate the marginal spaces of China’s changing urban scene, exploring the harsh conditions of the lives of the lower classes. Hence an implicit critique to “the utopian rhetoric promised by policy makers”. Lin Feng focused on how independent films represent zhiqing experiences in post-cultural revolution post socialist China, such as the issue of their identities. Francesca Kaufman (University of Edinburgh) explored the changing attitudes to women’s value in reform era China, through a comparison of Li Yang’s Blind Mountain (2007) with Zhou Xiaowen’s Ermo (1994). Her analysis suggested that since the mid 1990s there emerged a growing awareness of “the potentially regressive impact of economic reform upon women’s opportunities and social identity”. Leung Wing-Fai examines a transborder production The Postmodern Life of My Aunt(2006), by one of the Hong Kong New Wave directors, Ann Hui. Her analysis of how the film production illustrates the transformative relationship between filmmaking in Hong Kong and the mainland reflects what Berry regards the rise of transborder Chinese language cinema.

Lastly, the new productions of the political propagandist films have also been studied. Zheng Ji (University of Edinburgh) discusses the star strategy taken by the mainstream political propaganda films, facing the implementation of market-oriented reforms in the Chinese film industry in the beginning of the 21^st century. She explores “how the cultural capital and social recognition of popular stars are exploited in the production and promotion of propaganda films”, and the changing relationship between the ‘official’ culture and popular culture in China. Zheng stated that the leitmotif films were previously casted by a selection of ‘typecast actors’, who have close physical resemblance to their roles, such as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. In the marketisation of film industry, some recent leitmotif films such as Deng Xiaoping 1928 (2004) and The Founding of a Republic (2009) use pop stars to attract young audience, who constitute the largest group of cinema-goers in China. Her analysis of the new star phenomenon in leitmotif films contributes to a further understanding of political appropriation of commercial strategies and popular culture in the post-socialist era.

Conclusion

Overall, the conference has provided a precious chance for a critical examination of the Chinese cinema and film world in the midst of its radical transition since 2000.  In my observation of this conference, the current scholarly attention mainly lies in three main themes: firstly, there is a shifting focus from film texts to the contexts of film production, distribution and exhibition. This is exemplified by the new studies on film festivals, screening space, receptions, and how specific reception channel, such as pirate DVDs have shaped new cinema cultures. In these studies, cinema has been increasingly seen as a culture where different socio-political and economic forces are played out. Secondly, the cinema of Jia Zhangke becomes a central focus of current studies on Chinese cinema. Main discussions lie on how he has created an alternative institution that has gained recognition in China’s film world, and how his cinema creates personal narratives of China’s social transition and a view to the past.

Lastly, many young scholars focus on new independent films and new strategies of commercial films. The post 2000 Independent documentary film practice has attracted more attentions than independent fiction productions. Emphasis has been put on regional amateur practice and first person documentaries as socially and politically conscious practice. In addition, the new commercial art house films and new strategies of propaganda films have also been studied. It seems that there emerged a paralleled film world: the commercial art house and transborder Chinese cinema, such a those of Jia Zhangke, Jiangwen and Ning Hao, and the avant-garde independent ‘personal cinema’, as I regard, such as those of Ying Liang and independent documentary film practice. Do these two kinds of cinemas entirely separate from one another, or do they interact with each other in transforming the overall structure of the Chinese film world? If so, what forces are involved in the interaction and how do they at work? These are some of the questions that are left unsolved at this conference, that deserve further investigation.

The conference received grants from both academic institutions and private donation. In addition to funding from the Department of Film studies of King’s College London, King’s China Institute, University of Westminster, the conference also received financial support from the DSL Collection, a private collection of contemporary China arts. DSL starts from a museum approach that enables it to collect a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography, with a limited number of 150 pieces. Not oriented on the trends of market, it emphasizes on public accessibility and archiving. Recently, DSL started to show strong interest in contemporary Chinese independent avant-garde film and videos. DSL’s potential involvement in Chinese cinema may suggest a further structural change of the Chinese film world in the new decade. Lastly, despite the intensive valuable debates over one and a half days, no scholar or critics came from inside China to present their thoughts, only scholars that are mostly from the UK or US institutions were present. Nevertheless, I hope this report can provide an opportunity for further conversations between overseas scholars and critics, filmmakers and scholars inside China.

Relevant Classroom Use

Sally Liu came from Beijing to get her MFA at Columbia University. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Back in 2005 when I started as a freshman studying film at Boston University, I was one of only two foreign-born Chinese film students there. I remember the surprised look that people often gave me when they learned about my major. At the time, it was rare to see a student from mainland China taking on film as her major, especially at the undergraduate level.

My reason for studying film was a straightforward one. I fell in love with the medium in high school, and I wanted to become a filmmaker. I could also intuit an impending bright future for Chinese cinema, given its vast unexploited market. In this sense I probably have much in common with the thousand or so Chinese film students in the U.S. today.

This is why Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn’s Oct. 2 article “Reel China: Land of Cinematic Opportunity” makes me feel excited about the path I chose. In the article, he describes the trend of U.S.-bound Chinese film students, the pull and push factors for this trend, the challenges faced by the students, their aspirations, and the reality that they face once they complete the programs. Each of these points reminds me of my own experiences and those of my friends’. I can’t help but wonder, if we are being identified as a group, how will we do collectively ten or fifteen years from now? And how do we prepare for the future?

To reiterate, Horn writes that the number of mainland Chinese art students in the U.S. has grown significantly over the past few years, and film majors count among them. Many Chinese students wishing to become filmmakers chose to leave China behind because the chance of getting into the Beijing Film Academy was too slim – about 0.5% get selected, 14 times lower than the admission rate of Harvard.

