The following is a translation of an announcement from the Bishan Harvestival found on artist/curator/filmmaker Ou Ning’s Weibo feed. It is translated by Isabella Tianzi Cai.

The Bishan Harvestival is a three-day festival of performances, discussions and other events organized on the topic of rural culture in China. It will be held in Bishan village in Yi County, Anhui Province, August 26-28. More details can be found on Ou Ning’s website Alternative Archive.

Ou Ning is the director of Meishi Street and San Yuan Li, both available through dGenerate.

Xiuli Film Lot in Li County of Anhui Province

Bishan Harvestival
Film screenings: Paradox of Reality: Contemporary Documentaries on the Chinese Countryside
Time: August 28, 2011 10:00-18:00
Place: The Film Theater at Xiuli Film Lot in Yi County of Anhui Province

The Chinese independent film movement, which started in the early 1990s, has consistently delved into the vast undocumented reality of Chinese society, recording life in the time of change and writing history from the micro perspective of one individual. Many filmmakers associated with this movement show great concern over the changing living conditions of Chinese villagers and their outlook on life; these filmmakers have devoted tremendous energy in bringing forth the social problems, the political movements, the religious practices, the customs and traditions, and the preservation of history in rural China. They are often seen around villagers’ houses and fields, using their lens to sculpture the changing times experienced by a time-honored agricultural society under the myriad forces of modernization. Their documentaries are one of the most valuable historical records of rural China.

The documentaries selected for the Bishan Harvestival this year include Li Yifan’s film about religious organizations and village governance and its impact on villagers’ daily lives in Sichuan,  Mao Chenyu’s trilogy on family planning, death, and mysticism, Guo Xizhi’s two films on small towns’ political reforms and relocation projects, Lu Xinyu’s focused study on the daily events in a small village in Huizhou, and two other films made by two villagers under the supervision of Wu Wenguang. The aforementioned first four filmmakers perceive reality from an outsider’s perspective whereas the latter two belong to the rural world of their subject – therefore, their films are self-portraits.

During the making of these documentaries about Chinese village life, the filmmakers have consciously minimized their elitism. They went down to the grassroots level and created a leveled field of vision to use for their documentaries. They let reality speak for itself and let images forge their own objectivity. In the villagers’ documentaries, the comments and suggestions given by professionals were treated as advice; during the production stage, the professionals all “exit stage left” and let villagers take the central roles. This method harbingers a kind of imagistic democracy in the age of affordable digital filmmaking for the common people; it stands out against the rampant elitism in today’s culture as a big step forward; and it corresponds to the principles behind rural development since the time of the Republic of China (1912-1949).

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Cao Fei (photo credit: The New York Times)

By Ariella Tai

Internationally renowned visual artist Cao Fei has recently put on a new show entitled “Play Time,” pieces of which are currently on view at the Lombard-Freid Projects in Chelsea, New York City.  The show takes inspiration from children’s television shows like “Thomas and Friends,” “Teletubbies” and the BBC program “The Night Garden,” as well as other forms of youth entertainment, like puppets and miniature skateboards.  The New York Times profile observes, “The show seems to be a transitional one for Ms. Cao, who plans to shut down “RMB City” [her acclaimed online interactive environment] this summer.  But it has her trademark sensibility: pop and playful on the surface, complex social portrait underneath.”  Her reconstruction of Thomas the Tank Engine travels around Beijing as it picks up construction debris and transports it to a large dump near the Summer Palace, while her skate park for tiny skateboards exhibits architecture reflecting the highly developed landscapes of contemporary Chinese cities.

More after the break.

Cao Fei has become known for her explorations of youth subcultures in China, ranging from videos on the lives of Cosplayers to the creation of “RMB City.”  In “RMB City,” her avatar “China Tracy” engaged in performances, created videos and games and, in the avatar’s second incarnation, was manipulated by users into various activities within the virtual environment.  Her work within this popular online game highlighted her ability to communicate with “a shockingly young audience,” tapping not only into complex underground cultures but also into the fantasy worlds of several of her subjects.  Her 2007 video, “Whose Utopia” observes several factory workers in Guangdong acting out their innermost desires to dance ballet, breakdance or play rock musicians within the confines of their factory workplace.

