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

Huang Weikai

From now until March 2011, director Huang Weikai will be available for screenings and lectures in the United States. Huang’s latest film Disorder is a groundbreaking work of experimental documentary that has won prizes and screened at festivals around the world. The Atlantic calls it “one of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages!”

If you are interested in bringing Disorder and Huang Weikai to your institution or university for a screening, Q&A or guest lecture, please contact exhibitions *at* dgeneratefilms *dot* com.

BIOGRAPHY

Huang Weikai was born in 1972 in Guangdong Province, China. He studied Chinese painting for 15 years and graduated from the Chinese Art Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He used to work as a cinema promoter, art editor, graphic designer, movie script writer and cameraman. Since 2002, he has been directing independent films. His 2009 found-footage documentary, Disorder has been acclaimed as “One of the most mesmerizing films I’ve seen in ages” by Hua Hsu in The Atlantic for its unflinching look at the absurdity and anarchy of urban life in contemporary China.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Disorder
2009, 58 min, documentary

- 2008 Asian Network of Documentary Fund Project (13th PIFF)
- 2009 Young Jury Special mention Award of 31nd Cinema du Reel International Documentary Film Festival, France
- 2009 PRIX RED Award of the 24th Belfort International Film Festival, France
- 2009 Jury Special mention Award of 4th Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
- Official selection at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany, 2009
- Official selection at the 11th Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, the New Asian Currents program, Japan, 2009
- Official selection at the 16th Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, Canada, 2010
- Official selection at the 6th Play-Doc International Documentary Film Festival, Spain, 2010
- Official selection at the 7th Planete Doc Review Film Festival, Poland, 2010
- Official selection at the 3rd Chongqing Independent Film & Video Festival, China, 2009
- 14th Pusan International Film Festival, Korea, 2009
- 49th Krakow Film Festival, Poland, 2009
- 6th China Documentary Film Festival, China, 2009
- 6th China Independent Film Festival, China, 2009
- 9th DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival, Finland, 2010
- 2010 True/False Film Fest, America
- 2010 Black Movie Festival, Switzerland
- 12th Sarasota Film Festival, America, 2010

Floating (Piao)
2005, 93 min, documentary

- 2005 Black Pottery Prize and Audience Award of Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
- 2006 New Filmmaker Award of the 3rd Reel China Documentary Biennial, New York, Shanghai
- The 30th Hong Kong International Film Festival
- The 3rd China Independent Film Festival
- The 11th Umbria Film Festival (Italy)

Bin Laden’s Body Could Be Nothing But a Copy (Ladan de Shiti Zhineng Shi Yifen Kaobei)
2002, 23 min, short

- The 29th HongKong International Film Festival
- Never Go Out Without My DVcam-Video art from China- Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid

Relevant Classroom Use

“Images that Cannot be Banned” will offer a program of both fictional and documentary feature films as a way of introducing and exploring an interest in Chinese underground cinema. Through contextualisation, the primary intention of the selection is not to produce a ‘canonical’ list, but rather, to construct a snapshot of underground and independent filmmaking by tracing a web of links and commonalities inherent within emerging trends in Chinese filmmaking over the past decade.

What I like about this statement is the desire to resist producing a canon or list of key films. While there are several films that would be worthy of such a distinction, the Chinese underground cinema movement is a relatively new phenomenon still in the process of maturing and defining its historical legacy. It should be acknowledged that dGenerate took a significant step in commemorating the achievements of the movement with our poll of the greatest Chinese films of the 2000s, in which numerous digital independent productions were cited. But at the same time, there is such a wealth of creative activity being generated by the Chinese underground scene, that singling out specific films risks misrepresenting the collective nature of the movement, as a response to a larger and multifaceted sense of crisis underlying the radical social development of China in the post-Reform era.

It’s encouraging to see that a number of articles found on the dGenerate site are linked by Carrington as key resources for learning about Chinese underground cinema, as well as our short documentary Digital Underground in the People’s Republic, which, we hope, gives an impression of how much this aesthetic movement is the result of a collective effort involving not just directors, but producers, programmers and audiences.