Here you may ask, why must they go to the Beijing Film Academy in the first place? The reason is simple. Most people in mainland China have only heard about the Beijing Film Academy as a place to study film. It has the longest history and the best reputation. No other school can challenge its place.

Therefore, even though getting a foreign education means a huge investment, people who can afford it believe that the investment will eventually pay off.

In the article, one thing that Horn’s subjects comment unanimously on is the creative freedom that they can enjoy in American film schools. While they need to subject their films to unwanted monitoring and censorship at many levels in China, they need not worry about getting into serious troubles for making a political film in the U.S.

In addition to the freedom of expression, the students also comment favorably on the curriculum in the U.S. They appreciate the freedom to pick their desired courses to fulfill their desired studies. Many are also amazed by the range and diversity of courses available to them. One student mentioned copyright law and budgeting classes, which were not known to her to be offered in China, and was a delight for her to be able to learn both here.

In my own undergraduate and graduate experiences, this is definitely something that I can put my finger on and have benefited much from. During my four years in college, I became fascinated with cultural anthropology and philosophy. I took the required number of courses in both fields with great self-motivation and eventually graduated with a minor in each of them.

Horn also touches upon the language barrier that foreign students typically face. Unquestionably, learning the everyday English is still several steps away from using it effectively in screenwriting and other areas. And using the English language with a profound understanding of a drastically different set of cultural assumptions, signs and symbols, and subtlety could take a long time.

Fortunately, exemplified by the California Institute of Fine Arts, some U.S. schools have started to counter this one-way effort of Chinese film students by making American film students learn Chinese and sending American film students to China, according to Horn. These measures are directed to developing a pool of American talent necessary for future co-productions between China and the U.S. As some have come to believe, more investment in the film industry may come out from China, and now is the best time to get ready for it.

Here I also want to express my commiseration with Yu Gu, whose story is mentioned in Horn’s article. It is said that she went to China to make her student film “A Moth in Spring.” But local authorities stopped her production in an unexpectedly rough manner. Could she have avoided this sticky situation by connecting to the authorities first, like what Fan Lixin did for his film Last Train Home? Or does her failure to complete her student film tell us something about the work environment faced by mainland Chinese independent filmmakers? The answer is probably yes to both questions.

Relevant Classroom Use

Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward are delighted to announce the publication of The Chinese Cinema Book. Commissioned by the British Film Institute, The Chinese Cinema Book provides a comprehensive companion to the cinemas of the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora, from early cinema to the present day. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book is structured around five thematic sections: Territories, Trajectories, Historiographies; Early Cinema to 1949; The Forgotten Period: 1949­80; The New Waves; and Stars, Auteurs and Genres.

This important collection addresses film production and exhibition and places Chinese cinema in its national and transnational contexts. Individual chapters addresses major film movements such as the Shanghai Cinema of the 1930s, Fifth Generation Chinese film-makers and the Hong Kong New Wave, as well key issues, stars and auteurs of Chinese cinema. The book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars, as well as for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of the cinemas of Greater China.

The Chinese Cinema Book Edited by Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011ISBN 9781844573448 for the paperback
and 9781844573455 for the hardback.

Table of Contents after the break.

Introduction: The Coming of Age of Chinese Cinemas Studies
By Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward

PART ONE: Territories, Trajectories, Historiographies

1. Transnational Chinese Film Studies/Studies of Transnational Chinese Film
By Chris Berry

2. National Cinema as Translocal Practice: Reflections on Chinese Film
Historiography
By Yingjin Zhang

3. Cinemas of the Chinese Diaspora
By Gina Marchetti

4. Six Chinese Cinemas in Search of a Historiography
By Song Hwee Lim

PART TWO: Early Cinema to 1949

5. Shadow Magic and the Early History of FilmExhibition in China
By Xuelei Huang and Zhiwei Xiao

6. The Making of a National Cinema: Shanghai Films of the 1930s
By Laikwan Pang

7. Wartime Cinema: Reconfiguration and Border Navigation
By Yiman Wang

8. Chinese Filmmaking on the Eve of the Communist Revolution
By Paul Pickowicz

PART THREE: The Forgotten Period: 1949-1980

9. The remodelling of a national cinema: Chinese films of the 17 Years
(1949-1966)
By Julian Ward

10. Healthy Realism in Taiwan, 1964-1980: Film Style, Cultural Policies,
and Mandarin Cinema
By Guo-Juin Hong

11. The Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema: Emergence, Development and Decline
By Stephen Teo

PART FOUR: The New Waves

12. The Fifth Generation: A Re-assessment
By Wendy Larson

13. Taiwan New Cinema and Its Legacy
By Tonglin Lu

14. The Hong Kong New Wave: A Critical Reappraisal
By Vivian P. Y. Lee

PART FIVE: Stars, Auteurs and Genres

15. Dragons Forever: Chinese Martial Arts Stars
By Leon Hunt

16. The Contemporary Wuxia Revival: Genre Remaking and the Hollywood
Transnational Factor
By Kenneth Chan

17. On the Shoulders of Giants: Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Zhangke, Fruit Chan
and the Struggles of Second Generation Auteurism
By James Udden

18. The Urban Generation: Underground and Independent Films from the PRC
By Jason McGrath

19. Contemporary Mainstream PRC Cinema
By Yomi Braester

20. Contemporary Meta Chinese Film Stardom and Transnational Transmedia
Celebrity
By Anne Ciecko

Afterword: Liquidity of Being
By Rey Chow

Appendix
Book-length Studies of Chinese Cinemas in the English Language
Compiled by Wan-Jui Wang, Louise Williams and Song Hwee Lim

Chinese Names
Compiled by Zou Yijie

Chinese Film Titles
Compiled by Zou Yijie

Index

Relevant Classroom Use

Jia Zhangke speaks out at a forum held at the 2011 Shanghai International Film Festival (photo: china.org.cn)

Originally published in The Guardian, June 16 2011

He had to abandon one film lest it broke anti-pornography laws. Then he ditched a spy movie rather than fill it with Communist party “superheroes”.

