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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dGF: What attracted you to report on this story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Zhao Liang

Zhao Liang graduated from China’s Central Academy of Drama in 1985. He supported himself as a photographer while working on his early documentaries. His first feature documentary Crime and Punishment won the Best Documentary award at the Festival des Trois Continents. Zhao’s 2009 documentary Petition: The Court of the Complainants premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. His 2011 film Together is about discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS in China and was commissioned by the Ministry of Health.

FILMOGRAPHY

2011 Together

2009 Petition

2007 Crime and Punishment

2006 Farewell Yuanmingyuan

2005 Return to the Border

2004 City Scene

2001 Paper Airplane

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

Accompanying the article are two videos: one in which Zhao shares his thoughts on filmmaking in China, and another in which Ai Weiwei confronts Zhao on camera over the withdrawal of his film Petition from the 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival in order to avoid political controversy.

dGenerate Films is the distributor of Zhao’s film Crime and Punishment. It can be purchased through dGenerate or Amazon, or viewed online at Amazon or Fandor.

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Petition (dir. Zhao Liang)

A.O. Scott reviews Petition and Crime and Punishment in the New York Times.

The right of the people to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” as the First Amendment to the United States Constitution phrases it, would seem to be a basic feature of the relationship between citizen and state. Even nondemocratic systems acknowledge the principle that the rulers should listen to the complaints of the ruled. Zhao Liang’s “Petition,” a brave and wrenching new documentary from China, takes a bottom-up view of the cruel and absurd ways that lofty ideal is put into practice on the streets of Beijing.

Mr. Zhao’s camera is a stubborn, patient witness to some shocking scenes of bullying and intimidation, and he also offers a sympathetic ear to the ordinary people whose government hardly seems to care. “Petition” is an anthology of Kafkaesque anecdotes, most of them fragmentary, but what gives it shape and almost unbearable dramatic weight are the handful of stories the director pursues in detail.

“Petition” opens on Friday at the Anthology Film Archives, which is also presenting Mr. Zhao’s earlier feature, “Crime and Punishment.” That film, about the day-to-day work of military police officers, takes place far from Beijing, but its fine-grained insights into the workings of state power complement and complicate those seen in “Petition…” Together they offer eye-opening testimony both to the rigors of life in contemporary China and to the power of committed and honest cinema.

Read the full review.

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A scene from Together (dir. Zhao Liang)

This week on dGenerate we will be featuring articles related to Zhao Liang’s acclaimed documentary Crime and Punishment to coincide with the screening of his films at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. Click here for more information on the screenings.

Dan Edwards reports:

Zhao Liang is undoubtedly one of the leading lights of the independent Chinese documentary scene, and in the past I’ve written about his films Petition and Crime and Punishment… I was surprised to hear… that Zhao had just completed a film about HIV in China that had been passed for official release.

Indeed it is remarkable that the director of probing documentaries depicting Chinese police interrogation tactics on the North Korean border and the suppression of petitioners in the capital of Beijing now has the opportunity to make a film that can screen publicly in China. Zhao’s new film Together was able to be made as a companion piece Life Is a Miracle, a mainstream feature about a couple suffering from an illness suggesting HIV, with megastars Zhang Ziyi and Aaron Kwok directed by Gu Changwei. Together documents Zhao’s efforts to reach out to the community of HIV carriers and enlist several to appear in Gu’s film. Zhao’s film even has mainstream coverage in the Chinese press, as evidenced by this feature in China Daily.

Dan Edwards gives his first impressions of the film, plus an interview with Zhao Liang, on his site Screening China. Zhao reflects:

Before the shoot I had no knowledge at all of HIV – I gradually learned through preparing and shooting the film. Actually the Chinese are a very tolerant people. The discrimination is because people lack knowledge and mainstream media stigmatises the disease.

Read more at Screening China.

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Zhao Liang

This translated interview was first published Feburary 1, 2010 to commemorate Zhao Liang’s visit to the United States. The interview was originally published in the Chinese magazine Liang You. Translation by Yuqian Yan:

————
In 1996, when Jia Zhangke picked up a 16mm camera to film his fellow townsmen in Linfen, Zhao Liang, who used to live across the corridor to Jia at Beijing Film Academy, held the camera to record a special group of people – petitioners near Beijing South Railway Station.

Twelve years later Jia Zhangke has shifted his early interest in documentary to a recent martial art film project, and he even became a jury chairman at the Cannes Film Festival, while Zhao Liang eventually finished his 12-year project Petition, and was invited to a special screening at Cannes. Therefore he’s still a novice at Cannes. “Never mind. It’s quite common for a forty or fifty-year-old to be called a young director.”