Relevant Classroom Use

Rocky Mountain MLA Conference
Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 14-16, 2010

As in the past, this year’s annual convention of the Rocky Mountain MLA
boasts several panels related to Chinese and Asian literature and film.
Howard Goldblatt will be this year’s keynote speaker. The deadline for all
proposals is March 31, 2010. A complete list of panels and all relevant information can be found at:

http://rmmla.wsu.edu/default.asp

—————————————————————————–

CALL FOR PAPERS

Chinese Cinema in the US since 1979
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. USA
October 8-10, 2010

Submission Deadline – April 30, 2010

Sponsored by the Chinese Film Collection, a division of the Moving Image
Research Collections at USC; in collaboration with Film and Media Studies at
USC, ChinaFilm at Harvard, the Chinese National Film Archive, Beijing Film
Academy, and the Chinese Film Market journal; and supported by the Confucius
Institute Headquarters; the conference “Chinese Cinema in the US since 1979″
will be held in Columbia, SC, Oct 8-10, 2010. The conference will focus on
Chinese films made after 1979, when China and the US normalized diplomatic
relations. The discussions with be divided into two independent yet
interrelated categories:

(I) How have Chinese films, as instruments of cultural diplomacy and
occasions for cultural dialogue and exchange, been perceived by American
students, artists, critics, scholars, and politicians? How has the
accessibility (or lack thereof) of Chinese films shaped the perceptions
about them?

(II) How have Chinese films been utilized in learning the Chinese language
in the past and how should they be used in the future?

For the discussions of the first category, we welcome proposals from all
disciplines, professions, and perspectives that address issues in ethnic,
artistic, political, social, philosophical, and historical
understanding/misunderstanding of Chinese films.

For discussions of the second category, we seek expertise particularly in
converting the films into a learning tool for the Chinese language, which
has become popular in the United States.

It is likely a Chinese delegation of scholars and filmmakers will join the
conference. During the conference we will also president a Week of Jia
Zhangke’s Films.

Abstracts of the papers should be between 100 and 150 words in length and
should be submitted electronically to both and < clean.ann@gmail.com> by April 30, 2010.

Should you have any questions, please send them to the above email addresses
or call Grace Lee  at (803)777-4758 or (803) 319-0703

The acceptance of the paper will be announced by May 30, 2010.

—————————————————————————–

Announcement and Call for Papers
2010 Melbourne Conference on China: Chinese Elites and their Rivals – Past, Present and Future

Date: Monday, 19 July and Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Venue: The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Organiser: Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne
Print: The Programme (To be available after 1 June 2010)

Following the success of the 2009 Melbourne Conference on China, The Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne is pleased to announce the 2010 Melbourne Conference on China, to be held at the University of Melbourne on Monday, 19 July 2010 and Tuesday, 20 July 2010.

We welcome researchers, specialists, policy makers, policy advisers and educators working in anywhere in the world and in any area of China studies to come to the southern hemisphere to meet in Melbourne, the acknowledged capital of culture in Australia, to explore the various questions posed by the ongoing and rapid changes that have affected Chinese elite groups and their rivals in the past, the present and, most importantly, in the future.

Elites – and rivals to them – are found in all complex human societies. The struggle between elites and their rivals is one of the most powerful forces shaping human social and cultural systems. China’s traditional elites were among the first in the world to be selected on the basis of educational attainment, and the collapse of the old Chinese elite structure in the modern era had profound implications for almost every aspect of Chinese life, from politics to economics to culture to language. The emergence of a new Chinese elite system in the course of the twentieth century constitutes one of the most complex processes in the recent history of humankind. Analysis of the various kinds of elites in China (political, military, economic, technological, cultural, ethnic, social, educational, linguistic and even environmental) – and of their rivals – provides a powerful tool for understanding that country’s past and present, as well as the likely direction of its future development.

The issues that will be discussed in the conference Chinese Elites and their Rivals – Past, Present, and Future include, but are not limited to, the following:

· What is the current state of scholarly understanding of China’s elites and their rivals, and what new theoretical and empirical perspectives on these questions have emerged in recent years?

· How are China’s current elites, including political, economic, technical, military, ethnic, social, educational and cultural elites, connected to the twentieth century processes of nation-building and revolution?

· What are the likely future developments in China’s elite groups, and what new challenges will those elites face in the coming decades? Specifically, which elites will take the lead in China’s future development, and how will this occur?

