By Kevin B. Lee

Karamay (dir. Xu Xin)

Xu Xin’s devastating epic documentary Karamay is set to make its San Francisco premiere this Sunday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. (Details here).  In advance of the screening, I looked back at footage from a discussion held after the film’s New York premiere at the MoMA Documentary Fortnight last month, with director Xu Xin and producer Zhu Rikun both present. Going into the event, I wondered how a local U.S. audience would respond to a six-hour Chinese documentary, and I was especially curious to see how many would stick around for a Q&A session. By the end of the epic screening, a couple dozen people remained in the audience, and from their words they were clearly moved. In fact, the session was not so much dominated by questions and answers as by a series of intense and highly thoughtful responses from several audience members.

It was particularly interesting to hear the reactions of young overseas Chinese students who watched the film, given the film’s critical subject matter as well as past reports of disturbances at Chinese film screenings caused by nationalistic audience members highly sensitive to unflattering depictions of their homeland. (For a vivid example see Jia Zhangke’s first hand accounts of his recent festival experiences.) In the case of this screening, some Chinese audience members expressed a complex and highly personal response to Xu’s film. One viewer remarked how the film maintains a critical view of Chinese society without catering to Western stereotypes:

“What sets your film apart from other Chinese independent films circulating in the international market is that it does not simply fit into a simplified humanistic or humanitarian rhetoric that most Western viewers impose on China’s situation. We tend to demonize China as such, that their educational system brainwashes people and everyone in China just sits there following the rules without any sense of agency over the experience of their own lives. The very structure of your film, especially the beginning shots that take so long with the close ups of each child, and the six hour length of your film, actually demands the viewer to approach China and contemporary Chinese politics and rethink from a critical point of view, not from a simple humanitarian rhetoric of the West. That’s what I think is the most productive part of your film and I appreciate it.”

Another young viewer had an even more personalized response:

“I’m originally from China and I study graduate school at Columbia. I did my undergraduate study at Nanjing University. It’s the school that the girl at the end of the film [who was severely crippled by the Karamay fire] says she hoped to attend, but she can’t anymore. I’m the same age as her, so I imagined if that tragedy hadn’t happened to her, we could have been classmates, even friends.  It felt so close to me.

When I looked at the introduction [of the film] at the website and saw that it was six hours, I wondered why was it so long? I thought maybe the director meant to show the sorrow and grief of each parent. But then when I saw the film I got the idea that it’s deeper, it’s beyond that.

One interesting thing I noticed is that when we imagine a film of such a disaster, we imagine that those people who suffered must be poor and helpless and powerless. But then I realized that the parents are middle class, they have nice homes with nice decorations. They are not poor; some of them are probably managers or engineers. Those middle class people in any country are the most tame and mild people. Poor people might rebel, high class people might get power, but the middle class don’t. And here you can see how traditional they are. Even though they suffered from that tragedy, they still try to think for the party, for the country. Like my parents, when I’m home, and I criticize the party, my father tells me to shut up and just be thankful that we live such great lives.

But when I listen to [the parents in Karamay] talk, it’s such a big contrast. They are so wise, they’re so smart. My parents wouldn’t ask those questions. It’s like after that tragedy, these people’s eyes have been opened. They used to live on a track day by day. They wouldn’t ask any questions. And then after that day, I think that those things appear in their minds, they started to realize what system are we under, what things should we ask for, and what do we get? How helpless, how small and how weak are we?

And I think about my father. I think if these kinds of things happened to me, my father would definitely change, and become like them. Actually the shifting is very easy. If this thing never happened, they would stay the way my father is. So after watching the film, the question that came to me: how can we change people? How can we make them start to think and realize things? We can’t just start another fire. What else can we do?”

Director Xu Xin at the MOMA screening of Karamay

Other audience members were fascinated with how Xu Xin was even able to make such a film, interviewing dozens of families who had lost children in the disastrous 1994 Karamay fire that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren who were forced to wait while government officials were evacuated first from a burning theatre. Xu Xin offered some insight into how he conducted his shooting and what ramifications the film has on his social standing in China:

“Most of the interviews took place in the subjects’ homes. But some people chose not to be interviewed in their home out of concern for their children. So I rented a place from one of the parents and invited all of those people who did not want to be interviewed in their homes.