From the bottom of his heart, Zhao Liang doesn’t see himself as that “young” since it’s very rare now to be moved to tears by what he is filming as he used to be. Most of the time, he’s rather quiet and calm deep down inside, with no strong emotion. “I’ve become an old man, not easily moved. This is not the same as being numb, since I use my brain to think more often.” He also finished his filming of the petitioners. “I’m sure I’ll continue to keep an eye on them since we are already friends. But I won’t shoot any more. I’m physically and mentally exhausted, mostly a mentally. The topic is very sensitive and I’m under huge pressure.” In order to most truthfully record the process of petitioning and keep himself safe, Zhao Liang almost lived in disguise all the time. “I had to wear shabby clothes to film the petition, whereas to film the government’s reaction, I dressed up like an official.”

Journalist: Director Zhao, it’s my pleasure to interview you. First of all, I want to ask how you understand Prof. Cui Weiping’s conclusion of “Sisyphus’s children?” Like Sisyphus rolling the huge boulder up the hill, the petitioners also struggle to achieve an impossible mission with unflinching courage. Including yourself, over ten years shooting is also a long, persistent process.

Zhao: I like this metaphor a lot, and I’m deeply touched by it. Her conclusion is very accurate. These people’s life and mental state is exactly like what she concludes.

Journalist: Prof. Cui also proposed another question, whether their stubborn personality led to the tragedy of their life or the tragedy caused their stubborn personality? What do you think?

Zhao: In this film, stubbornness is a virtue. In fact I see stubbornness as human nature, but its nature is not easily perceivable in most people. I think that this nature can nurture a person. Perhaps you may never come across such a situation that reveals your stubborn nature. I also feel that this is very complicated. Personality determines a person’s overall temperament, but fate is formed by different aspects and forces. No one wants to live such a tough life, but they have no choice. Actually lots of people who come to Beijing to petition have to give up eventually because of the political situation here, as well as their own financial problems.

Journalist: Did this stubborn personality affect you when you were shooting this film?

Zhao: For me, observing and filming are my personal interest. As a bystander, I’m not part of them, and my persistence does not match even one thousandth of theirs. It’s not comparable. I can only use my own way to express my opinion on them.

Journalist: What supported you to finish Petition?

Zhao: This is also quite complicated. As a professional documentary director, I have to satisfy myself in the end. Compared to other film genres, documentary has its unique social value and meanings. I have the responsibility to record their living state and the reality that is unknown to most people. There’s very little such report in our society. I’ll be very gratified if I can use my camera to preserve their living state and show it to general audiences.

Journalist: How do you see the international and national screening of this film, and the contrast between the two versions?

Zhao: The film is just my personal opinion, my own work. As a film, it doesn’t have a nationality. I want to show it to people, no matter if they’re white, yellow or black. I use audio-visual language to show audiences my world, my mind and my surroundings. For me, a Western audience is different from an Eastern audience. It’s the objective condition. I can only do my own part, and I don’t want to impose my own expectation on them. Of course, as for the meaning of social development, showing it to Chinese will be more efficient. But foreigners certainly have the right to watch our films.

As for the length of the film, my mentality is that the short version should be more suitable for international promotion. For me, foreigners don’t need to know too many details. The short version still contains the overall structure and major content, and its accuracy is not reduced by the shortening of the length. Maybe for Chinese people, the more detailed long version is more interesting to them, while these details are not necessary for the culturally and socially different Western audiences.

Journalist: In the short version, many dramatic elements about Fan Xiaojuan and her mother is gone, even some essential content.

Zhao: But a film has limited capacity. The general mood of the short one is tough and brave, so I tried to avoid tears during the editing. For example, I would avoid scenes that might sadden the audiences and trigger tears. I tried to make my work more masculine. But in the longer version, I highlighted the mother-daughter story. If the audiences feel like to cry, let them cry freely.

In the longer version, the mother-daughter story is told in flashback, across-edited with the ongoing reality. Their ten-year life experience is reflected in the long process of looking for the mother. In the two-hour version, the structure is readjusted to help the audience understand the film. Too complicated plot may cause many misunderstandings, such as confusions in the chronological order. The relationship between different characters is quite complicated.

Journalist: In the two-hour masculine version, what do you think the climactic moment for tears is?