Her 2003 experimental video San Yuan Li, co-directed with artist Ou Ning, reflects her inclinations and talents in their earlier forms.  Edited from footage taken by a dozen young artists, this highly stylized, and energetically rhythmic film explores the case of a village that has been physically hemmed in on all sides by the towering skyscrapers of Guangzhou during the city’s rapid modernization.  The villagers develop ingenuous ways to make their living and maintain their way of life.  This piece, like her later works, takes on the task of “documenting society,” and the ways in which Chinese are affected by the shifting economic and social milieus.  She tells the New York Times: “All my experience did not come from art school… It’s from growing up in the early 1990s in the south of China.” Continually interested in collaboration and interaction with her audiences, she is strongly connected to the context of her experiences and art.

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Ou NIng

In addition to being an artist, curator, writer, and director of the Shao Foundation, China’s cultural renaissance man Ou Ning is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker. After making the experimental San Yuan Li in 2003 with Cao Fei and other members of the U-theque collective in Guangzhou, Ou Ning relocated to China’s capital, where he made Meishi St (2006) about the demolition of one of Beijing’s oldest areas in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics. Both films are now part of the dGenerate Films catalogue.

In March 2010 I interviewed Ou Ning in Beijing about his filmmaking career for an article I was writing on China’s independent documentary sector for RealTime Arts magazine in Australia. Only a few select quotes appeared in that piece, but the complete interview contains a wealth of fascinating material not only on Ou’s background, but also the rise of China’s “digital” documentary generation.

Thanks to Ou Ning for his time and for speaking so openly about some controversial matters. The interview was conducted mostly in English.

Dan Edwards: I believe you started your career as an editor and graphic designer. Can you tell me how you first became involved in filmmaking?

Ou Ning: In 1999 I was commissioned by Emei film studio to design a film magazine. When I got the magazine’s content I was very disappointed, as it was all just about movie stars and commercial movies. I advised the publishers to change the magazine, and along with Wu Wenguang I got them some content about independent films. The publishers were very happy and commissioned me as the editor.

At that time there were no real film critics in China. With the magazine we organised screenings in a group that became U-theque. I knew the Hong Kong film director and critic Shu Kei [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shu_Kei]. He had distributed a lot of art films in Hong Kong, and through him I was able to get the license to distribute a lot of films in China. The screenings we organised were very successful and U-theque grew very big.

In 2003 there was the “Zone of Urgency” at the Venice Biennale. The curator Hou Hanru wanted to discuss social problems in Asian cities, and he was particularly interested in “alternative spaces” in Asia. U-theque was a good example of an “alternative space” – a space that is freer than official institutions like museums. U-theque used to use a lot of ordinary spaces for screenings like bars and cafes. So they commissioned U-theque to make San Yuan Li.

Did the U-theque screenings take place in Guangzhou?

Actually U-theque began in Shenzhen. We had so many people we also moved to Guangzhou as well. We had a total of 800 members in both cities.

Is U-theque still active?

No. In 2003 an important historical event happened. After we made San Yuan Li, Nanfang Dushi Bao [Southern Metropolis Daily, a mainland newspaper famous for its investigative reporting] sponsored our retrospective of Jia Zhangke films in 2004. Then the death of the student Sun Zhigang was reported by the Southern Metropolis Daily [Sun was beaten to death while being arbitrarily detained by police in Guangzhou]. So the after that the Guangdong Government really hated the paper. They also hated the film, San Yuan Li. Actually they never saw the film, but San Yuan Li [an area in Guangzhou] had a reputation as one of the worst areas for drug abuse in China. They were afraid our film would publicise that.

Fifteen police broke into my office studio and took all my documents and DVDs. They were trying to prove U-theque was an illegal organisation – and that the Southern Metropolis Daily had supported an illegal organisation. They also wanted to take my computer but I insisted they could not take it.

Then they banned U-theque as an illegal organisation.

How did you come across the subject matter for your next film Meishi Street, and how did you first meet the main character, Zhang Jinli?

They really liked San Yuan Li in Europe. Both Le Monde and Le Figaro reported on it at the Venice Biennale.

In 2005, Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation supported Shrinking Cities, a project looking at shrinking cities like Liverpool and Detroit. This drew my attention to the organisation, and they commissioned me to make a project about Beijing. But I quickly found Beijing was very different to Guangzhou.