The frustration of making films in a country with “cultural over-cleanliness” has led an internationally acclaimed Chinese director to lash out at its censors, a state news site has reported.

Jia Zhangke won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival in 2006 – apparently earning the approval of China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping, who is expected to become president next year.

But he began his career as an “underground” film-maker – directing movies that were praised abroad but never saw official release in China– and he complained of ongoing battles with censors as he addressed a cultural forum in Shanghai. Unusually, his remarks were reported by an official news site, china.org.cn.

“The only reason that we cannot make genre movies is the barrier that censorship sets,” Jia said.

He said he scrapped a film about a man’s sex life after an official decided it might break anti-pornography laws. He also abandoned a spy film about the Communist party and Kuomintang due to controls.

“If I want to make the movie here, I have to portray all the communists as superheroes,” Jia said.

“This would betray my original idea and make it difficult to develop the story.”

He added: “This kind of cultural over-cleanliness that bans the erotic, violent and terrifying is cultural naivety.”

China has a vast censorship apparatus, but films and television programmes are particularly tightly controlled. One film director told the Guardian that censors demanded 400 changes before they would pass his movie.

Hong Kong director and producer Manfred Wong told the Shanghai forum that in crime movies made on the mainland all police officers must be portrayed as good guys, while romantic movies cannot show affairs or cohabitation before marriage.

He argued that mainland film-makers need a ratings system. Some believe the government might relax constraints if age restrictions were introduced.

But Li Hongyu, who writes about film for Southern Weekly newspaper, said it was simplistic to suggest a ratings system would result in less censorship.

While western ratings systems focus on issues such as violence and pornography, China has much wider concerns about the content of films, he said.

“China’s control over movies is more detailed. China has a movie censoring committee composed of approximately 30 or so staff whose backgrounds are very diverse, spanning from movie professionals, the Women’s Federation, the [Communist] Youth League, teachers, and a religious committee to various governmental administration departments,” Li added.

“The debate about introducing a ratings system has been going on for many years. But it is hard to implement, since if the system is used, it will not be easy to cover the government’s other considerations. What if it is concerned about political views?”

Official requirements, which concern the moral as well as political qualities of content, can be baffling to outsiders: the head of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television recently denounced TV time travel dramas for their “frivolous” approach to history.

Jia Zhangke’s film Dong is available through the dGenerate catalog.

Relevant Classroom Use

By Isabella Tianzi Cai

Advisors Cara Mertes and Lixin Fan listen to a filmmaker in a small group at CNEX/DFP workshops. (Photo: Meredith Lavitt)

From April 13 to 16, 2011, Sundance Institute held its Film Forward Program in China to showcase ten excellent independent films as part of its international outreach project to promote intercultural exchange. Film Forward was initiated by the Sundance Institute and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and organized in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The program coincided with the Sundance Institute – CNEX Documentary Film Workshop, in which eleven Chinese documentary project teams had the privilege to interact directly with the foreign talents and industry experts brought on by the collaboration.

CNEX is currently one of the world’s most active players in terms of bringing attention and assistance to Chinese documentary filmmaking. It is a non-governmental organization based in Beijing with staff members working in Taiwan and North America. Founded in 2006, it has grown consistently over the years and continued to help produce and promote Chinese documentary cinema internationally.

The responses to both the Film Forward Program and the workshop were incredibly enthused. Audiences and participants eagerly sought answers to their own questions about the films screened as well as about general filmmaking practices.

Kate Dean, the producer of Winter’s Bone, wrote that she was pleasantly surprised by the first question she got after her film’s screening in Xi’an. Instead of the usual trite questions we hear at every film festival, an audience member asked her if the search for a father figure in the film could be interpreted as the search for spirituality, because in the English language, “Father” is synonymous with God. Coming from a Chinese-speaking person, this question impressed Kate.

Stanley Nelson, the director of Freedom Riders, was equally impressed by the quality of audience response when he showed his film to students at Tsinghua University and the Beijing Film Academy. He was worried at first that they would have a hard time understanding the context of his story, but the first question he received turned out to be identical to the one he received in the United States. Additionally, in exchange for trying to explain racial segregation in US history, he got to hear Chinese people’s will to strive for freedom. It made the Q&A meaningful to him at many levels.

Fan Lixin’s Last Train Home, a Canadian-produced television documentary about China’s migrant workers, had its premiere in China during the program. According to Meredith Lavitt in her blog article, the film aroused hot debates each time it was played. From his interactions with audiences in Beijing, Xi’an, and his hometown Wuhan, Fan wrote that he repeatedly sensed “confused patriotism.” He sincerely hoped that his film could expose Chinese people to a new way of loving their country. Instead of saving face by covering its problems up, more good can be done by openly discussing these problems.

As for the advisers working side-by-side with the invited Chinese documentary filmmakers, the three-day workshop was physically exhausting; however, it paid off with a string of accomplishments. As Cara Mertes observed:

By the closing reception, it was clear that a new community of filmmakers had connected across China, and a common goal of telling authentic stories had been reached. All of the filmmakers made tangible strides conceptually, from developing plans for refining their films’ structure to creating materials for gaining funding to decisions to work with editing and producing advisors.

Indeed, by the end of the programs, not only the filmmakers involved but also the organizers realized that they were in the right direction of promoting cross-cultural dialogue. As the world becomes more connected through such programs, helping people tell and show their own stories through films is an ever more worthy cause.