Zhao: In fact the mother-daughter story still has the tear-triggering effect. For me, when Xiaojuan found her mother and the two of them sitting in the room and talking, my eyes were watering. From a male perspective, bursting into tears is not necessary. The long version has a scene of Xiaojuan picking up a bottle from my car and handing it to her mother. The emotional feeling between the daughter and mother is truly communicated through this media. Their past still lives in them. Although the bottle itself is valueless, their life experience and class remind them not to forget their roots. It’s very tear-triggering to me.

Journalist: The opening scene of the whole group is also very powerful. It’s almost like the petitioners emptying out their pain and suffering that have been accumulated for so many years in front of the camera.

Zhao: In the original edited version, the talking alone was about half an hour. The content was very rich. I asked Kong Jinglei to help me with edit, but she couldn’t help crying after the first part. I’ve never encountered such situation in my work before. I’m very sure about the use of the group opening scene since its impact is very powerful.

Journalist: As for visual expression, do you see Petition as the petitioners’ catharsis in front of the camera or more as your own self-expression?

Zhao: Of course in this film, my self-expression is very important. I present my thoughts here; I reorganize their life in my film in order to tell the audiences my opinion on them. Their excitement or sadness is the element I want to express. Broadly speaking, documentary is more about showing others a personal angle, personal perspective and thoughts. In my opinion, a work shouldn’t carry too many meanings. Of course it’s great fortune if it can carry some other social meanings. But as long as the author can elaborately articulate his/her intention, it will be a good work.

Journalist: But your previous works are all concerned about serious social topics, consciously or unconsciously.

Zhao: All I think or care about is always in conflict with and in relation to the social and political system. But I don’t insistently expect my film to generate such social value.

Journalist: In Tuchimoto Noriaki’s retrospective in this film festival, Tuchimoto says that film is the fruit of happiness, although minamata disease is a tragic social reality. Did you feel happy during your filming?

Zhao: It was very painful, no happiness at all. I tried to be more professional. All that was happening was very worth recording.

Journalist: If I understand this from a different angle, is it possible that the concept of professionalization also contains a certain utilitarian purpose?

Zhao: When you have witnessed so much suffering and experienced it with them, if you still think about awards, think about fame and gains, you’d better try some other things that will benefit you more. For me, fame and material gains are not the case. Whether it’s appreciated by other people or wins certain awards, it’s just other’s opinions, which is not important to me. I’m very clear how much I suffered for this film and how much pressure I underwent. As a man of my age, once I start doing something, it’s essential to carry it through to the end. I have to make good use of my time. Of course if you say it’s also utilitarianism, then it is. Anyway, I must be responsible to myself.

Journalist: During the Q and A, the audiences were very excited. Sometimes they were simply expressing themselves, and occasionally you and the host had to interrupt their talks.

Zhao: It’s related to their education level and the occasion for the conversation. You have to know what you are doing. In such a workshop occasion, the purpose is not to listen to their self-expression. It’s not their lecture. You have to be clear what your role is as an individual. Interruption is quite normal; I even feel it’s a joke. The film made some of the audiences outraged. But either vituperation or other voices, the audiences should understand what to do in different occasions. For me, all sorts of situations are quite natural. They are not a big deal for me.

Journalist: Did you feel sad or worried during the filming process? Did you think that if this tragedy caused by the institutional system might happen to you, perhaps in the next second, you would become a petitioner yourself?

Zhao: It’s not my personality. I’m probably more like Yang Jia and would react in a more violent and direct way. Petitioning is unlikely to happen to me. I know it’s a meaningless thing and I don’t want to waste my energy. Of course, the petitioners were absolutely right by saying my petition today also indicated your future. It would be your turn some time. What they referred to is the lack of safety caused by this social system and judicial flaws. Since the Constitution is not actually executed, we all possibly become a victim some day.

Journalist: Was there anyone who refused to cooperate during your filming?

Zhao: One guy who lived under the bridge was extremely difficult to communicate. He spoke in a very strange way and always talked about difficult political theories. He lived at the end of the bridge opening and stayed there even after all other people were driven away by the authority. He replaced a square brick on the side of the bridge opening with a piece of glass. In the morning, he moved the brick away to get some daylight, and put it back during night so that he was not found by the authority. He made a living by picking garbage and spent the rest of his time writing. He never went to petition. He saw himself as a Ninja, waiting for something to happen, kind of like Waiting for Godot. Although his way of thinking might be a bit awkward, his words and expressions were quite accurate if you think them over carefully. I was not able to understand him through my own intelligence and logic. He never let me film him, and I could never enter his world.

