Asia Times, Nov 29, 2005
Capturing China's problems on film
By Caroline Cooper

BEIJING - Sun Xiuwei, a longtime student of film with concerns about
some of China's biggest problems, was until recently unsure how to bring
these two interests together. Then in October, the 24-year-old saw an ad
in her local paper.

"The ad solicited proposals for documentary film projects on China's
governance issues," recalled Sun, who has a neat black ponytail and
small rimless glasses. "This seemed to me the perfect way to get
involved and communicate some of the things I am worried about right now."

With her partner, Xiong Xun, Sun drafted a proposal outlining plans to
shoot a water management dispute in Guipin village in Guangxi province.
"China's biggest problem right now is finding ways to resolve local
management and government issues. The common people are the most
important in China's history."

Sun's project cuts to the heart of China's gravest social ills. For all
of China's many apparent successes, a certain degree of discontent is
bubbling at the edges. Government-released figures state 74,000 "mass
incidents" took place in 2004, up from 53,000 in 2003.

Many of the protests, most of which center on public outrage for
government wrongs, have turned violent, resulting in skirmishes between
villagers and police, burned cars and damaged property. Recent events
involving local residents' bitter land dispute with local officials in
Taishi village of Guangdong province only further highlight the
precarious nature of local level governance in China.

Some of the most engaging responses to these conditions are coming from
China's artistic communities. China's pioneer documentary filmmaker Wu
Wenguang has shot Chinese social problems since first picking up a
camera in the late 1980s. These concerns are evident in his landmark
films Beijing Drifters and On the Road, intimate portraits of people on
the fringe.

Now Wu has found a way to share his skills with a wider audience, many
of whom are well familiar with the hardships his work depicts. In early
November, Wu gathered 10 young documentary filmmakers and 10 villagers
from provinces around the country to his studio on the outskirts of
Beijing. The 20 new directors were culled from responses to national
advertisements that ran in October in papers across the country. The
focus of their documentary projects, as with so much recent unrest in
China, will be the failure of local level governance.

"This project is closely connected to China's rural population, "Wu
explained. "Most of China's population lives in the countryside, it's
the location of some of the biggest problems. I am excited about this
because the project is based on people's own ideas and proposals. People
need to understand village governance in the broader sense - not just
the associations and committees but what they stand for and what they
could achieve in the broader sense.

"I think this will help more people care for and consider the real
conditions among China's peasants. We need to care for the people."

The selected directors, supported by funding from the EU Training
Program on Village Governance, are shooting their short documentaries in
November and December. Editing and post-production will take place
through December. The films are slated to tour several American
universities in March and will return to China for assorted screenings
in April.

"The young documentary filmmakers have so many ideas and so much
potential," Wu said. "While the 10 villagers who have been selected to
shoot will turn the cameras to their own lives, the local dilemmas they
know well."

Proposed topics include environmental governance disputes in Shandong
and Guangxi provinces, unresolved tourism plans for a Tibetan village, a
land dispute on the outskirts of Beijing, the role of local officials to
address pollution in Jiangxi province and one Guangdong village's
discussion of whether to keep writing their love for the Chinese
Communist Party in the pages of their family books.

In a country where direct discussion of governance issues remains taboo,
the filmmakers face a special set of challenges in capturing their stories.

"People need to know where the line is and how to work with that line,"
EU project officer Jian Yi said. "Not everything will be possible at
this time. The people we selected, both the villagers and the young
filmmakers, demonstrated in their proposals that they know how to work
around these constraints."

Much of the November workshop focused on issues of government control
and of how to deal with the apparent limitations to documentary film in
China today. Many of the young filmmakers anticipate problems in the
filming, especially those focusing on sensitive governance topics.

"Villagers like to cooperate with us," explained Xiao Qiping from his
shoot location where he is documenting the divisive effect pollution has
had on one village in Jiangxi. "But leaders have not understood our real
intention so far. It is clear the elections we have filmed were not fair
or legal."

Wang Wei, 28, is one of the villagers selected to shoot a short
governance documentary. Wang is a farmer who raises pigs and tends an
apple orchard in Shandong province. His documentary focus, a land
dispute in Wangjin village of Shandong province, is a topic with which
Wang is well familiar. A former soldier, Wang returned to his home
village to find local leaders embezzling money and redistributing land
according to their own interests. He has been instrumental in
galvanizing villager responses to the abuses. But with a camera, Wang
can now document the disputes and, he hopes, bring to light some of the
most common challenges in local level governance.

"Self-governance is the most basic stage of the democratic process in
China, "Wang said. "When people have the right to vote in the
countryside, the people in the city will in time gain some understanding
of the process. This is a movement from the rural to urban places."

At Wu's November workshop, Wang contended that local governance was a
source of both China's biggest problems and its greatest hope. "I think
the only way to resolve the problems in the countryside is to bring in
democracy. Let the officials be controlled by the people, not the other
way around.”

Local-level governance took shape in China in the early 1980s, when
changes in the post-Mao Communist Party governance structure allowed for
new possibilities at the most local level. Locally organized elections
first took place in Guangxi province and soon spread across the country,
alleviating burdens to the governance structure at the bottom rungs and
allowing the countryside a greater sense of self-determination.

Still, many contend the voting is a ruse, and in recent years village
governance has in some areas become as much of a source of conflict as
leadership. Yet in 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao suggested that voting be
allowed at the higher township level, marking an acceleration of local
governance in China and a sign that democratic experiments are growing.

For now, documentary film may be one of the most dynamic mediums through
which China's governance issues are being communicated. Wu's efforts to
bring a diverse set of filmmakers together is just one example of
China's artistic community working in recent years to bridge the gaps in
dialogue about the country's most pressing problems. Zheng Yaxuan, a
Beijing-based film critic, believes this project and others like it to
be essential to public participation in China's governance issues.

"This project represents a kind of possibility," she said. "Both
villagers and ordinary young people can, though this, participate and
express opinions, capturing what they see.

"Film is a witness. Documentaries observe what is happening in this era
in China. This is important because right now, every Chinese is starting
to become his or her own person, not just a number in a system. All
across China, people are finding their voice."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GK29Ad01.html

 

 

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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