Relevant Classroom Use

In conjunction with the screening series New Tales of Chinese Cinema screening this weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image, here are two video essays exploring films from the series, both published at Moving Image Source. The series includes Disorder by Huang Weikai and Oxhide II by Liu Jiayin, both distributed by dGenerate. Oxhide II screens Saturday, April 30 at 2pm. Disorder screens Saturday, April 30 at 5pm

Descriptions of each video can be found at the Moving Image Source, and after the break.

New Beginnings: Opening moments from contemporary Chinese cinema

Slow Food: David Bordwell on Oxhide II

Notes on New Beginnings: Opening moments from contemporary Chinese cinema:

For decades, Chinese cinema was understood in generational blocks, each with its own defining characteristics: the Fifth Generation rejected socialist realist propaganda in favor of lushly filmed, socially critical allegories; the Sixth Generation rebuffed the Fifth by embracing gritty urbanism. We may now be at a point where Chinese cinema is too diverse to define. The etymology of the generational concept—used to characterize waves of Beijing Film Academy graduates, who for years were China’s only trained filmmakers—is now obsolete in an age where digital filmmaking equipment is widely accessible. The independent scene is as prolific as ever, producing hundreds of features a year outside of state supervision, particularly in the documentary realm.

The explosive activity generated by this new technology is overturning other truisms and assumptions of Chinese cinema. The state-sponsored system was long an object of ridicule, as its lackluster product was routinely trounced by Hollywood imports, whether in Chinese theaters or the pirate DVD market. But signs of creativity and innovation are sprouting, enabled to some extent by the state film industry’s redoubled efforts to compete in the world market, whether by upgrading its CGI prowess or encouraging fresh approaches to storytelling.

Some of the most vivid examples of this diversification are on display in “Tales From the New Chinese Cinema,” a series curated by Cheng-Sim Lim and Bérénice Reynaud, that recently screened in in Los Angeles and will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image from April 29 to May 1. This video essay looks at the six films in the program, demonstrating their collective range of stylistic approaches and thematic interests by focusing solely on their opening moments. Even within these minute samplings, there’s a wealth of detail to be discovered, both cinematic and cultural. In many cases the film’s special cinematic qualities are informed by specific cultural subtexts, which this video attempts to uncover. Of course, there’s much more to be said about these films than what their opening moments can contain: for example, read Reynaud’s extensive commentary on several of these films, published in Senses of Cinema. We’ve only scratched the surface of these and many other works from today’s Chinese cinema.

———-

Notes on Slow Food: Oxhide II and the art of dumpling making

“Every festival that’s serious about the art of cinema should pledge to show Oxhide II.” That’s what David Bordwell had to say about the second feature by Chinese independent filmmaker Liu Jiayin. A follow-up to her debut family saga Oxhide, this homemade epic (shot in makeshift Cinemascope by masking the top and bottom sections of Liu’s camera lens with tape) consists of nine shots and a cast of three people (Liu and her parents), a thoroughly utilized table, and over 100 dumplings whose construction and consumption are meticulously documented. While Oxhide II enjoyed exposure at Cannes and Rotterdam, no major American fests heeded Bordwell’s call; it was the Wisconsin Film Fest (in Bordwell’s hometown of Madison) that held its U.S. premiere last April.

Oxhide II is enjoying a resurgence this spring, with one-off showings in Oregon, Los Angeles, and at the Museum of the Moving Image, thanks to the curatorial efforts of Shelly Kraicer, Cheng-Sim Lim, and Bérénice Reynaud. This video essay uses Bordwell’s notes on Oxhide II, originally published on his blog Observations on Film Art, as a script to examine the film in depth. Additionally, we’ve translated Bordwell’s analysis into Chinese to produce a bilingual commentary that alternates between spoken Mandarin with English text and spoken English with simplified Chinese text. We hope these efforts might make Bordwell’s insights more accessible to the film’s native language audience—and perhaps induce a much-needed Chinese language edition of Bordwell’s invaluable study Planet Hong Kong.

Relevant Classroom Use

Wang Xiaoshuai (WANG Taili) and Xiao Dabao (XIAO Yang) in The Bright Eleven:Old Boys

One of the hottest web films in China right now is the 43-minute feature Old Boys, directed by 31-year-old TV commercial director XIAO Yang. It is part of an omnibus film, The Bright Eleven, sponsored by Shanghai General Motor’s Chevrolet Cruze and jointly presented by China Film Group and Youku, the largest video hosting service in China. In theory, online video platforms in China such as Youku allow millions of amateur videos, student films and other works to be seen. Since The Bright Eleven is made by a team of professional filmmakers and has its own marketing team, it has great advantages over the independently produced content found on Youku, especially in terms of reaching an audience.

As the statistics on Youku reveal, Old Boys has been watched over 31 million times since October 28, 2010. A news report dated December 17, 2010 by China Youthology also claims, “Among the films [that consist The Bright Eleven], ‘Old Boys’ was the most popular, with far more viewers than Zhang Yimou’s latest movie released around the same time.”

As China experiences a boom in film production, it is clear that online video is providing an alternative route for its distribution needs. Last year, roughly 150 out of 500 plus domestic films (meaning films that are registered with the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television) had the chance to be screened in movie theaters in China. As many of the theatrical releases are big-budget blockbusters with spectacular visuals that thrive on the big screen, less space is available for more modest, character-driven productions such as The Bright Eleven.

The Bright Eleven is not treading the old path of theatrical distribution but riding the new wave of online digital distribution, doing its best to tap into the country’s 457-million Internet users. Its success foreshadows the industry news that “[s]even Chinese websites — letv.com, qq.com, joy.cn, xunlei.com, baofeng.com, pptv.com and pps.tv — recently announced plans to produce one movie-watching ‘mega-channel’ later this year” (AFP Relax). We do not know for sure, but it looks like that this new movie website will remain a platform for official releases.