Zhao: In fact, the most difficult part was Xiao Juan and her mom. Their relationship with me was a different kind. It was a long process of repeatedly turning distrust into trust, and then it became distrust again. Xiaojuan’s mother was angry at me for Xiaojuan’s leaving since she thought I helped her to leave. Later, Xiaojuan went to the local government and the fake news made by the local government was broadcasted on TV. She thought that it was me who filmed the fake news and gave it to the government. She thought that I was from the local TV Station so she refused to be filmed by me from then on. Xiaojuan’s mother published a search notice on the newspaper for Xiaojuan’s return to Beijing. Her refusal caused me lots of trouble.

Journalist: Xiaojuan always trusted you.

Zhao: Right. Xiaojuan had trust in me, and this relationship continued for many years. She was still very young at the beginning and there was almost no one she could rely on in the entire village. Then she figured out that she was not the biological child in the family, so she always came to me whenever she was in trouble. She asked me for advice on whether she should go to English class, or how to find her lost things, etc.

Journalist: The film mentions Xiaojuan’s several love relations. They are all very realistic, but she’s real strong.

Zhao: Right. She’s much more mature than me. The environment of the South Station is very complicated. It’s a strange circle that doesn’t affect outsiders. But she lives exactly inside it. It’s a completely different level. She’s in a very dangerous situation where the homeless, security guards, garbage-pickers can easily take advantage of her. It’s another kind of danger. Although there’s no detail in the film to present this danger, the mental state of the petitioners is perceivable from my depiction of the group. The purpose of my film is not to tell how dangerous their life is. There aren’t many scenes about their life. The depiction of this part is rather simple. I put more effort into the broad picture and different temporal layers.

Journalist: Will your next film continue to focus on such social realist topics?

Zhao: It’s hard to tell. Now I have a general line and I’ll look for something. I plan to travel around the country, more importantly to look for myself. At the same time, I want to know what is the soul of this country and this nation. This topic might be too big, but I always have some doubts about our nation. I need to go out and see. It’s more like a returning process. When a person reaches a certain age, he/she need to look for something psychological and spiritual.

Journalist: You mentioned in a recent interview that you hope to express yourself elegantly. But most contemporary Chinese documentaries are quite rough and direct.

Zhao: First of all, you need to understand what I mean by elegant. It has nothing to do with how rough and shaky the film is. In fact rough and shaky can be elegant as well. Like what Cong Feng said, he was very excited after he saw the film. The characters in this film are very elegant. To see elegance and grace from the petitioners is exactly what I want to express. Of course, each aspect is important, such as your mentality of creation, what level your lens can reach, whether your image is able to present the leitmotif of your film. My “elegance” is more about the overall artistic system.

Journalist: Can you summarize your artistic system during the past 10 years, apart from your sensitive expression of the institutional system.

Zhao: In fact, my topics are not very broad. I’m like a fish, swimming in the reality of Chinese society. My deepest feelings and thoughts are about the institutional system. I’m touching it all the time and all I want to express is related to it. So my next film is probably still about the system. Actually, no matter what you film, you can never jump out of this circle. Any thoughts and worries would have to cover this part. I’m not a very brave man, so I was always very careful and I only shot under absolute safe conditions. This caused huge psychological pressure in the past years. Sometimes I even felt that I was followed and tried to find a way to escape. Sometime I thought that my phone had gone wrong. Maybe not. It might just be my illusion, but the huge psychological pressure made me more curious about things around me. Ever since I was a kid, my dad told me that I could do whatever I wanted expect touch politics. The system is by nature a big black thing. My fear for it is deeply rooted in me.

Edited by Zhao Lili

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Petition (dir. Zhao Liang)

Today is the first day of screenings for the indomitable Zhao Liang at Anthology Film Archives, and we couldn’t be happier with the press coverage so far. Here are some choice clips from reviews by New York critics for Zhao’s films Crime and Punishment (opening tonight at 6 and 9; additional screenings Saturday and Sunday) and Petition (starting tomorrow and screening daily at 6:30 and 9:30). More reviews and directions to Anthology after the break.

EMERGING FROM ARDUOUS, dangerous, in-the-trenches work, Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang’s documentary investigations open onto the profound problems of a country often kept hidden by authorities. His interest is in the banal mechanics of systematic oppression: His remarkable debut Crime and Punishment (2007), for instance, provides a rare look into the People’s Armed Police, a branch of law enforcement similar to the military in its regimented lifestyle and coldly abusive administration of “justice.”