Initially I wanted to make a film like San Yuan Li – ie not a traditional documentary film. In San Yuan Li there is no story, it’s just like a montage. I wanted to do one about Dashilan [an area in Beijing just south of Tiananmen Square]. All the footage in San Yuan Li was sped up, but in the new film about Beijing I wanted the whole thing very slow. So I shot a lot of footage in Dashilan. I went there for four days every week and interviewed a lot of people, shot every hutong – totally there are more than 100 hutongs in Dashilan, and I shot almost every one. So I had more than 200 hours of footage, shot over one year.

I met Zhang Jinli [the central character in Meishi St] one morning in 2005 – it was summer, very early morning. I got up about 6am and was shooting on Meishi Street. An old person came to me because he saw me with a camera and thought I was a journalist. He came to tell me, “Today something will happen at 179 Meishi Street” – the address of Zhang Jinli’s restaurant. As a documentary filmmaker, every day I was looking for a story. He told me something would happen at 9am, so I organised all my team and we went there.

At 9am Zhang Jinli hung his banners for the first time outside his restaurant and handed out flyers. When he saw me with my camera he got so excited – he thought, “Oh good, a journalist has come!”

I talked with him – that was the first time I met him. After that every time I went to Dashilan I would talk with him, and I found he was a really interesting man – a very smart guy. So I had a new idea. I decided to give a camera to him, teach him how to use it and ask him to document his protest and his daily life. Zhang Jinli’s character is very good – he’s very interesting and humorous. Because he was trying to protect his property I realised this was a very urgent story. So I wanted to make a film about his story first, and after that I would continue with my other project. So that’s how Meishi Street came about.

How long after you met Zhang Jinli did you decide to give him a camera and ask him to document his own story?

After I met him, it was one month later I gave the camera to him.

Was he keen, or did you have to persuade him?

Actually he is very open to new things. When I told him, “I am going to give the camera to you,” he was very happy. The first day he just took the camera and shot some of his friends in the park.

That scene is in the film…

Yeah, that’s right. He felt very excited – the most exciting thing for him was one time he hung the banners on the roof of his house. The police came to take down the banners. When he put the camera on the police, the police were very afraid of the camera. That made Zhang Jinli realise that actually the camera is a weapon for him. Then he was more motivated to shoot more footage.

I noticed in a lot of the footage in the film, Zhang is filming the police, but the police have cameras too.

Yeah, it’s very interesting. You can say that digital technology has had a great impact on Chinese political society. You can see at the end of the film during the demolition process, there are so many cameras on the scene. That means that there are some cameras from the police station, some from our team, some from NGO organisations. The digital technology has brought some opportunity to the people to document history by themselves. This is a great change in China. Before that, history only had one version, by the Chinese Communist Party, but now with digital technology history has different versions. History has a Zhang Jinli version, a Security Bureau version… there’s a lot of different versions, not just one version. That is a great progress in the political situation in China.

In terms of the final film, how much time did you actually spend on the street shooting Zhang’s story, and how much of the film did Zhang Jinli shoot himself? Did he shoot most of the footage that we see in the film?

Two-thirds is Zhang’s, one-third our team. In total he provided me with about 70 hours of footage. The last scene of the demolition is mainly by us, because Zhang is in the action, on screen.

And was Zhang involved in putting the film together during the editing process?

No, he just provided footage. That is why the film is directed by myself. Actually at that time Zhang Jinli didn’t have the opportunity to tell a story. The original idea was to give a camera to him and teach him to edit. That would be a more complete idea – just like Wu Wenguang did with his village project. He gave a camera to villagers and taught them to edit.

But Zhang Jinli, after this, bought a camera himself, opened a blog and he’s become very interested in digital technology and using all the different kinds of media to document his daily life. He is still in the process of trying to get his compensation. He now lives in his sister’s house. Before the Olympics the district government said they’d give him a house close to where he used to live as compensation, but after the Olympics when he went back to talk to them they ignored him.

So it sounds like it was quite an empowering experience for him, in terms of telling his own story and producing his own media?

Yeah, he is so smart. Every two or three days, or at least once a week, we would meet and he would provide his new footage. After one month I found he was not only shooting but also speaking – narrating. Like a journalist. So in Meishi Street we can see him becoming educated as a citizen journalist. We can see him acting just like a journalist, interviewing people.