Old Boys tells the story of two ordinary men in their late 20s. They have seen their youth go by and have settled for the simplicity of everyday life. One day, struck by the death of Michael Jackson, who was their school-day idol, they decide to enter a singing contest together. The film goes back and forth between their wondrous but long lost past and their dull and hard-pressed present.

The two lead characters in Old Boys are representative of China’s post-80s generation. China’s Cut-throat competition and fearsome unemployment rate have left many college graduates to fend for themselves. Though some are employed, the jobs they have are not what they have dreamed for. Their youthful aspirations, in the face of having to make a living, are nearing disappearance. The film humorously crafts the laments and nostalgia of one’s bygone youth. These emotions resonate with contemporary Chinese viewers. As pointed out by China Youthology,

From a youth insight perspective, the popularity of ‘Old Boys’ is no surprise. The story addresses two core tensions of youth in China now: the frustration in achieving the dominant dream of a middle-class life; and the frustration in achieving individual dreams. Many youth were moved to tears by the story.

China Smack also notes similar reactions of the viewers,

many people leaving [shed] tears over their youth, commending it as a rare example of a fine domestically-produced piece of work. The film has also spurred passionate discussion amongst netizens about one’s dreams.

Old Boys is available on Youtube. The lyrics of its theme song are also provided below:

I am deep in love with her, thinking of her day and night.

But how can I express myself?

And will she accept me?

Maybe I will never expose my hear to her.

For I am always wondering alone and homeless.

Dreams are always too far to reach.

Should I give up?

Flowers bloom and fade again.

When comes spring for me.
Youth is like a river,

rushing away without saying goodbye,

leaving me behind without the passion of the old days.

Look at those flowers in the sky

withering in their most beautiful moments,

who will remember that they ever existed in this world?
Many years have elapsed in a blink of the eye,

witnessing countless happiness and sorrows.

Once with much hope as well,

admiring the wild goose flying southward.
People go in different directions,

away and gone.

But where is my future within ordinary days?

Oh who can give me the answer?
Those who were with me,

where are you now?

Those I used to love,

how do you look like now?
Have your dreams come true?

Can we do else than mourning about the past?

I can’t stop the time and I can’t find my true self ever again.

A million stars are twinkling in the sky.

And I try to find out the one that used to stay by me.

Do you still remember me

we shared together here before?
Life is like a ruthless blade,

having changed us.

Will it wither before it ever has a chance to bloom?

I used to have my dream.
Youth is like a river,

rushing away without saying goodbye,

leaving me behind without the passion of the old days.

Look at those flowers in the sky

withering in their most beautiful moments,

who will remember that they ever existed in this world?
Have your dreams come true?

Can we do else than mourning about the past?

I can’t stop the time and I can’t find my true self ever again.

A million stars are twinkling in the sky.

And I try to find out the one that used to stay by me.

Do you still remember me

we shared together here before?
If tomorrow comes,

I will send my best to you my dearest.

Relevant Classroom Use

1428 (dir. Du Haibin)

Disorder, 1428, Oxhide, and Oxhide II at the Cinema Pacific Film Festival in Eugene, Oregon

Part of the Cinema Pacific Film Festival. From the Cinema Pacific site:

“CINEMA PACIFIC is an annual film festival based at the University of Oregon in Eugene that is devoted to discovering and fostering the creativity of international films and new media from Pacific-bordering countries, including the U.S. Through onsite and online presentations, the festival connects stimulating artists and ideas with a diverse public, furthering our understanding of world cultures and contemporary issues.”

Tape and Ghost Town at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California

Part of the series “Fearless: Chinese Independent Documentaries.” From the YBCA site:

“The most compelling, politically engaged documentary cinema in the world right now is coming from China. Totally under the radar, with low/no budgets and little/no hope of their work being shown in their own country, filmmakers are using inexpensive digital technology to tell stories that would never otherwise be told. This is not easy stuff — the films tend to be long, and often depict human rights abuses, stories of chaos and neglect, and of state-sanctioned deception. It is a deeply committed cinema, which expects no less from the viewer.”

Oxhide II and Disorder at REDCAT in Los Angeles, California

Part of the series “From Disorder to Unexpected Pleasures: New Chinese Cinema.” From the REDCAT site:

“In recent years, independent Chinese cinema has experienced a virtual explosion. Digital media have allowed filmmakers to be bolder, more daring and to explore hybrid forms of documentary and fiction, or mix found and live footage while playing with novel formal strategies. Independent Chinese cinema has also come of age. Reaching beyond nostalgia and social protest, it plumbs surprising corners of Chinese reality with humor that is at times light, dark, saucy, dry, raunchy or conceptual. Expect the unexpected.”

Information on individual screenings after the break.

Disorder at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
screening at the Cinema Pacific Film Festival
Wednesday, April 6th at 8 PM

Address:
430 Johnson Lane Eugene
OR 97403 On the University of Oregon Campus

Description:
Hua Hsu of The Atlantic calls it “one of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages“.
As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teeter on the brink of mayhem.

Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors.  Tickets can be purchased here.

Tape at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
screening as part of the “Fearless” series
Thursday, April 7th at 7:30 PM

Address:
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, California, 94103

Description:
Li Ning documents his struggle to achieve success as an avant-garde artist while contending with the pressures of modern life in China.

Tickets for the screening are $7 for general admission and $5 for seniors, students, and teachers. Gallery admission is included in ticket price. Tickets can be purchased online here. For directions and more detailed pricing information, visit the YBCA website.