- Michael Joshua Rowin, ArtForum

Crime and Punishment (2007) follows the paramilitary People’s Armed Police on the beat, gaining extraordinary access to a station in the rugged, frigid Northeast, on the North Korean border. The staff of young officers—pettily prideful, swimming in their uniforms—is naive enough not to self-censor for the camera. They show as bullies, incompetent if not malicious, with their lone investigative technique a face-slap.

- Nick Pinkerton, The Village Voice

Although it has its clear literary antecedents in Kafka and Bleak House, Petition‘s look at the arbitrary and corrupt nature of authority is of a specifically Chinese variety—not to mention the authentic stuff of actuality. A case of life imitating art—or rather art documenting life imitating art—Zhao Liang’s non-fiction film continues the director’s dissection of petty Sino-officialdom begun in his first film, Crime and Punishment. While that movie recorded the power abuses of soldiers policing the Chinese-North Korean border, Zhao’s latest film moves to Beijing to document the bureaucratic nightmare known as the petition system.

- Andrew Schenker, The L Magazine

A companion piece of sorts to Zhao’s 2007 look at totalitarian law enforcement, Crime and Punishment, this guerrilla-cinema essay is more than just a look at China’s judicial morass; it’s a dispatch from the front lines of a dictatorship. Cameras smuggled into petition offices (filming inside is a no-no) capture harassment, while government-sanctioned thugs threaten violence, and in one grotesque scene, the remains of an activist are found scattered along train tracks. Yet Petition is also a portrait of a sustaining outsider community, one fueled by dissent and the refusal to give in to a corrupt system.

- David Fear, Time Out New York

Faced with absurd obstacles and delays, petitioners spend years rewriting and resubmitting their complaints, all the while living in shanties, under bridges, or in tunnels, and enduring violence at the hands of “retrievers,” government officials sent from their home villages. Despite the threat of arbitrary arrest and internment in detention centers, prisons, and punitive psychiatric hospitals, the petitioners audaciously speak out—distributing flyers in Tiananmen Square, shouting from towers, writing tracts, and holding parades, all of which result in more arrests. Zhao puts on view the sham and the shame of the 2008 Olympics, which served as an official pretext to demolish the petitioners’ settlements, and he shows that discontent with abusive one-party rule isn’t the domain solely of disaffected intellectuals but also of ordinary people who are tired of being, as one of them says, the “new slaves of socialism.”

- Richard Brody, The New Yorker

http://dgeneratefilms.com/events/zhao-liangs-petition-and-crime-and-punishment-screening-at-anthology-film-archives-next-week/

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This article was originally published August 17, 2010.

By Kevin B. Lee

Zhao Liang

Zhao Liang is one of China’s leading artists working in video, photography and documentary film. His work examines both rural and urban realities, fast-paced progress and nostalgia, the nature of politics, and the beauty of the natural world. He clearly connects with the underprivileged, whom he considers to be the engine of society, and homes in on the everyday aspects of life ignored by public institutions. He has directed two feature documentaries, Crime and Punishment and Petition, and his videos, photos and installations have been exhibited around the world.

To commemorate dGenerate Films’ release of Crime and Punishment, what follows is a transcript from Zhao Liang’s audience Q&A following a screening of the film at the China Institute on Feburary 5, 2010. Additionally, there are excerpts from a supplementary interview with Zhao conducted by dGenerate Films’ Kevin B. Lee.

Thanks to Isabella Tianzi Cai, Vincent Cheng and Yuqian Yan for their translation of the interviews.

1. From the audience Q&A following the China Institute screening of Crime and Punishment:

Question: Could you say something about how this film has been distributed in China and how it’s been received? Has it been screened in theaters? Has it been on the television as well as on the web?

Zhao: In China, this film was screened once in Beijing Independent Film Festival. Other than that, very rarely have people had the opportunity to see films like this, unless they go to certain art galleries where they might have such films. So it is definitely hard to have distribution done in China. Right now dGenerate Films Inc. in the United States is helping me distribute it here.

Question: Could you explain why you made the film?

Zhao: It actually happened by chance. I was actually doing another project in 2004 somewhere around the China-North Korea border. I was there actually through connection. I was trying to document the interactions between the Chinese police officers and also the people from across the border,  the whole dynamic between the border police and how they deal with people from the other side of the border. And after I got there, I realized that they were not dealing with that issue any more. Instead, I got the chance to observe their daily lives and found them fascinating. So I decided to change that particular project and make something that could actually document their daily life.

Question: I found it really interesting that the soldiers actually allowed themselves to be filmed. I just wonder how that came about and what your sense was. Did they see the problem of what was happening and want it to be made available to the public?