Did you ever go back to your original project about Beijing?

After Meishi Street, I had so many new projects so I haven’t had time to do it.

That footage would already be very valuable – big parts of that area have been destroyed and rebuilt in the past few years.

Yeah, after Meishi Street was rebuilt in 2007 I often went back there to get new footage. So my footage covers the whole process of change in that area – it’s totally different now. I really want to finish this project, but I don’t know how to find the time…

Both San Yuan Li and Meishi Street are very collaborative projects, with multiple people contributing to the filmmaking process. Do you feel this an important aspect of your approach to filmmaking?

Yes. This is a new way of making films – you know most of the Chinese documentary filmmakers often work individually, in one-man teams. But because when I started making films I was running the U-theque organisation I developed a co-operative idea from that orgnisation. For each project we had a list of four or five people who were in charge of the camera. So we shot a lot of footage, and then every week we would have a meeting to discuss what to do next. From Monday to Friday we would be shooting in the city. Then Saturday or Sunday we would sit down, have a meeting to preview and discuss all the footage, then decide how to shoot the following week. So we had so many meetings when making the film.

Was this for both San Yuan Li and Meishi Street?

Yes, both.

Are other people from U-theque still involved in filmmaking?

Of course! There’s quite a lot. Huang Weikai (Disorder, 2009, also in the dGenerate catalogue) participated in both San Yuan Li and Meishi Street. He was my main cameraman. So far he has made three documentaries by himself. Also Fu Xinhua, another member of U-theque, has made two more films about urban villages in Guangzhou.

In earlier periods of the People’s Republic, filmmakers only came through the film schools and other specific training institutions, so groups like U-theque and the idea of people training themselves is a big change.

Yeah, there are two things that made this change. First was pirate DVDs. People educated themselves. They didn’t need to go to Beijing Film Academy – they saw a lot of films through pirate DVDs, which gave a very rich film history. When they had seen this history they wanted to make things themselves, and they found there were very cheap cameras that had come out. I mean everyone can buy a camera and start filmmaking. We can also say pirate DVDs are part of digital technology. This technology has had a great impact on filmmaking in China.

When did that change start to happen here?

I think it was in the 1990s people started seeing DVDs. It was after that – after the turn of the millennium – they started making films. I wrote an article about this for a Belgian art festival – how DVDs and digital cameras changed filmmaking in China and the whole political situation.

Many of China’s independent documentary filmmakers seem to come from fine arts backgrounds. I’m thinking about people like yourself and Cao Fei, Ai Weiwei and Zhang Dali. Others like Zhao Dayong and Hu Jie started as painters before moving into filmmaking. Why do you think so many visual artists in China are attracted to documentary filmmaking?

I think today you must know that documentary is the most powerful medium to show your concept of Chinese society. For example Ai Xiaoming was the first intellectual to use documentary film to talk about very sensitive events in China. She made a film about Sun Zhigang, the young man killed by the Guangzhou police. She also made a film about an AIDS village in Henan. Documentary film is the powerful medium for people to get involved in politics. Ai Xiaoming was the first one to do that, and then Ai Weiwei has also done that.

I think today’s contemporary art is very commercial in a very commercial system. Some artists have changed to making documentaries because they are concerned about Chinese society and Chinese reality. It’s a more direct way to express themselves, because a lot of artists care about society and they have found contemporary art has lost its critical power.

Ai Weiwei discovered this. He has produced four documentaries, and then he mails the DVDs to a lot of different people for free. Anyone can send their address to him and he’ll mail it to them. He has distributed more than 15,000 copies of his films this way.

Earlier you talked about the problems U-theque had, and how much the authorities didn’t like San Yuan Li. Have you ever suffered any other interference from the authorities in your filmmaking activities? Did you have any problems when you were shooting Meishi Street for example?

When I was shooting San Yuan Li the government didn’t know – I just had to deal with the people in the village. So there was no trouble in making the film. And in Beijing, because Dashilan – where Meishi Street is – is a tourist area, there were so many tourists every day with cameras the street office and local government could not recognise who was a tourist and who was a documentary filmmaker, so there was no problem [laughs].

Do independent documentary filmmakers in China generally regard themselves as a community, or do they tend to work in isolation? Do you have much communication with other filmmakers?