1428 at Bijou Art Cinemas
screening at the Cinema Pacific Film Festival
Friday, April 8th at 6:30 PM

Address:
492 East 13th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401-4268

Description:
“fascinating, beautifully crafted” (Ronnie Scheib, Variety)
Du Haibin’s award-winning documentary of the earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan province in 2008 explores how victims, citizens and government respond to a national tragedy.
Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors.  Tickets can be purchased here.

Oxhide II at CalArts
Los Angeles Premiere
Friday, April 8th at 8:30 PM

Address:
REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA

Description:
“A masterpiece… inventive, quietly virtuosic.” (Bordwell, Observations on Film Art).
Building on the stunning vision of OXHIDE (voted one of the best Chinese films of the 2000s), writer-director Liu Jiayin once again casts herself and her parents in scripted versions of their life in a tiny Beijing apartment.
Tickets are $9 for general admission, $7 for students with ID, and $5 for CalArt students, faculty, and staff. Tickets can be purcased at the CalArt website.

Oxhide with Liu Jiayin at Bijou Art Cinemas
screening at the Cinema Pacific Film Festival
April 9th at 6:45 PM

Address:
492 East 13th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401-4268

Description:
“The most important Chinese film of the past several years“- Cinema-Scope
Boldly transforming documentary into fiction, Liu Jiayin cast her parents and herself as fictionalized versions of themselves.
Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors.  Tickets can be purchased here.

Disorder at CalArts
Los Angeles Premiere
April 9th at 7:00 PM

Address:
REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA

Description:
“gripping, stirring, occasionally shocking“- Hua Hsu, the Atlantic
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.
Tickets are $9 for general admission, $7 for students with ID, and $5 for CalArt students, faculty, and staff.  Tickets can be purcased at the CalArt website.

Oxhide II with Liu Jiayin at Bijou Art Cinemas
screening at the Cinema Pacific Film Festival
Sunday April 10th at 1:00 PM

Address:
Bijou Art Cinemas
492 East 13th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401-4268

Description:
“A masterpiece… inventive, quietly virtuosic.” – David Bordwell,Observations on Film Art
Breaking new ground in cinematic art, Liu Jiayin’s follow-up to her masterful debut OXHIDE turns a simple dinner into a profoundly intimate study of family relationships.
Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors.  Tickets can be purchased here.

Ghost Town at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Screening as part of the “Fearless” series
Sunday April 10th at 2:00 PM

Address:
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, California, 94103

Description:
A.O. Scott calls Ghost Town a “miniature epic of the everyday“.
Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu minority villagers squat in the abandoned halls of this remote former Community county seat.
Tickets for the screening are $7 for general admission and $5 for seniors, students, and teachers. Gallery admission is included in ticket price. Tickets can be purchased online here.

For a full list of upcoming events, visit our Events Page.

Relevant Classroom Use

Thomas Mao (dir. Zhu Wen)

From the official press release:

“From Wednesday, April 6 to Saturday, April 9, REDCAT will present “Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales from the New Chinese Cinema.” In recent years, independent Chinese cinema has experienced a virtual explosion. Digital media have allowed filmmakers to be bolder, more daring and to explore hybrid forms of documentary and fiction, or mix found and live footage while playing with novel formal strategies. Independent Chinese cinema has also come of age. Reaching beyond nostalgia and social protest, it plumbs surprising corners of Chinese reality with humor that is at times light, dark, saucy, dry, raunchy or conceptual. Expect the unexpected.”

REDCAT is located at 631 West 2nd St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 – in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and in adjacent lots.

Tickets are $9 for the general public, $7 for students with valid ID. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800, at www.redcat.org, or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon–6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

Note: The series features two of dGenerate’s films: Disorder by Huang Weikai and Oxhide II by Liu Jiayin. Liu Jiayin will present Oxhide II in person.

More details on each film in the series after the break.

Thomas Mao (dir. Zhu Wen)

Thomas Mao (Xiao Dongxi), directed by Zhu Wen
Los Angeles premiere with Zhu Wen in attendance
Wed April 6, 8:30 pm
2010, 80 min

One of the most original voices of post-socialist China, novelist/filmmaker Zhu Wen has crafted, for his third feature, a droll, surreal and ironic tale in which East meets West… or does it? Thomas is a painter trekking through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and Mao the scruffy “innkeeper” who lodges him. Gradually, what appears to be “reality” shifts. Who is the butterfly, who is the philosopher?

“An intellectually teasing absurdist comedy with a touch of Zen, Thomas Mao ostensibly dramatizes the culture shock between a Chinese hillbilly and an American backpacker but goes beyond that to smudge the boundaries between art and life, dream and reality.” – Hollywood Reporter

Preceded by 21G (21 KE), directed by Sun Xun
The first Chinese animation film premiered at the Venice Film Festival
Animation, 2010, 27 min

A disturbing and enchanted voyage through a “world without specific time… in which we live in vanity… There is no law, no rule… lying and being lied to only…” – Sun Xin

Winter Vacation (dir. Li Hongqi)

Winter Vacation (Hanjia), directed by Li Hongqi
Los Angeles Premiere
Winner, Golden Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival
Thur April 7, 8:30 PM
2010, 91 min

Slackers in Inner Mongolia meet the poetry of the absurd. In a dreary little northern town, kids have nothing to do… while the adults are wily or apathetic. For his third feature, poet/filmmaker Li Hongqi effortlessly leads the viewer through a series of breathtaking tableaux in which tension accumulates and then releases in unexpected, and often wickedly funny, ways.