Crime and Punishment

Zhao: I think it definitely involved some ethical issues for documentary filmmakers. Actually I did not have any permit to film this. I had a friend at the time, and through connection I had the opportunity to film their daily life. And I also told a lie in which I pretty much told them that I was writing a script and wanted to get some sources of inspiration for this particular script. These people were all very young and inexperienced, so for a lot of them, they actually did not give the film a second thought. They knew, though, when exactly I was going overboard. And when that happened, they would ask me to stop filming them, as you have probably observed in this particular film. That was pretty much the dynamic of filming this documentary and to approaching these subjects.

Question: In terms of the crew involved, were there any other people besides yourself who were there to film? And in terms of the presence of the camera, how comfortable were the people in the film with the camera? Is the opening scene shot right after you arrived there or is it shot some time later after you had been there for a while?

Zhao: Yes, it was a one-man crew. I was the only person there to film it. In terms of the specific date that the opening scene was shot, I cannot give you too many details. But I do remember that the way that they were dealing with the whole folding of the cover and the bed sheet. They did it very neatly every time, but they actually didn’t do it everyday. This is not actually a military military. Only when they are supervised that they would need to do it for show. What usually happens is that they often use their own covers, and they will put the folded ones under their beds, and that would be just supervision purposes. So they probably do this, as I will say, about three to five times a month. And it was probably after a month that I actually picked the camera and filmed the ritual that they do.

In terms of the presence of the camera and what kind of impact that it has on the interaction between me and them, I think that it does a certain kind of impact. For example, the old man who picks up scraps. I think that in China people tend to have this perception of the media: at the same time that they think it is political and for propaganda, they also think it as having something to do with justice. They think that if the camera is there, that means that “I am not on the side of the police officers.” So sometimes when the police officer locked the room, this old man would start to communicate with me, and we would be talking about how we could deal with this particular police officer in terms of apology and so on and so forth. And I do think that for me, I really want to tell him that it is best for him to apologize because I do think that the police officer would probably not react in the way that he had in this film if not for the camera. I think it is because of the presence of the camera and the mere fact that I was there that he lost his face and wanted this particular apology from this old man. So I do think that it does change the dynamic.

Question: When I was watching this, especially during the interrogation scenes, I couldn’t help being reminded of several similar kinds of behaviors during the Cultural Revolution, which is the fact that these faces, young officers invested with such authority. I know that this film is an observational documentary, have you had any reflections on how history can factor in on this particular situation? The other question that I have is just factual. I noticed that in the credits one of the producers was Wang Bing. Is that the same person as the director of Tie Xi Qu? And I was wondering the dogs, how they were used normally. Thanks.

Zhao: When I was on location as I was shooting this particular documentary, I realized how complex the situation was in terms of the connections or the relations between the local members, including the committee members, and the society that they lived in. And I do think that for this particular old man, he wasn’t wrong because he did not have the permit, his was expired. The police officers were actually doing the things that they were supposed to do to make sure that he actually renewed his license.

The situation then sidetracked as the son of the old man cursed the police officer. And I do think that that’s something that the police officer later on was not even serious about. The police officer just wanted an apology because the camera was there. To me, it is more about the absurdity of reality than anything else. And that is something that I wanted to capture with that particular sequence.

For the second question, yes, Wang Bing and I do know each other. We are actually friends. We are neighbors, and we live in the same building. In the credits you can actually see a lot of my friends. I really could not have done this without them.

As for dogs, eating dogs is something that people do practice in that part of the country, that is, the northeast part closer to North Korea. That is how they prepare for dog meat and eat it. For this particular film, I am using the dogs as a metaphor, so I’m sure that you will get the sense of what it means.

Question: The film that you are showing tomorrow, Petition, you started that film in 1996, so I believe that this film was shot afterwards. I am just curious if you originally intended to do this film from the viewpoint of the military police, to see it from a different vantage point. Do you see these two films as in a conversation with each other?

Zhao: I think there are a lot of objective reasons that I did these two different documentaries. For Petition, it would be almost impossible for me to actually approach the government officials or the police officers in that particular film because these are very political savvy Beijing police officers. They have all the former experiences before them and they know exactly what kinds of issues would damage them or what kinds of complications that would actually come out of the film, of the filming of the dynamic and interactions between the people who come to the petition village to complain, and the police. So that answers the question of why I wasn’t able to do that in Petition. As for this one, it was just by chance and also by luck, and also because that these people are politically more naive and less politically-savvy than their Beijing counterparts.

Question: Were there any other interesting things that you had filmed but did not make it into the film?