· Are there long-term continuities and common and persistent characteristics in China’s elite cultures, in particular, continuities spanning the imperial era, modern times and the present?

· How is the power of different types of elites contested? Are there any unique features in the contests between different types of elites that have hitherto been ignored or misunderstood? How do the various types of elite groups in China – past and present – relate to each other?

· What is the status of the new, and still emerging, urban classes? In what ways are they culturally, economically, socially and politically significant? What is the role of China’s new rich?

· What is the role of the descendants of the members of privileged social groups? Will the emergence of private ownership in China produce a ‘silver-spoon’ elite, with elite status becoming inheritable?

· What has been the role of overseas Chinese elites in China’s modernisation? How should the role of foreign-trained returnees, both old and new, be defined?

· What is the status of ethnic minority elites in Han-dominated China? Who are these minority elites? How are they affected by the larger economic, linguistic, political and cultural institutions that shape Chinese life?

· What is the impact of the Internet on the rivalry between the elites and the masses? How, and to what extent, is the power of elites contested in the virtual world?

· Are educational elites, both foreign-trained and China-trained, still highly regarded in China? What changes have taken place in Chinese systems of cultural/intellectual capital? How have these been affected by engagement with systems from outside, for example in the learning of foreign languages?

· What connections, similarities and differences are there between China’s elites, ancient and modern, and elites in other parts of the world?

(Papers examining any other aspect of this broad theme, from any other perspective that is not mentioned above, are also welcome.)

Leading scholars and policy advisers from Australia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States have been invited to address the conference.

Papers on any aspect of Chinese elites and their rivals and any related thematic issue or historical period are welcomed. Each presentation will be for 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.

The conference will be conducted in English, but a few sessions will be bilingual and conducted in both English and Chinese.

All sessions will be held on the University of Melbourne campus on Monday, 19 July 2010, and Tuesday, 20 July 2010.

Those attending the conference will be responsible for organising their own travel and accommodation, and some meals. The Conference Organising Committee will soon post more information about hotels located within a 15 minute walking distance from the University of Melbourne.

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, no later than Friday, 30 April 2010, to the following email address: Conference-on-China@unimelb.edu.au

The abstract must be in English and must contain the proposed title of the paper, the author’s name and home institution, a brief bio of no more than 150 words, along with contact details, including postal address in English, or Chinese (if applicable). All submissions will be acknowledged in writing upon receipt via email. Other inquiries may also be sent to the above email address, or to the contact people listed below.

Deadlines: Submission of abstracts: Friday, 30 April 2010
Notification of acceptance: Friday, 14 May 2010
The conference programme: Friday, 28 May 2010
Standard registration: Friday, 18 June 2010

Registration: All attendees should either register online after receiving both postal and email acceptance notifications, or send a completed registration form to the Conference Organising Committee by email to contact persons.

A standard conference fee of AU$100 is payable upon register. Postgraduate students are entitled to a discount of 50% on their registration fee.

More information about the registration form and fee, as well as hotels located within walking distance of the University of Melbourne, will be available in February 2010 on the official Asia Institute website at: http://www.chinastudies.unimelb.edu.au/conferences/2010/index.php

Contacts: Please contact the Conference Organising Committee, Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, or email Conference-on-China@unimelb.edu.au

If you have other questions about this conference, please feel free to email Dr Gao Jia at jia@unimelb.edu.au and Dr Lewis Mayo at lmayo@unimelb.edu.au

Website: Information on this particular conference may be found on various websites, but the Asia Institute website can be taken as the most up-to-date source: http://www.chinastudies.unimelb.edu.au/conferences/2010/index.php

Relevant Classroom Use

Tami Blumenfield (photo courtesy of University of Washington / Tami Blumenfield)

Tami Blumenfield is a Lecturer at the University of Washington. Her research mainly focuses on the education and media representation of minorities in southwest China, especially the Moso and Na. Her teaching areas cover movement and media representation in contemporary China, indigenous media, kinship studies, visual anthropology, and anthropology of education. Tami Blumenfield is also one of the organizers of the Moso Media Projects, which comprises the Moso Film Festival, participatory media production, and ethnographies of Moso Media.