There are 22 families in this documentary. In fact, the number of victims is much larger. They all talked a lot for this project. The shortest interview lasted just one day, but most of them lasted 3 or 4 days. I think the reason why they were able to talk so much was because of the time they had with all their pent up emotions. So when someone took the proactive role to go to them and give them the chance to talk, they would pour out everything they wanted to say. The second thing that they were able to talk to the camera so much was because I went there in secret. Nobody knew about my shooting, so they probably felt safe.

As you’ve seen from the movie, this place is owned by China’s national petroleum corporation. The people you’ve seen interviewed in the film are not that that remotely connected to each other because they all are connected to the corporation in some way. They are all considered upper middle class in China in terms of their salary. That’s why the settings of their living rooms look similar.

There are Chinese independent filmmakers who have been caught and imprisoned from making documentaries about sensitive political issues. From this film I’ve been able to avoid these problems, perhaps due to how the parents phrase themselves. All in all, this is a film about the fire. It’s not a political incident.”*

Producer Zhu Rikun added his own take on the issue of censorship for independent documentary filmmakers in China:

Producer Zhu Rikun addresses the audience as moderator Chi-hui Yang and translator Isabella Tianzi Cai look on

“For independent productions censorship is not a big obstacle getting in the way of getting the films shown. The world is getting more transparent and open and is facilitating world distribution. Compared to other kinds of political activities, independent filmmaking is not as risky. We don’t face as much pressure and obstacles as they do. For example, lawyers or other people who may get caught by the police and placed in prison. That’s not typically faced by documentary filmmakers. The responsibility rests on the filmmakers themselves concerning self-censorship. Most people think it’s very hard for independent filmmakers. It’s because there are not so many of them out there. If the number is big then the problem would become smaller.  I think this film is made not just for Chinese audiences, it’s made for everyone because the world is getting smaller. This problem does not just concern Chinese people, it’s a universal problem. It’s more important that we think about what the film is about rather than who the film is made for.”*

However, since Zhu Rikun made these comments in February, new obstacles have emerged for independent filmmaking in China, as several websites related to independent film have been shut down, such as the websites for Fanhall Films, the Li Xianting Film Fund and Yunnan Film Festival. It remains to be seen what ongoing ramifications the current communications crackdown in China will have on independent filmmakers – but we can assume that, true to the title of the Yerba Buena series, they will remain fearless.

*Q&A translation by Isabella Tianzi Cai

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Li Xianting Film School's Ying Liang (left) and Zhu Rikun (right) with owner and daughter of their favorite restaurant in Songzhuang (photo by Gertjan Zuilhof)

Last month we reported that the International Film Festival Rotterdam launched “Raiding Africa,” an exciting program commissioning several African filmmakers to make new films in China. The IFFR enlisted the Li Xianting Film School to help initiate the African directors into the Chinese independent film scene. Located in Songzhuang on the outskirts of Beijing, Li Xianting Film School is the first film school for independent filmmakers in China,.

IFFR’s Gertjan Zuilhof, the organizer of the program, is providing ongoing updates on the project at his IFFR blog. His latest entry introduces the Li Xianting Film School, where important figures like Zhu Rikun and Ying Liang (whose films dGenerate distributes) are fostering the independent film movement in China through their screenings, events and educational programs.

We’ve visited Songzhuang on multiple occasions, and we’ve always meant to profile the Li Xianting Film School in depth (the closest we’ve come is Shelly Kraicer’s indispensible guide to the Chinese indie film scene). So it’s great that Zuilhof is bringing exposure to the Film School through both the Raiding Africa program and his blog. And it’s amusing to read Zuilhof’s observations on Songzhuang, a former farming town that has become a haven for Beijing artists, and has traded its acres of fields for newly-built galleries. Zuilhof quips: ”They make modern art museums here like they are pizza huts.”

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The fourth unit, Special Attention: Films from Dahuang Picture, was devoted to the Malaysian independent production company which focuses on Chinese-language films and served as a major force in promoting new Malaysian cinema to the world.  Unit five paid tribute to Ogawa Shinsuke, one of the most influential independent documentary filmmakers in postwar Japan, whose socially engaged documentary modes influenced a generation of Chinese directors, including Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan and Wang Bing.  The last unit showcased excellent student works from the Li Xianting Film Production Workshop.