Yeah. There is a community in China. At the very beginning it was maybe a filmmakers community, but now because Ai Weiwei and Ai Xiaoming use documentary films to get involved in citizen’s political movements, some activists have joined in. The Chinese activists also gather on Twitter. They have a big community, because Ai Weiwei is like a leader – a godfather. When he makes a documentary film, he sends a DVD to everyone and it becomes very well known in the activist scene. So the community is getting wider and bigger – it’s gone beyond the filmmakers. Chinese activists discuss politics on Twitter every day – discuss everything that happens in China.

Are you currently working any other film projects?

[Sighs] Even though I work as a curator and the director of the Shao Foundation, the thing I most like to do is to be an artist – a creator. I really want to go back and make a film. When you work as a curator you have to handle a lot of administration. I hate that! [laughs]

I made a film about Guangzhou, and one about Beijing, so I’d like to make a film about Shanghai. There’s a worker community in Shanghai built in the 1950s, also located in the center of the city. A lot of migrants have now moved in – it’s the same kind of community as Dashilan and San Yuan Li. I planned to do this project after the Beijing project – I planned it in 2006, but I haven’t had time to do it [laughs].

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Nail Household Fighting Against Demolition Squad

by Sara Beretta

Sometimes reality exceeds the virtual, in its absurdity, strangeness and grotesquery. It also happens that the virtual realm can help in coping with the harshness of real life, by re-enacting and mocking its absurdity and cruelty. This is the case of Nail Household Fighting Against Demolition Squad, the online flash game by Mirage Games that is spreading like wildfire over China. First appearing on the popular website 17173, it’s one of the most played online games.

The so-called “nail householders,” their houses left as lonely nails in the middle of already demolished ones, have to hire people to face the demolition team men, who are milling about to crash down the remaining squatters. There’s Mrs. and Grandpa Ding (Chinese for “nail”) and their six-member family fighting against the crew – with slippers, homemade tools and other scrappy objects – in order to keep their houses standing. What is unusual for a video game  is that there are but a few chances to win: after strenuously fighting for six levels, the player hits the “survival level,” set up so that the player is all but doomed, something that rather closely resembles the game’s real life basis.

It’s a funny, easy game, in the style of popular satirical videos (“e-gao”), but what’s compelling is its similarity to daily life,  where a lot of families have to face eviction and forced relocation, or to accept money as a refund for being removed  from their houses. And many of them refuse, opposing the oncoming bulldozers, sometimes with tragic results. A recent incident in September 2010 involved heavy injuries to a family in Fenggang town, Yihuang county.

An actual "nailhouse" surrounded by a development site

For the past several years, the character destroy (“chai“) painted on walls brings drama and misfortune: it means that the house has to give place to progress as dictated by local authorities: a huge new road, a bus station, etc. Residents opposing the demolition are an increasingly urgent social topic, their tragic struggle, grotesquely depicted in the video game, have even carved out a space within Chinese mainstream media. But independent media, in the form of un-official documentaries and amateur videos, have covered this issue far earlier and with far more urgency.

One critical example is Meishi Street (2006) by visual artist Ou Ning, which documents the resistance of some Beijingers to the knocking down of their nail house in the name of 2008 Olympics urban projects, not only filming them but allowing them video cameras to film their plight from their own perspective. It is also worth mentioning Ou Ning and Cao Fei’s San Yuan Li (2003), an experimental documentary concerning the modernization threatening the former farming village of San Yuan Li, situated in the outskirts of Guangzhou. Meishi Street and San Yuan Li (both distributed by dGenerate Films) offer powerful images and voices to better illuminate a crucial contemporary public issue – one that, ultimately, is not a game.

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The latest issue of Hong Kong-based Open Magazine features three articles on citizens’ documentary in Chinese civil rights movements. One of them, written by Teng Biao, who is a human rights lawyer in Beijing, has been translated and published at Interlocals.net. See original.