In this conversation with dGenerate’s Kevin Lee, Tami shares her engagement and interaction with the Moso community, and articulates the effect of filmmaking process on local people and culture with vivid examples from her own experience. She draws particular attention to the ethics of representation, the significance of collaborative projects, and the role of filmmakers and researchers from an anthropological point of view.

Play the Podcast (Time: 22:04)

Download audio file (dGenerate_Tami_Blumenfield.mp3)

Download it here (right-click to download). (File size: 20.7 MB)

Click through for a list of Tami’s publications and a timecoded index of topics covered in the interview.

PUBLICATIONS:

• 2008: “Anthropologists in Motion.” In Anthropology News, January 2008.
• 2007: “Best Practices for IGERT Sustainability.” Co-authored with Renate Sadrozinski and Maresi Nerad. Report for the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education at the University of Washington.
• 2004: Contemporary Moso Adaptations to Mainstream Culture: Examining the Influence of Education and Tourism. In Zhang Xisheng, ed. Ethnic Minorities and the Market Economy. Kunming: Yunnan University Press.
• 2004: “Walking Marriages”. In Anthropology News 45 (5).
• 2003: “A Country of Daughters: China’s Na Women.” In Nervy Girl (May). Portland, Oregon: Independent Publishing Northwest.
• 2003: “Na Education in the Face of Modernity.” In Landscapes of Diversity: Indigenous Knowledge, Sustainable Livelihoods and Resource Governance in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Xu Jianchu and Stephen Mikesell, eds. Pp. 487-494. Kunming: Yunnan Science and Technology Press.
• 2003: “Languages and Lives: Bilingual Education and the Quest for Naxi and Moso Identity.” Ao-Tung (XXI): Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College East Asian Studies Program.

Interview index by times and subjects:

• 00:00 – 00:53: Tami’s recent projects in regards to Chinese film
• 00:54 – 03:55: How did Tami get involved with the Moso community and how did her research focus shift from the community to the filmmaking process of local people?
• 03:56 – 05:59: The role of academics in anthropological research
• 06:00 – 09:09: The intention and result of Tami’s projects
• 09:10 – 12:03: Example of the gap between local people’s understanding of how their words will be used and the consequences of working with filmmakers
• 12: 04 – 13:25: The significance of making people more conscious about the filmmaking process when they work with filmmakers
• 13:26 – 16:42: Recent documentaries from China that have impressed Tami the most
• 16:43 – 18:36: How films are used in Tami’s class
• 18:37 – 19:59: Issue of representation in visual anthropology, who has the right to portray other people, and how the real life of people who are portrayed has been affected by those images
• 20:00 – 21:23: The myth of indigenous people develops into a localized economy around film production

Relevant Classroom Use

Lu Xinyu (photo courtesy of UCLA International Institute)

Lu Xinyu is Professor and Director of the Radio and TV Department, School of Journalism, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.  Professor Lu is widely regarded as the leading scholar on independent Chinese documentaries.  Her influential book Documenting China: The New Documentary Movement (Beijing, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2003) was the first book to systematically theorize the New Documentary Movement in China from the beginning of 1990s.  She spent the past academic year as a visiting scholar in the department of cinema studies at New York University.

Selected Publications by Lu Xinyu:

Books:

• Writing and What It Obscures (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008)
• Documenting China: The Contemporary Documentary Movement in China (SDX Joint Publishing Company, Beijing, 2003)
• Mythology. Tragedy. Aristotle’s Art of Poetry: New Concept to Ancient Greek’s Poetics Tradition (Fudan University Press, Shanghai, 1995)

Papers and Articles:

• “The Power and Pain of Chinese New Documentary Movement”, Dushu No. 5, 2006.
• “Ruins of the Future Class and History in Wang Bing’s Tiexi District”, New Left Review, 31 Jan/Fab 2005. London.
• “Tiexi District: History and Class Consciousness”, Dushu No. 1, 2004.
• “The History of Documentary and the Document of the History”, Journalism Quarterly, Winter, 2003.
• “A Memorandum about Contemporary Chinese Documentary Development”, South China Television Journal No. 6, 2002 and No. 1, 2003.
• “Began from the Other Side: New Documentary Movement in China”, Frontiers No. 3, 2002.