In an interview with Fanhall Films, art director Zhu Rikun mentioned that starting next year the festival will expand its program to invite more foreign independent works, while strengthening the quality of Chinese films in the selection.

dGenerate director Ying Liang attended the festival.  In an article on Fanhall.com, Ying cited his personal top three (all documentaries): Fortune Teller by Xu Tong, Red White by Chen Xinzhong, and Falling from the Sky by Zhang Zanbo.

Click here for the complete program in Chinese and English

Click here for more information on BIFF

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The Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Home of the Chinese Independent Film Archive (Photo courtesy of Iberia Center of Contemporary Art)

By Shelly Kraicer

Whenever I am interviewed about Chinese independent cinema, the question that comes up more often than anything else is “Can these kind of films be shown in China?”

The situation is changing, rapidly, and in substantial ways. The answer used to be “Yes, sort of”.  Now, it’s “Yes, most definitely”.

Independent films, i.e. films made outside the government censorship system, can’t be shown in regular commercial movie theatres.  When I arrived in Beijing back in 2003, one had to do a bit of investigative work to find screenings; at art galleries, a few bars and cafes, and occasionally on university campuses: all low- to zero-profile events.  Now, though, there is, if not exactly a profusion, then something like a blossoming of screening opportunities for “unauthorized” Chinese indie films.

One such event, which I attended in early April, provides a handy opportunity to sketch out a provisional, though hopefully not too superficial overview of the Chinese independent film scene.

The Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA) organized their first annual film festival from 29 March to 19 April this year.  Called “What Has Been Happening Here”, the festival took place in the CIFA’s headquarters at the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, in Beijing’s 798 Art District.

The comprehensive exhibition was well organized and impressively curated.  There were several sections: one featured screenings of new Chinese independent DV films; one provided a smartly chosen and extremely useful overview of the history of Chinese DV films from its origins in the 1990s to now; one provided a retrospective of films made by Jia Zhangke’s company XStream Films, and the directors associated with it (Jia himself, his regular d.p. Yu Lik-wai, Emily Tang, and Han Jie); and a final section offered selections from the last ten years of experimental/avant garde DV work.  Accompanying these screenings, which ran morning to evenings daily for 21 days, was an exhibit in the Iberia Center capacious gallery space that surveyed the indie film scene in China today.  It highlighted the six key organizations involved in producing, distributing, and exhibiting the films, with supporting documentation, videos, artifacts, and a rich selection of materials.  The institutions featured were:

• Chinese Independent Film Festival (CIFF)
• Fanhall Films
• Li Xianting’s Film Fund
• Beijing Indie Workshop
• Caochangdi Workstation
• Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival (Yunfest)

First, a word about CIFA itself.  It is a non-profit academic institution, founded in 2008, devoted to “sorting, collecting, and promoting” contemporary Chinese independent films.  The CIFA underlines that it is a non-governmental film archive, in implicit distinction to the PRC’s China Film Archive, the very official, bureaucratic national institution devoted to safeguarding official, approved Chinese cinema.  The CIFA’s director, Zhang Yaxuan, is an expert on Chinese independent documentaries and a film maker and producer herself.  The facilities of CIFA within the Iberia Art Centre at 798 include a spanking new screening room of 79 comfortable seats.  The excellent projection and sound equipment — the finest yet that I’ve encountered in a Chinese non-commercial venue — suggests that the CIFA is well enough funded not to skimp on necessities.  The screenings themselves were well-run (though there was occasional trouble getting the projection ratios right, necessitating your correspondent dashing to the projection booth to discuss the accuracy of the watermelon-shaped heads on screen).

The Chinese Independent Film Festival was founded in 2003.  It is located in elegantly livable, gracious Nanjing, one of China’s most important intellectual centres, and features an annual festival of all genres of Chinese independent cinema (features, documentaries, shorts).  CIFF has since 2007 instituted a juried competition section.  Run in conjunction with the Nanjing RCM Art Museum, the CIFF uses a variety of venues around Nanjing to show an excellent selection of what their programmers (including Zhang Xianmin and Cao Kai) consider to be the year’s best Chinese indie films, based on their mission to support “independent spirit, openness, inventive in form, forward thinking” cinema.  I’ve attended the 2007 edition, which offered a relatively low-key but well-attended series of concurrent screenings over about a week (in 2008 the festival took place in late September).  The discussions after the films, and among the filmmakers, though, were anything but low key: the festival cultivates a real sense of intellectual energy and ferment.