In the article, Teng gives a comprehensive overview of the civic documentary movement in China for the past few decades. While the facts are impressive in both volume and numbers, the ideas aren’t all new to us. He writes,

Information monopoly is designed to benefit those in power, while Citizens Documentary can eliminate the cover-ups in certain extent. Only a few documentaries can already make the dictatorship pay a huge price. One can imagine that with the expansion of the Civic Documentary campaign, covering up truth will be a futile and obsolete attempt. Till then, there should be a significant change in the mode of power operation. (Interlocals)

Such a reversal of these power dynamics can be seen in Ou Ning’s and Cao Fei’s collaborative film, San Yuan Li. Ou and Cao led a group of twelve amateur videographers to videotape their enigmatic little village of the same name, embedded in the outskirts of the megalopolis of Guangzhou. In the past decade, because of the state’s plan to modernize the region and the ever expansion of the city, everything old about the village has been either rapidly changing or rapidly disappearing. In order to save the village’s transitory appearances, the filmmakers enlisted ordinary villagers to document the losses. Politically speaking, this form of resistance is subtle, but it is kindled with a spirit of free discourse, both journalistic and democratic in nature.

Another point of relevance in Teng’s propositions lies beyond the implicit political significance of cultural or historical preservation using film; when certain documentaries are produced for investigative purposes, the stakes can be even higher. In Ou Ning’s Meishi Street, we experience a zero-distance encounter with a group of Beijingers facing demolition of their homes. These people open themselves up in front of the camera and for the camera, venting grievances that they couldn’t elsewhere. One man decries the state media for exactly the same reason that Teng mentions: “covering up truth will be a futile and obsolete attempt.”

In the face of China’s unassailable march towards modernity, nobody is an isolated victim. The questions and debates on which aspects of Chinese culture are worth preserving and which information needs to go out in the light will mount with increasing urgency. Already manifested in Xie Wenjun’s documentary, Disappearing Guangzhou, cultural preservation and human rights movements can be intricately linked. See Arthur Waldron’s comments on Xie’s film:

The narration makes the point that the post-80 generation involved in documenting cultural loss in Guangzhou is focused on cultural preservation, but for the residents of the endangered neighborhoods, it is the even more serious matter of the defense of rights. (Waldron)

Note that the people in Guangzhou feel threatened today not just because some have been forced to relocate for the upcoming 2010 Asian Games but also because there was a proposal in the local government to replace Cantonese with Mandarin in some television broadcasting. Protests abounded after the news leaked, despite the fact that it had all just been a proposal. To read more about China’s language policy, see Waldron’s blog.

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Zhao Dayong

“How China is using art (and artists) to sell itself to the world” is an informative and insightful article in The Star by Murray Whyte. It analyzes China’s recent boom in cultural and media industries and its discontents—a burgeoning scene of individual expression. dGenerate directors Ou Ning and Zhao Dayong and producer David Bandurski are featured in the article as prominent representatives of the alternative art scene.

For Whyte, China’s recent supports and displays of cultural development reflect the government’s deep desire to raise “soft power”– “the ability of a political body to get what it wants through cultural or ideological attraction”–in order to match its huge economic development. The efforts include the plans for new museums and “creative districts” nationwide, proliferation of a glossy magazine industry that embraces Western excess, participation in global cultural events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the induction of formerly underground filmmakers back into state-run studios, and the production of big-budget political blockbusters such as The Founding of a Republic.

These splashy, showy displays, contrary to common expectation, do not indicate progress in free expression. Artist and activist Ou Ning, whom the article identifies as a “tireless campaigner for cultural freedom,” refers to the overwhelming urban reconstruction making place for the creative districts as “trading a specific brand of artistic freedom for a broader tyranny.” Commenting on the burgeoning media and culture landscape, David Bandurski (producer of Ghost Town) of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project notes, “This has nothing to do with the vibrancy of culture, or the diversity of culture.” Instead, he continues, “[The government] wants a renaissance, but they want it to happen under party control.”

Beneath this superficial and artificial glamor, the article also notices a “thriving underground scene” that represents a “new kind of expression that has sprouted amid the state-mandated cultural flowering.” Documentary film, as the article quotes Ou Ning again, is the country’s new frontier for individual expression. Among them, Ghost Town by Zhao Dayong and San Yuan Li by Ou Ning and Cao Fei both depict abandoned landscapes and lives, one left “on the distant margins of a country pushed into modernization overdue,” the other “swallowed by Guangzhou’s land-gobbling development.” Although Zhao Dayong defines his work as more individual expression than political act, Ou Ning and Whyte both see the progressive effects of this growing individual expression. The article concludes with Ou’s remark, “Everyone to make a small change in their daily lives. That’s how society can change: individually, step by step, by all of us.”