In this interview conducted by dGenerate’s Yuqian Yan, Lu Xinyu told us about her current work during her visit in New York and how she was attracted to independent Chinese documentary from an aesthetic and humanist background.  Starting from Aristotle’s poetic concept of “tragedy”, she led us to understand the New Documentary Movement as a unique art form that depicts the tragic life of ordinary people in the rapidly changing Chinese society.  The interview was conducted in Chinese.  Full English transcript after the break.

Play the Podcast (in Mandarin Chinese) (Time: 16:43)

Download audio file (dGenerate_Lu_Xinyu.mp3)

Download it here (right-click to download). (File Size:7.7 MB)

dGF:  What projects are you currently working on?

LX:  My current research project still focuses on the New Chinese Documentary Movement.  I hope to contextualize this movement in the development of Chinese cinema, as well as world cinema today in order to better understand and reflect on the unique contribution of Chinese documentary.  I think it is important to examine why Chinese documentary has become a movement and its significance to world cinema in general.  This is why I have been attracted to this subject.  My experience in New York this year as a visiting scholar enables me to approach this issue from a broader perspective.  Both Chinese social development and the trajectory of Chinese cinema are interconnected with the process of globalization.  All of these aspects should be discussed in relation to each other.

dGF:  We know that your PhD degree was in aesthetics.  What led you to study independent Chinese film and documentary?

LX:  My PhD dissertation was about dramatic theory.  I was concerned about the reason for the decline of the modern Chinese drama.  In order to understand this, I turned to classical Western dramas and poetics tradition.  I felt that using the Western concept of “comedy” and “tragedy” to analyze and categorize Chinese theater was very problematic.  During my study of Aristotle’s Art of Poetry and its relation to ancient Greek drama, I found a vital change in the concept of “tragedy”.  In ancient times, tragedy, according to Aristotle, was closely linked to the hero and his eminent family.  Heroes were all from royal or noble families.  Why? The explanation given by Aristotle was “happen to.”  But my research found out that heroes became heroes because they were responsible to the whole city-state and society.  But in modern individualistic society, ordinary people become the ones who bear the weight of society.  People from the lowest social class are most likely to be the victims of social transformation.  Therefore the meaning of tragedy has fundamentally changed from the dramatic action of the noble family to the depiction of the tragic life and psychological world of ordinary people.  In this sense, it is the life of ordinary people that embodies the meaning of social tragedy.

I started to teach at Fudan University after my graduation in 1993.  I had some communication with TV stations for my Special Feature Documentary class.  At that time there was a heated discussion about the definition of documentary.  1993 was the year when New Documentary Movement started to be legitimized and accepted within the system.  From then on, I found that TV documentary rather than literature was paying attention to ordinary people.  Literature, on the contrary, entered a self-reclusive, narcissistic stage.  It was documentary that facilitated the dialogue between art and society.  That was very appealing to me since documentary functioned as a continuation of my interest in the transformation of tragedy.  I started to use aesthetic theories to understand Chinese documentary.

dGF:  When you say TV documentary, do you mean “special feature documentary?” (zhuan ti ji lu pian)

LX:  In fact, the TV documentary at that time was a rebellion against special feature documentary.  When we came to the “TV time,” we abandoned the word “documentary” because it belonged to the “Film time”, and conveyed a sense of propaganda.  People who worked for TV stations replaced “documentary” with “special features” (zhuan ti pian).  Therefore at the end of 1980s, when we started to turn against the fake, grandiose and empty formula of the special feature, we redefined and rediscovered the concept of documentary.

Why TV stations?  TV workers were very sensitive to social changes.  The New Documentary Movement started from television because, compared to the film system, these people had closer contact with society and more opportunities to use film equipment.  Accessibility to equipment is also an important reason.  Many first generation independent filmmakers built up their relationship with TV stations through a variety of ways, either private or public.  That was the only way for them to get a hold of equipment.  The 1990s were also the time for the reformation of Chinese television system, which created a flexible space for independent filmmakers.  Many filmmakers took advantage of that space to work on their own projects, including some of the most famous directors like Wu Wenguang.

dGF:  If you look back at that time, how does it compare with the documentary scene in China today?

LX:  The first generation independent Chinese documentary makers had very strong political intention.  They held a clear attitude to criticize and rebel against the mainstream coercive ideology.  Political intention and social responsibility were prominent features among the first generation.  These directors preferred to understand society through observation, to approach Chinese society from the bottom up.  Therefore they were more willing to use the observational mode of direct cinema, combining Frederick Wiseman and Ogawa Shinsuke.

