Notes Introduction 1. I recognize that this term is conceptually ambiguous, occupying a somewhat vexed position in the history of documentary due to its association with cinéma vérité. Brian Winston (2007, p. 298) has pointed out that initially cinéma vérité referred not to observational documentary – or cinéma direct in French, the ‘fly on the wall’ format in which the director scrupulously erases his or her presence from the cinematic image – but to the particular form of French filmmaking pioneered by Jean Rouch, in which the docu- mentary director consistently inserts him or herself into the frame. However, the anglophone documentary tradition has, over time, tended to confuse the terms, attributing the central principle of cinéma direct to cinéma vérité. In consequence, the latter term is not applied with particular consistency to any single group of films, further dividing scholars over what distinguishes the two approaches. It is for this reason that Bill Nichols (1991, p. 38) has advocated doing away with the term altogether, and replacing it with the concepts of ‘observational’ and ‘interactive’ filmmaking. The situation is com- plicated still further in China, where different kinds of film practice have their own history and vocabulary, sometimes distinct from, sometimes inex- tricably bound up with, those we are more familiar with in Europe and the Americas. Nevertheless, the term vérité has acquired a less specialist currency associated precisely with the type of realism displayed in these films, a point often acknowledged by foreign critics of contemporary Chinese documentary. For this reason, I shall be using it as a general (non-Chinese) shorthand for the aesthetic that is the focus of this book. 1 Mapping Independent Chinese Documentary 1. In fact, the SWYC apparently composed a ‘Manifesto of the new documen- tary movement’ (‘Xin jilupian yundong xuanyan’), which was read out at the Beijing symposium. Both Shi Jian and Kuang Yang, another member of the group, maintain that the original was never consigned to paper. It was, how- ever, recorded, and a blander version later published by the Broadcasting Institute (Li, Liu and Wang, 2006, pp. 250, 277). 2. Much of the literature on independent Chinese documentary takes the film as a critical point of reference. For example, Lin Xudong (2005) has remarked that ‘Bumming in Beijing [ ...] has long been considered the pioneer of the Chinese independent documentary movement’; Dai Jinhua (cited in F. Fang, 2003, p. 348) has argued that the film was seminal, and thus the point of origin for independent documentary as a genre in China; Chu Yingchi (2007, p. 91) has described the film as ‘a pioneering success’; and Lü Xinyu (2003a, p. 5) has credited the film with having an unprecedented impact on the traditional documentary scene in China. 160 Notes 161 3. The subjects of Bumming in Beijing were marginal in that they had delib- erately opted to work outside the state-run employment system, having neither danwei (‘work unit’) nor hukou (‘household residency’), much like the early independent documentary makers themselves. 4. In addition to Larsen, on viewing Bumming in Beijing for the first time at the 1991 Vancouver International Film Festival, Bérénice Reynaud (1996, p. 235) remarked that ‘the real subject of the tape was the struggle of an artist with the documentary form, his (re)discovery of cinema verité and “camera-stylo”.’ Later commentators have tended to replicate this discursive framework. 5. Following its initial screenings in 1973, Antonioni’s documentary was the subject of a public criticism in the People’s Daily, with the director accused of being overtly anti-China (H. Sun, 2009, p. 56). Ivens, despite being invited to film in the PRC by Zhou Enlai himself, saw only certain episodes of his multi- part documentary broadcast in the country, due to the change in political conditions following the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 (J.-P. Sergent, 2009, pp. 65–6; T. Zhang, 2009, p. 41). 6. The NHK-CCTV coproduction The Silk Road [Sichou zhi lu], which started broadcasting in 1980; the Sino-British coproduction Heart of the Dragon [Long zhi xin] (1984); and The Great Wall [Wang Changcheng], shot by TBS and CCTV, and broadcast in the autumn of 1991, are the three television documentaries consistently cited as the most influential foreign coproduc- tions in China during the late 1980s and early 1990s (c.f. F. Fang, 2003, pp. 311–26). Wu Wenguang and Duan Jinchuan have also both commented on how their shooting practices evolved through encounters with these foreign television crews in the 1980s (Berry, 2007, p. 125). 7. This latter characteristic is less obvious in the films of Wu Wenguang, who, despite acknowledging the influence of Wiseman, never translated this influence quite as directly into his filmmaking practice. 