Zhao: I have a lot more of what I call “the boring footage” that I have shot but did not use in the final product. It makes me uncomfortable to actually show them including the cases of cracking down prostitution and a lot more unethical things going on. For me, I really don’t want those things seen by other people, so I left them out. I do think I have enough material other than those to fill in the documentary, which is after all just two hours’ long. I needed to make a very difficult decision.

Question: How do you want the viewers to feel after they see the film?

Zhao:  I actually don’t really expect or I don’t really care about how the audience will feel about my film because that’s not my purpose. As a filmmaker, I am making films for myself, and these are the things that I want to focus on: whether I have done my job, whether I have expressed to the fullest extent, and also the form, the style, the content that are incorporated in my film, whether I have fulfilled my expectation for myself as a filmmaker to tell the story to be told. So this is more personal, I don’t expect you to get something out of it.

That’s the reason why I feel very uneasy about Q&A. I feel embarrassed. Here is something that I want to impress upon you: in China at this stage it is almost impossible to get permit or have any type of approval or permission for independent film-making, especially documentary. For me, I have to struggle with ethical concerns. As a filmmaker, this ethical issue really bothers me a lot. And I really feel uneasy answering questions. I actually have to reexamine my responsibilities as a filmmaker, where to cross the line of being an ethical filmmaker. To me, this is definitely very difficulty to deal with.

Question: Can you talk more about the political pressure faced by independent filmmakers?

Zhao: I think the whole circle of independent film-making has a lot to do with the subject matters. If the subject matter is not that sensitive politically, no one actually would care, so they will not pick on you or single you out. To me, it is not the actually pressure from the top or the government, it is more the psychological pressure you have within yourself about the idea of what-if. Right now, I do think that through my friends, indirectly, I am trying to get the sense of how they perceive Petition, which is more politically charged. And at this point, it seems to me that I get the sense that they are not going to do anything that will be explicit to me. So far they have not approached me yet. So, we will see.

Question: So what are you working on now?

Zhao: I’m actually working on a project on AIDS that was commissioned by the government.

Comment: As a member of the audience, I do understand the difficulty of being an independent filmmaker in China. The black humor in this film is something that I enjoyed very much, and also the sense of despair, the sense that there is no resolve for everything. They needed to do what they needed to do to make a living. That is something very brilliant about this film.

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2. Excerpts from interview with Zhao by Kevin B. Lee:

Lee: For western audiences, they tend to see this film as a criticism of the Chinese state authority and police authority because the ways that the police treat the suspects seem like instances of power abuses. How would you answer to those audiences? What do you wish that they would understand?

Zhao: First, I want to say that this film does have a critical side against the state authority. Police brutality is common in China, and it needs redress. But on the other hand, I see the policemen and the thieves as victims of this distorted environment. Both can feel insecure about their positions in society. A thief probably fears that he may be mistreated by the police; a police officer, too, probably fears that one day he will let go of the right and power to arrest and interrogate people.

Lee: How big is the area?

Zhao: It is a small town, with a population of 8,000 to 10,000 approximately.

Lee: Usually in a small town like that, every one knows each other. Their way of relating to each other is probably not as strict as in big cities. However, the policemen there act like they are the big shot. They enforce a very strict-code behavior and discipline. Even the way they conduct themselves, like the ways they fold their blankets and talk to people, seems inappropriate. What do you think is the cause of the distortion in this environment?

Zhao: The police station at the China-North Korea border is a branch of China’s military force. The police officers there often do not have close ties with the locals. After a few years, most of them will get discharged and return to their birth cities to start a new career, with a few exceptions whereby the ones who are from the small villages of the town will return to their respective villages.

Lee: Does “the distorted environment” refer to this town only or China at large?

Zhao: Not just the town. I was referring to our entire political structure and institutional system.

Lee: In the film there is a garbage collector who easily catches our attention. Will you say that there is a certain class struggle associated with people like him, who come from the countryside? Why did the police suddenly pick on him for not having a permit even though it seems that he had been doing this job for a while? What is your view about it?

Zhao: I tend to think that the police has a reason to be strict in carrying out their duties. I don’t agree that the police picked on him simply because he was from the countryside. By law, the garbage collector needs a permit for doing his job. When the police checked on him, they found out that he left his permit at home. They asked him to go home and retrieve it, and he did. However, when he came back with the permit, the police found out that his permit had already expired. That was the reason they took him to the police station.

Lee: But then you see the way they treat him is very disrespectful as if their natural attitude towards him is to suspect him and not to believe his story. What does that say about the prejudice of the policemen?