“An absurdist sense of humor, that reminds us of Beckett, or, in cinema, of Aki Kaurismaki’s icy laughter.” – Le Monde

Oxhide II (dir. Liu Jiayin)

Oxhide II (Niupi II), directed by Liu Jiayin
Los Angeles premiere with Liu Jiayin in attendance
World premiered at the Cannes Film Festival
Fri April 8, 8:30 PM
2009, 133 min

Building on the stunning vision of OXHIDE, writer-director Liu Jiayin once again casts herself and her parents in scripted versions of their life in a tiny Beijing apartment. Liu takes her uncompromising artistry to the extreme, setting all of the action around the family dinner table, which doubles as her father’s leather-making station. As the workbench is cleared for the family to make a dinner of dumplings, the camera catches every meticulous detail of the action in real time. Small moments between family members reveal deep insights into the mysteries of family relations and the art of everyday living.

“A masterpiece… inventive, quietly virtuosic.” – David Bordwell, Observations on Film Art

Single Man (dir. Hao Jie)

Single Man (Guangyun), directed by Hao Jie
U.S. Premiere
Special Jury Prize, Tokyo FILMEX
Sat April 9, 3:00 PM
2010, 95 min

“This is a strange and delightful thing from China: a sex comedy, bawdy and a little raunchy, about four elderly farmers… all non-professional actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves. New director Hao Jie, with a bit of Boccaccio and a dollop of Rabelais, reveals a side of rural China you’ve probably never seen before… Chinese indie cinema at its most wryly entertaining.” –Vancouver International Film Festival

“The deceptively unsophisticated Single Man is hilarious and appalling by turns, but it always feels true.” – Variety

Disorder (dir. Huang Weikai)

Disorder (Xian Zai Shi Guo Qu De Wei Lai), directed by Huang Weikai
Los Angeles premiere
Sat April 9, 7:00 PM
2009, 58 min

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. As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teeter on the brink of mayhem. One man dances in the middle of traffic while another tries to jump from a bridge before dozens of onlookers. Pigs run wild on a highway while dignitaries swim in a polluted river. These scenes, unshowable on China’s heavily controlled television networks reect an emerging underground media, one that can truly capture the ground-level upheaval of Chinese society.

“One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages.” – Hua Hsu, The Atlantic

Preceded by Condolences (Wei Wen), directed by Ying Liang
Rotterdam Tiger Award for Best New Short
2009, 20 min

Unfolding through a brilliantly composed one-shot sequence, this award winning film reconstructs the cruel aftermath of a highly-mediatized bus accident.

I Wish I Knew (dir. Jia Zhangke)

I Wish I Knew (Hai Shang Chuan Qi), directed by Jia Zhangke
Los Angeles Premiere
World premiered at the Cannes Film Festival
Sat April 9, 9:30 PM
2010, 138 min

China’s most significant filmmaker of the decade has done it again, with another alluring hybrid of documentary and fiction. Here Jia weaves a dense texture between amorously shot footage of contemporary Shanghai and the films the city created or inspired. Peeking through the gaps of an architecture menaced by permanent urban renewal, he finds the traces of a romantic or brutal past, and echoes the voices of survivors or those who went into exile.

“Jia’s Shanghai is elusive and mercurial, yet tangible, symbolized by the angst-ridden flâneur character played by Zhao Tao. By opting for the fluidity of remembrance, Jia not only connects present-day Shanghai with its past but also makes the city a much more dynamic trope for aesthetic articulation.” – The China Beat

The series was curated by Cheng-Sim Lim and Bérénice Reynaud, and funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels. Zhu Wen’s and Liu Jiayin’s trips to the US were organized in a collaboration between REDCAT, Pomona College Museum of Art/ Media Studies, and the University of Oregon’s Cinema Pacific.

Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales from the New Chinese Cinema is presented in collaboration with the institutions that will hold additional screenings throughout the greater Los Angeles area, as well as New York City: Los Angeles Filmforum, Echo Park Film Center, Pomona College Museum of Art/Media Studies , UCLA Film and Television Archive, and the Museum of the Moving Image (NY).

For a full list of upcoming dGenerate events, visit our Events Page.

For more films made available by dGenerate, please visit our catalog.

Relevant Classroom Use

Zhang Xianmin

Following his recent critique on the state of Chinese cinema “Daytime Booze Nighttime Party,” Chinese film producer / critic / programmer / professor Zhang Xianmin offers further thoughts on current trends in the independent film scene.  He also constructs an alternative history of modern China through several documentaries, including three films by pioneering investigative filmmaker Hu Jie, In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, Though I Am Gone and East Wind Farm Camp (all available through dGenerate)

I have tried to translate Zhang Xianmin’s essay as close to the original as possible; however, there were instances where I had to abandon the Chinese expressions in the essay for more appropriate English terms.

- Isabella Tianzi Cai

Film festival organizers for independent Chinese cinema are slowly consolidating into distinguishable communities. This phenomenon is similar to what happened around 2005. At that time, many independent productions came out, and they did not take place in major cities; instead, many celebrated local cultures. However, up till now, these festivals have yet to develop into unique brand names, indicative of their unique local cultures. For example, Ou Ning’s U-theque Organization helped organize film screenings in the Pearl River Delta and also held the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival. For another example, some people from Fujian Province organized a cross-strait film festival, resembling the work by the Taiwan Film and Culture Association. Yang Jin also wanted to organize a film festival showing films that reflected authentic local Shanxi culture; unfortunately, it did not happen as he wished. I think there will more such activities in the future.

There is much room for idealizing film-related activities in China, just like there is much room for so-called media expansion, commercialization, and civil rights movement right now. I think they resemble the rarefied air in high-altitude places. Chinese independent cinema lacks oxygen, therefore, we can idealize it.

This essay focuses on particular films.

There are many, but none too good.

The Spicy

Single Man (dir. Hao Jie)

The spicy films refers to the extremely violent and sexual films; in other words, they are the films that must show either blood or flesh. These traits seem contrary to the rapid growth of art films in the past two to three years. Most art films can be thought of as being “fresh”; by that, I mean they are more or less the same as a nun who falls in love but curbs her love, or a boy who is gay but never comes out of the closet. The violent and sexual films usually deal with the blue-collar cohort. I doubt if anyone can predict how much longer they are going to stay in vogue to survive till the next video gallery age.