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Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China has undergone a series of profound, ever-accelerating transformations spurred by experiments with a market economy and a more open approach to foreign investment and external cultures. In the last decade the consequences of these changes have dramatically impacted China and its place in the world. Concurrent with the Portland Art Museum’s CHINA DESIGN NOW exhibition, the Northwest Film Center continues to explore the perspectives of Chinese and western filmmakers whose works reflect on the broad currents of contemporary change in Chinese society. As China’s past and future collide, the works by these media artists provide unique insight into the social and aesthetic confusions, obstacles, and opportunities being navigated in the interstices between history, daily reality, and the future’s promises.

Other films screening as part of this series include Jia Zhangke’s 24 City, Ning Ying’s I Love Beijing and Perpetual Motion, and Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes.

More details can be found at the NW Film Center site.

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This marks the first in a five-film screening series at Toronto’s Gibsone Jessop Gallery.  Gibsone Jessop not only showcases international contemporary art from around the globe, with a special focus on China, they also host nightly events such as film screenings, theater and music that deepen the understanding of the cultures and context their artists create within.  The next five Fridays will highlight different dGenerate films.  Subsequent screenings include San Yuan Li, Little Moth, Using, and Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China.

Visit Gibsone Jessop’s site for more information about the event.

Friday, November 6, 2009, 7:30pm
To reserve tickets, please email info@gibsonejessop.com
Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 at the door
Limited Seating.

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San Yuan Li (dir. Ou Ning, 2003)

What is a Chinese film?  Ever since I’ve started living and working in Beijing over six years ago, most serious discussions about Chinese cinema ultimately come down to this elemental question, either in its descriptive mode (what defines a Chinese film?) or in its more urgently prescriptive version (what should a Chinese film be?).  Often, it’s filmmakers themselves who seem most anxious about the issue.  Behind it lie several subsidiary anxieties: “What do Westerners want from Chinese films?”, “What’s my role in Chinese society?”, “Are films art, or commerce, or politics?”

In English, we don’t distinguish between zhongguo dianying (movies made in China) and huayu pian (Chinese language films).  Chinese film in the first instance can simply mean the national cinema of China, from its early years in Beijing and Shanghai to the present day, both within and outside the state run system of production, distribution, and exhibition.  A broader geographical definition adds to this films from “greater China”, encompassing Taiwan and Hong Kong.  A still broader meaning includes any films in the various Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc.).  A still wider circle would embrace filmmakers of Chinese ethnicity like Ang Lee and John Woo, whose work can be in English or in Chinese.

So much for the first term in “Chinese film.”  The second word, “film”, is equally ambiguous.  Look at any catalogue of the state-run Shanghai International Film Festival, and you’ll find the official narrow interpretation of Chinese film, encompassing state-owned film studios’ mainstream propaganda films (zhuxuanlu pian) and independently financed commercial movies authorized by the Film Bureau, both on film and DV.  Small-scale independent “image exhibitions” in China (see my previous article for an overview) will show films made outside of the system, these days almost exclusively on digital video.

With foreign film festivals, the picture becomes even more complex.  There are still international film festivals that largely follow the creaky old Shanghai IFF model, filtering out non-sanctioned cinema (several of the old-style “Category A” film festivals fit this bill).  On the other hand, there are festivals such as Rotterdam’s International Film Festival that exist to “discover” (for western viewers), support (though financing and programming) and promote independent, alternative, non-commercial cinema.  Most festivals lie somewhere in between.

Foreign festivals of either bent attempt to satisfy certain ideas about what constitutes “China” and what constitutes “film.”  No choices are completely objective, and none escape the confines of pre-existing notions of cultural and national difference.  Even the most independent, enterprising festivals can have a stake in constructing a vision of a product, the “independent Chinese cinema” brand.  This is a brand that can satisfy certain prejudices and requirements of an alternative art film distribution network.  We have to change the question, then.  Instead of asking “what is a Chinese film?”, let’s ask instead “what kind of cultural work can Chinese cinema do?”

