By Chris Berry (https://cpianalysis.org/2017/07/03/the-death-of-chinese-independent-cinema/)
Is independent cinema in China dead?
Chinese indies have been in a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities
since their beginnings in the 1990s. Regulatory punishments are
announced, but somehow the filmmakers carry on. However, the forceful
suppression of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014 made people
sit up and wonder if it was for real this time. The implementation of China’s first actual Film Law in March of this year seems to have added to the chilling effect.
In April, at the Department of Film
Studies at King’s College London, and in association with the Chinese
Visual Festival, a symposium optimistically called “The Future of Chinese Independent Cinema”
took place. Speakers included Professor Zhang Xianmin of the Beijing
Film Academy, who is also one of the leading producers of Chinese
independent films, and independent documentary filmmaker and author of a
recent Chinese-language book on Chinese indies,
Wen Hai, as well as other speakers from outside the People’s Republic
of China. Based on what we heard, Chinese indie cinema as we knew it
really is in steep decline. But perhaps it is being reborn as something
new.
Chinese indie cinema “as we knew it” was a
sort of shadow cinema. It went unrecorded in official yearbooks and
uncollected by the China Film Archive. But it survived in the grey areas
of China’s regulatory regime. “Independent” has a distinctive meaning
in China. In the United States and most liberal democracies,
“independent cinema” is understood in contrast to Hollywood and other
mainstream commercial industries. The main thing that Chinese
independent films and filmmakers try to be independent of is the state.
Therefore, the main standard for defining
independence in China is not submitting your film to the censors.
Censorship is a pre-condition for commercial exhibition. So, the
filmmakers figured that if they did not try to sell tickets, making the
films was not a problem. Instead, a circuit of events like the Beijing
Independent Film Festival sprang up to exhibit the work and enable
filmmakers to meet audiences. And because the regulations say that “film
festivals” must be approved by the Film Bureau, in Chinese they were
called “exhibitions” or “audio-visual screenings” to avoid that issue.
Periodic skirmishes with the authorities
let everyone know when they were overstepping the mark, and for two
decades, a modus vivendi operated. An alternative archive was produced
of hundreds of features and documentaries dealing with topics that would
never make it into mainstream Chinese media but were not directly
oppositional. But now, that is over. None of the established indie
festivals have survived. The new Film Law has been understood by some to
mean that even making the films or holding a simple private screening
runs the risk of prosecution.
It is often assumed that Xi Jinping’s
authoritarian regime that came to power in 2012 is responsible for the
crackdown. But in the symposium at King’s, Wen Hai argued the problems
went back earlier. The so-called “colour revolutions” of the first
decade of the new century spooked the Chinese Communist Party into
believing tight control of the “ideological realm” was necessary again,
and we are living with the consequences today.
What does this mean for the future? Some
key figures have stopped making movies or at least greatly reduced their
output. Feminist activist documentarian Ai Xiaoming was forced to
retire from her position as a professor at Zhongshan University in
Guangzhou, and has only recently started to make films again. Others have sought refuge overseas. Ying Liang, a director and organiser of indie film festivals in Sichuan has been living in Hong Kong, and that is where Wen Hai is based now and making his films.
Other filmmakers have decided to find
ways to work “within the system.” The most prominent example is
internationally awarded slow film auteur, Jia Zhangke. After getting a
high enough profile with his early indie films to attract the attention
of the authorities, he was pressured to submit his films to the
censorship procedure, starting with The World (Shijie)
in 2004. Today, more “independent-style” films are emerging from China.
They look independent, but they have gone through censorship. Next time
you see a Chinese “independent” film, check to see if opens with a
“dragon seal” credit, the sign that it has been approved by the Chinese
censors. Bi Gan’s much talked-about Kaili Blues (Lubian Yecan, 2015) and Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent (Changjiang Tu,
2015), which won Mark Li Ping-Bing a Silver Bear for cinematography at
Berlin in 2016, are both examples. Whether these are true indies remains
debated.
Meanwhile, although the high-profile
indie film festivals have disappeared, a map that Zhang Xianmin showed
during the symposium confirmed that various film clubs and other
non-commercial screening activities continue. Independent events that do
not feature independent films have not been shut down. For example, the
FIRST International Film Festival in Xining is carefully called an “exhibition” in Chinese. Focused on young filmmaker debuts, 2016 marked its tenth edition.
Clearly, the situation remains difficult
in the film world. But the energy that drove the independent scene is
inspiring new initiatives elsewhere. The art world is one such space. In
China, as elsewhere, no self-respecting contemporary art exhibition
would omit moving image work. Some of China’s most prominent artists,
like Cao Fei and Yang Fudong, are best known for their moving image
work. And some of the established independent filmmakers, like Wang Bing
and Zhao Liang, are increasingly active as artists on the gallery
circuit.
Last but not least is the online world.
In recent years, the Chinese equivalents of Youtube have become host to a
vast ocean of short videos. Most are clips or music videos. But some
are recognised as “micro-movies” (weidianying). We are only
just beginning to find out about Chinese “micro-movies.” But what seems
to drive many of them is the desire to talk about things you cannot find
on mainstream television. Of course, the censors operate online, too.
But there they are reactive rather than proactive. By the time an
offensive “micro-movie” is deleted, it has often been widely downloaded
and shared already.
None of this is intended to downplay the
impact of the crackdown in the world of Chinese non-mainstream cinema.
There has been a sea change, and the indie scene is greatly diminished.
But to assume that China will no longer produce exciting and alternative
moving image works would be a great mistake – they just may not be
where we used to find them.
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