Typical spicy films are getting more spicy nowadays. In most cases, they are not accepted by film festivals in China, which I find to be quite sad. I like to imagine: ten years down the road, will we hold a film festival for B-movies of this type? In my opinion, international co-productions Spring Fever and She, a Chinese are somewhat spiced. The Cockfighters by Jin Rui and Single Man by Hao Jie are both spicy. Of course we can treat their spiciness as a joke because of their stories. After all, their messages are proper.

As for the other ones produced in 2011, I do not think very highly of them. Put in a nice way, they started a cult film culture. Put it in a neutral way, they were reflective of the changes in society. However, put it in a bad way, they were not as innocent as we would like them to be. I am against today’s film censorship program. I do not want to comment on every single film. I think most people have not had the chance to watch the films that I have, so it is not a good idea to discuss them here. The circulation of independent films in China has shrunk in the past decade. The available platforms are not sufficient at all. You, my reader, will be the proof of my argument. You will see how many of the following films you have seen. The typical spicy fiction films include Wang Liang’s Ideal by Gao Xiongjie and Muona Summer by Wang Lulu. The typical spiced documentaries include All About Gay Sex by Zhou Ming. We cannot judge a film by how spicy it is. Personally I liked All About Gay Sex most of all. Wang Liang’s Ideal did all it needed to do for a fiction film, but it was short of something. The acting in Muona Summer is bad, especially that of the actors. The acting shifts from the spicy to the fresh many times, and it made spectators schizophrenic. The best sequence of Muona Summer is the end credits.

These films are not famous compared to those that have received international recognition. Interviews dominate All About Gay Sex, and they span several topics such as love and relationship, first love, and extramarital relationship. Every subject tries to hide nothing from the camera; they openly discuss their sexual intercourse, their sexual partners, their feelings, etc. There are not insert shots showing anyone in action; everything is based on words. These are my personal feelings, and I will not be surprised if others find the film boring. Besides this film, the documentaries by Li Ning, Wu Haohao, and Xie Jianqiang are also spicy in my opinion.

Fresh and Artsy

The films that I have mentioned above are all art films. However, most art films are graceful, subtle, and restrained (in contemporary literature, being graceful, subtle, and restrained is outdated; it may be better to group them as the humming or muttering films and the dainty films, as opposed to the roaring films and the sleazy films).

One example is Rivers and My Father by Li Luo, which was not accepted by any international film festivals but was screened at the Chinese Independent Film Festival. It is the story of a man who tries to erase and reconstruct his memories. Empty Iron Mountain by Gao Zipeng, sponsored by the 1st China independent Film Fund, is an art film for the middle aged. It is the story of an intellectual who disappears and dies on purpose (this film is supposed to be completed in 2011).

Most fresh and artsy films present intellectuals’ and the bourgeois class’s stories. However, they have a blue-collar tendency too because going to the factory workers and farmers used to be a fresh endeavor in revolutionary times. Moreover, Jia Zhangke is also a big influence in the most recent decade. Sun Spots by Yang Heng (a feature-length fiction film) and Male Cousin (a short fiction film, author unknown) are examples of films about junior delinquents in 2010.

Male Cousin is what I mentioned earlier about fresh and artsy films. The story is about a boy who falls in love with another boy but never makes it known to the other. A college art student returns home during his school vacation. He wants badly to meet his fictive cousin, who has gone to national service. They finally meet each other. The college boy gets to see his fictive cousin’s bare shoulders in some photos, and they take the same bus before leaving each other for good. This film was made by two college students in Xuancheng, Anhui, which I suppose was their hometown. It is a good film. Many scenes are rendered appropriately, the plot and the acts are precise, the violence in the film stops just in time, sex never takes place. It is artsy, cool, sexy, close to life, and not at all contrived, just like this piece of dialog, a comment about A Better Tomorrow by John Woo, in the film: “See how constrained gay movies were back then!”

Reconstructing The History of the People’s Republic of China’s

Hu Jie, director of In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul, East Wind Farm Camp and Though I Am Gone

Thanks to the work by independent filmmakers, up till now, we have accumulated a body of works that could be used for New China’s history, outside the official rhetoric. I made a chronological list below, and it should cover all the important historical periods. Although some of the films below were made much earlier, this list is completed in 2010.

This list contains many sensitive words. If any reader finds it incomplete in some way, please note that it is not because I did not include it, it is because my editor tries to keep me safe. If you can spot a missing item, it shows that you are very good. Anyone can try to add what they think is missing.

Bao Feng Zhou Yu [Tempest], Xie Tieli, 1961 – land reform
Storm under the Sun, Peng Xiaolian & S. Louisa Wei, 2009 – court case of Hu Feng
In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, Hu Jie, 2005 – anti-rightist movement
Chronicle of a Chinese Woman, Wang Bing, 2007 – the great famine
East Wind Farm Camp, Hu Jie, 2008 – the great famine
San Li Dong, Lin Xin, 2006 – 17-year coal mining business
Though I am Gone, Hu Jie, 2006 – earlier years of the cultural revolution
Buried, Wang Libo, 2009 – Tangshan Earthquake and the latter years of the cultural revolution
Tong Xue [Classmates], Lin Xin, 2009 – economic reform
60, Zhang Ming,2009 – economic reform
Petition, Zhao Liang, 2008 – contemporary

I want to conclude by quoting documentary filmmaker Mao Chenyu: “Where I am now, let it be history.” If you deny that history is that of the third-person, be it micro or macro, then you own it too. “Where you are now, let it be history.”

Relevant Classroom Use