Fanhall Films, run by Zhu Rikun, is a multi-faceted indie film support organization based in Songzhuang Arts District, a distant eastern suburb of Beijing.  Fanhall started as a website and online discussion forum and has broadened into film production and distribution.  They have produced a series of indie films, released (authorized) DVDs in China of unauthorized films (a neat trick, and a good subject for a later post), and sponsor the China Documentary Film Festival and the Beijing Independent Film Festival (each annually, in Songzhuang).  They also constructed, last year, a comfortable medium-sized screening room, above which is a spacious cafe and small exhibition space.  The trip out to Songzhuang is long (a grueling 2 hours plus by bus from the centre of Beijing), but Zhu Rikun and his staff take advantage of the community feel provided by the artists village at Songzhuang, and invite directors to spend the week during their festivals.  Community-building is a vital part of their agenda.  For more detail on the 2008 version, see my first blog entry.

Also based at Songzhuang, and closely supporting Fanhall’s film exhibition events, is the Li Xianting Film Fund.  The fund was started in 2006 by the famous art critic Li Xianting, who raises funds from artists, now outrageously prosperous in the international art market, whom he supported in the 1980s and 90s.  The fund is building an archive of independent films to support the work of researchers and filmmakers, publishes a journal, and provides grants for the development, production, and post-production of new film projects.  It also co-presents the Beijing Independent Film Festival and the China Documentary Film Festival with Fanhall Films.

Beijing Indie Workshop was founded by Beijing Film Academy professor Zhang Xianmin in 2005.  A non-profit organization supporting indie filmmakers, Indie Workshop provides equipment and post-production facilities for impecunious filmmakers, produces films, and organizes a continuing series of informal screenings and rigorous discussions of recent works (I’ve been fortunate to attend a few, which combine an intellectual salon flavour with organized film appreciation — participants are encouraged to fill out scorecards and give ratings for each film screened).  It also works to connect new filmmakers and films with foreign festivals, curators, and researchers.

Caochangdi Workstation was founded in 2005 by documentary filmmaker and theoretician Wu Wenguang.  It is made up of his Documentary Studio, the Living Dance Studio, and the Beijing Storm Company.  It provides a space for video and performance art, supports the work of filmmakers, and hosts a series of film, video, and performance exhibitions and festivals at its space in Caochangdi, a suburb of Beijing close to the 798 Arts District.  This year, CCD are hosting a May Festival of performance (works from their 2009 Young Choreographers’ Project) and film (a Documentary Forum).  CCD’s workshops include support for an ongoing series of films called the Villager Documentary Project (documentaries made by people living in Chinese villages, provided with technical and organizational support by CCD Workstation).

The Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival was launched in 2003, and is bi-annual.  It’s a documentary film festival based in Kunming, Yunnan, featuring screenings of Chinese and foreign documentaries, a documentary competition, and seminars bringing together Chinese and foreign documentary filmmakers.  Yunfest was founded with a strong anthropological-documentary film bent, and still has a section devoted to these films.

I’m tempted to try to compare the programming philosophies of the various festivals, but hesitate to generalize without enough data.  So I only offer this as a very tentative, provisional sketch, and really invite comment or correction (see the comment link below).  BIFF/CDFF tend, I’d say, to emphasize the political role of cinema, film as social critique and as agent for social/political change.  They are willing to push the edge, sometimes quite a bit, on political content, though are savvy about keeping a low enough profile to get away with some programming risks.  CIFF in Nanjing, while supporting these films too, seems to put equal or greater emphasis on film as art, and championing films that are formally innovative and  aesthetically risky.  CIFA, at least in its first incarnation, builds a historical context, and has an interest in defining something like a canon of Chinese independent cinema.  But I’m really reluctant to over-generalize, and genuinely welcome suggestions on how to clarify the above suggestions.

Chinese film events are obsessively self-documenting: there’s always at least one person from the organization filming everything that goes on.  So that’s good news if you are doing research in the field; there should be resources available if you want to follow Q&As, panel discussions, and directors’ comments from any of the events.  It’s not quite like being there, though.  One does have to attend these festivals to really get a sense of the ferment, energy, seriousness (lots of seriousness) and dedication that the small communities of Chinese filmmakers and their supporters bring to their activities.  Which, in this time of slumps (both economic and creative, cinematically speaking), is a terrifically encouraging thing.

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