Wiseman’s observation was objective and dispassionate.  He maintained certain distance from his subjects; his observation was cold in some sense.  Ogawa used observational mode in a more interventional way.  He treated his subjects as his own self.  The first generation borrowed from both Wiseman and Ogawa to depict Chinese underclass as an objective “other.”  But this “other” was positioned equally to the directors themselves.  This is the major difference from the second generation who emerged at the end of 1990s.  With the emergence of digital video, filmmakers are no longer dependent on TV stations.  Many young directors use the camera to express themselves.

The new generation emphasizes individualism and self-expression, while the previous generation focused on realism.  The first generation placed emphasis on the “other”; and the second generation expresses the existence of the self.  In a broader sense, it is the existence of both “other” and “self” that constitute Chinese society today.  So there’s some interesting dynamic between the two generations.  The first generation directors claimed that “We are not artists. We are just artisans.”  This claim emphasizes the position of the director in relation to reality.  They do not want to impose their subjectivity on reality, but to allow the conflicts of reality to be revealed from the text without authorial manipulation.  The second generation directors see themselves as artists.  So their aesthetic style incorporates more performativity and self-reflexivity.  Interestingly, they may have never heard about these theories, but they instinctively created these styles to break the boundary between what’s in front of the camera and what’s behind it, and the boundary between subjectivity and the other.  They boldly show themselves in the film, therefore the boundaries between the director and film subjects, public and private disappear as well.  In this sense, they are very avant-garde.  They break established rules and create new aesthetic styles.

This is the current situation of independent Chinese film and documentary.  Meanwhile, those documentaries of social concerns still exist in an influential and powerful way.  So independent Chinese documentary or independent Chinese cinema today is very diversified.

dGF:  You’ve already mentioned many, but I still want to ask what are the major issues that you are most interested in, or you think are important to us as independent cinema lovers.

LX:  I’m most interested in how Independent Chinese cinema and New Documentary Movement build up their connection with society.  How do they redefine the concept of documentary and art?  What is art?  We used to imagine art as a self-contained pure aesthetic form.  This concept was quite influential after 1980s.  But now we are facing the dramatic transformation of Chinese society, both temporally and spatially.  Everyone’s life is inevitably involved in and affected by this process.  How should art react to these changes?  As a film director who bears this social pressure, how to express and represent his understanding of this society, his expectations for the society and for life itself?  All of these construct a new artistic platform for us to understand Chinese society today.

If we only learn Chinese from economic and social perspectives, we’ll never understand the psychological changes Chinese people are going through during this transformation.  By watching independent documentaries, we not only experienced the psychological world of the directors, but also got to experience the existence of people at different social levels through the lens of camera, especially the existence of the underclass and how they struggled through these changes, their pains and their needs.  This is extremely important to me.

dGF:  What would you say have been the most impressive or most significant works of Chinese documentary in the last few years?

LX:  There are a lot.  I’ve written extensively in my essays.  For example, West of the Tracks.  It focuses on how the traditional mainstream community becomes a marginalized group in Chinese society.  Working class used to be the dominant class in China, but they become marginalized under today’s market economy and social transformation.  How does the changing life of this huge group of people affect Chinese society and the industrialization process of the world?  What is its significance to globalization?  West of the Tracks pushes us to think about these questions.  The director has a very interesting view of art.  He says, “If you think my film is about laid-off workers, it means you haven’t fully understood my film.  My real focus is on human life.”  As long as it concerns human life, it has something to do with art.  Art is always about human life.  Politics and economics are the power that is behind human life.  We see the complexity of power relationship through the fate of individual and therefore to reflect on the problems we come across.

Another example would be Before the Flood, which is about the Three Gorges Project.  It is a powerful combination of broad social background and individual lives, a vivid depiction at both macro and micro level.  Bing Ai also takes Three Gorges Project as its subject matter, but explores it from a feminist perspective.  Woman’s affinity for land, for river makes the film extremely powerful and penetrating.  It allows us to experience the development of Chinese society and the tragedy of Chinese people from within.

Relevant Classroom Use

Relevant Classroom Use