Zhao: The garbage collector kept making up lies about his not having a permit. That was the reason for their long altercation. After he retrieved his permit, which was an expired one, he complained further about the fact that nobody reminded him to extend it.

Lee: As you were filming it, how did you feel about the garbage collector since he kept lying?

Zhao: On one hand, I felt that the old man only made a meagre living out of the garbage he collected, and his life must be hard. The procedures that he needs to go through in order to get a permit every year are cumbersome – he probably needs to bribe some officials to get it done for the number of permits is limited. At the same time, law enforcement in China is carried out rather haphazardly. In the past he had never been caught or punished for not having a valid permit, so he took it for granted that he could continue taking his chances.

Unfortunately, the old batch who worked at the police station was replaced by a new batch, which consisted of younger police officers who were generally less lenient. No one from the new batch recognized the old man, so obviously he was at a disadvantage. On the other hand though, I felt that the police needed not to harass the old man. The whole thing was lame.

In a twin pack of this documentary, I included a related incident. What happened there was that the well pump in a local residential area got lost. By convention, garbage collectors are the usual suspects of such public thievery. It is believed too that even if they have not done it, they must know the culprit because the person must go to them to sell the stolen thing. Therefore, from the police’s perspective, one way to such curb public thievery is through garbage collectors. Thus, the policemen in this case did have a second good reason to check on the old man.

Lee: There is one scene where the police officers are saying that they are losing their hair. What is the main cause of stress for them?

Zhao: All of them take turns to work night shifts. And since the number of police officers who work there is limited too, it is a hard job for all. They don’t usually get enough sleep. Plus the fact that they also need to take care of 110 emergency calls and be prepared for action at any minute.

Lee: Near the end of the documentary there is a scene where the police officers arrest the timber thieves and go with the thieves to their residence. This scene seems to be a very complex scene to shoot for a documentary filmmaker because it also involves a family conflict. Prior to this scene, the documentary mainly takes place in the police station, which is a very controlled environment. How were you able to film this seemingly tense and difficult situation between the policemen and the villager outside the police station? What was the villagers’ reaction to being filmed by him as they were having a fight with the policemen?

Zhao: I did not find it hard to film this scene at the time. The villagers put their trust in me because they felt that with the presence of my camera, the policemen would not dare to mistreat them. The footage could act as evidence if needed at a later point too. This was a great advantage to both my filming amongst them and the villagers themselves.

Lee: Were there other moments when you felt that the camera was having an effect on your subjects?

Zhao: It is certainly true in the case of the old man. He often spoke to me in front of my camera because the police would not sympathize with him. Occasionally I nodded at him. This simple gesture alleviated him.

Lee: Did you feel that the police acted differently in any way in front of the camera?

Zhao: Yes, they did, to varying degrees. In general, they weren’t as brash. For instance, the garbage collector’s son remonstrated the police officers at one point. Because my camera was there, the police officers felt that they would lose face if they did not pursue the investigation right to the end.

Relevant Classroom Use

“Zhao Liang captures those sides of life that are ignored by official politics and, in so doing, acts as a chronicler of everyday life. Futility, running idle, stubbornness, and stamina are motifs shared by all of his films, while the dramatic consequences of the rapid economic and structural transformation in China constitute the continuous backdrop to his work.” (Quoted from the catalogue of the 2008 Berlin Biennial)

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY

Tickets may be purchased at the box office on date of screening.

Details on each film and screening times after the break.

Crime and Punishment
In Mandarin with English subtitles, 2007, 122 minutes, video

Thursday, Jan. 13 at 6pm and 9pm
Saturday, Jan. 15 at 4pm
Sunday, Jan 16 at 4pm

Winner of the International Human Rights Award at the Nuremberg Film Festival, Best Documentary at France’s Festival des Trois Continents, and awarded Best Director by One World International Human Rights Documentary, Variety critic Robert Koehler calls Crime and Punishment “Stunning“.

On the North Korean border, Chinese military police enforce the law with a heavy hand, leading to moments of harrowing abuse and surreal satire. Amidst the barren wintry landscape of Northeast China, Chinese military police officers rigidly enforce law and order in an impoverished mountain town. They raid a private residence to bust an illegal mahjong game, casually abuse a pickpocket accused of throwing away evidence, and berate a confession out of a scrap collector working without a permit. The police switch between precise investigative procedure, explosions of violent fury, and moments of comic ineptitude, all captured incredibly before the camera.

Petition
Friday, Jan. 14 through Thursday Jan. 20
6:30pm and 9:30pm

Petition, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest documentaries to be produced in China. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.

“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

Relevant Classroom Use