Foreign film festivals, especially, play critical and controversial roles in presenting, labeling, constraining, defining, and shaping foreign cultural production for domestic (i.e. Western) consumption.  Since the era of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, “Chinese film” has often meant something gently or violently exotic: old models of Orientalism carried over quite easily into our so-called “postmodern”, “post-colonial era.”  Sex and violence, preferably vibrantly coloured and richly costumed, sell, because they offer western viewers a comfortingly familiar vision of a China that they think they already know.  It’s hard to account for films like Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia, 2006) any other way.

For many in the West, China is currently being re-defined as an increasingly powerful and ominous nation.  This fear of a new economic and cultural adversary colours how Western media outlets choose to depict China.  Films that in some way underline social problems, films that are bleakly depressing, films that adopt some sort of adversarial stance in relation to power, all constitute an approved set of images which flow towards Western audiences.  Examples abound.  To pick three, almost at random: Zhang Lu’s Grain in Ear (Mang zhong, 2005), Han Jie’s Walking On The Wild Side (Lai xiaozi, 2006), Li Yang’s Blind Mountain (Mang shan, 2007).  Again, the point for festivals and distributors is to supply audiences with comforting images of what they think they already understand: China as a place essentially different from their own home.  China is a place whose internal problems and contradictions need to be exposed, defined, and consumed.  This essentially is just a way of confirming one’s own “normality” in the face of a menacing “other.”  The role of critical, independent Chinese directors in making these films is therefore sometimes all too painfully ambivalent.

Enter the Clowns (dir. Cui Zi'en, 2001)

Within the Chinese filmmaking community, there are other fault lines.  Particularly visible is an implied polemic between film art and film politics.  For many independent filmmakers enmeshed in China’s particular political situation, film offers an imperative duty of opposing power.  Facing a Party whose old style hegemonic control of political discourse is no longer matched by its control over China’s social and economic space, cinematic discourse has an unavoidable responsibility to engage.  Alternatively, the Party’s now only sporadic surveillance of visual culture provides filmmakers with a new freedom to explore questions of form, to create or challenge film aesthetics.  Exemplary figures  include young filmmakers like Liu Jiayin (Oxhide [Niu pi, 2005]), queer experimentalist Cui Zi’en (Enter the Clowns [Chou jue deng chang, 2001]) and avant garde artists Ou Ning (San Yuan Li [2003] and Meishi Street [Meishi jie, 2006]) and Yang Fudong (An Estranged Paradise [Mosheng tiantang, 2002] and Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest [Zhu lin qi xian, 2003]).

Another tendency newly visible in mainland Chinese independent cinema is the urge to record and catalogue.  This is the work that these new Chinese films do.  There has been a virtual explosion, mainly on the documentary side, but also in new narrative fiction, to use cinema as a kind of archive, capturing communities and disappearing or threatened ways of life.  This movement, if it’s not premature to call it that, results in long (sometimes very long) films that function as exhaustive catalogues of data, seemingly assembled more than structured, presenting in some sense a “complete” view of a certain slice of Chinese reality, presented raw and un-altered, for a viewer to digest and analyze on his or her own.  I’m thinking of recent films like Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town (Feicheng, 2008), Cong Feng’s Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic (Ma Daifu de zhensuo, 2008), and Lin Xin’s Classmates (Tongxue, 2009).  Derived from the ethnographic documentary tradition, but injected into mainstream independent film discourse (if that term makes any sense), these catalogue films respond to what can be seen as a political imperative to show the truth: real, unmanipulated reality, untainted by the ideological manipulations of previous Chinese cinema.  Watching this movement is fascinating: the resulting works can be exhilarating, or pretty mind-numbing, or a provocative mixture of the two.

So what can be done to avoid the traps of cramming “Chinese cinema” into restrictive definitions?  What should Chinese film be and do?  It’s not easy: people largely see what they want to see.  Mass media is about giving comfort, reinforcing patterns of thought, policing the boundaries of what we call knowledge.  If I had to give the Chinese filmmakers an answer, I’d say: Make and exhibit films that show audiences what they don’t already know.  Find images that are fresh, provocative, that destabilize the complex of pre-established, pre-thought concepts that a film audience totes like baggage.  Don’t show what’s already been seen; don’t depict what’s already been imagined.  Unsettle, surprise and disturb, and you’ve started to point in the right direction.

This article, revised in June 2009, is based on a shorter article that originally appeared in the Festival Daily, published by the Toronto International Film Festival, September 2007.

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