8. Gonggong may literally be translated as ‘public’. An equivalent term is hong- guan, which means ‘macro’, or perhaps more colloquially ‘large scale’. This lends itself to further variations: hongpian juzhi, literally ‘a monumental work’, is one example. These terms have subtly different connotations, but are generally applied to similar works. For a brief discussion of gonggong and its significance in relation to these documentaries, see Zhu and Mei (2004, p. 7). For an example of the usage of hongguan and hongpian juzhi, see discussion of Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks in Zhang and Zhang (2003, p. 154). 9. A sustained discussion of one minority group that has been the focus of attention in these documentaries – the Chinese queer community – can be found in Chapter 4. Hu Jie and Ai Xiaoming’s work touches on highly sen- sitive topics ranging from the Cultural Revolution (In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul [Xunzhao Lin Zhao de linghun] (2004); Though I am Gone [Wo sui si qu] (2006)), to village land seizures (Taishi Village [Taishicun] (2005)), the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) crisis in China (The Epic of the Central Plains [Zhongyuan jishi] (2006)), and the aftereffects of the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 (Our Children [Women de wawa] (2009)). 10. Examples of such films include Wang Fen’s Unhappiness Does Not Stop At One [Bukauile de bu zhi yige] (2001), about her parent’s relationship; Yang Lina’s 162 Notes Home Video [Jiating luxiangdai] (2001), also about her family; Zuo Yixiao’s Losing [Shisan] (2004), which is focused on his divorce; and Hu Xinyu’s The Man [Nanren] (2005), which takes place almost entirely inside the director’s one-bedroom flat in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, rarely straying outside the room, let alone the apartment block. Zhang Ming’s Springtime in Wushan [Wushan zhi chun] (2003) includes a scene of full frontal nudity, while Hu Shu’s Leave Me Alone [Wo bu yao ni guan] (1999) features one in which a prostitute stubs out a cigarette on her arm. More recent films follow this trend to its logical conclusion, with Tape featuring a scene of the director masturbating in bed. 11. The only woman attached to the first group of directors was Li Hong. In contrast, one of the first full-length DV documentaries, Old Men [Lao tou] (1999), was shot by a woman, Yang Lina, and, while women directors remain under-represented on the Chinese documentary scene, they are now more prominent than was the case in the 1990s. 12. Duan Jinchuan, for example, has argued that the more amateur and less professional documentary film becomes, the weaker its artistic power, and the less significant its impact (X. Lü, 2003b, p. 99). This problem he has in part ascribed to the lack of appropriate training programmes in China’s film schools and universities (J. Duan, 2005). 13. See, for example, X. Lü (2005a, p. 168). For further discussion of the violence of the digital, see Y. Wang (2005). 14. In reviews of Chinese independent film festivals, for example, both Chris Berry (2009c) and Markus Nornes (2009) have commented on the con- tinued influence of direct cinema on independent Chinese documentary. This influence is identifiable in recent films such as Xu Xin’s Karamay [Kelamayi] (2010), Ji Dan’s When the Bow Breaks [Wei chao] (2010) and He Yuan’s Apuda [Apuda de shouhou] (2010). The latter won top prize in competition at the 2011 Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival (Yunfest), a major independent documentary film festival located in Kunming, Yunnan Province. 15. Jishizhuyi is also problematic as a way of assessing what was distinct about the new documentary because it was not a discourse unique to the 1990s. Including variants such as jishi meixue, it had been in use since at least the early 1980s, arising amid discussions among cinema directors about how to move beyond socialist realism, the dominant representational mode in fea- ture film after 1949 (Berry, 2002; Lagesse, 2011, pp. 317–18). Arguably, the term’s re-emergence in the early 1990s was an attempt to clear a discursive space within which the documentary directors could operate in the immedi- ate post-Tiananmen period. Lin Xudong (2005) makes this point implicitly when he states that ‘Although film insiders spoke tactfully when debating the true nature of the new style documentaries – referring to the use of “true, on-the-spot” [zhenshi, jishi] filming as a means of subverting the slip- shod, grandiose narrative structures of 1980s documentary – it was tacitly understood that the new documentary movement was directed at certain conservative political dogmas threatening to stage a comeback in post-1989 China.’ In other words, both jishi and zhenshi – a term for ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ also in circulation during this period – were used to provide rhetorical cover for the early independent documentary directors, cloaking the innovations Notes 163 of their practice in the language of an established theoretical debate ongoing since the death of Mao.