Revealing Keys to the Riddle of Reality
Moving Images of the Pearl River Delta: from 1999 to 2003

Ou Ning

YISHU, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, June 2004, Summer Issue,Vancouver

The year 1999 was a time when Lars von Trier's The Idiots and Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration hit all the major film festivals to great acclaim. The advent of the digital video (DV) camcorder has offered powerful support for their Dogma 95 theory of filmmaking. In an article in Cineaste magazine entitled "After the Creation of VCD and DV Camcorders," Chinese director Jia Zhangke reviewed the new trend of DV filmmaking he had observed at international film festivals. China's own DV productions were first released that year: Yang Tianyi shot Old Men in Beijing, while Cao Fei produced Imbalance 257 in Guangzhou. 1999 also saw the establishment of U-theque, the largest independent film organization in the Guangdong area. In the 2000 issue of Filmakers, an independent film magazine published by U-theque, the Danish Dogma 95 movement was introduced in the Chinese language for the first time, and two local DV filmmakers, Cao Fei and Jiang Zhi, were featured as well.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the independent DV filmmaking in Guangdong after the introduction of DV technology around 1999. By limiting the geographic coverage to the Guangdong area, we do not intend to set forth a kind of geo-cinematology, as it seems less significant to focus on regional characteristics of filmmaking in this era of globalization. What concerns us more are DV artists' reactions to the rapidly evolving social reality in the Pearl River Delta region (primarily referring to the urban belt centered centred on Guangzhou, including Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhuhai, as well as some less developed areas). In fact, aside from their focus on local subjects, the DV productions created in Guangdong posses no obvious "Guangdong attributes." As we cannot rely on the geographic features of Fengyang, a northern county town in Shanxi Province, to categorize Jia Zhangke's filmmaking style, neither can we use "Guangdong attributes" to describe the DV production style in the Guangdong area. Within these DV productions, we are unable to detect many folk elements or to discern the traditional cultural context of the region due to the fact that most of the artists are not native Guangdong residents. They have migrated to the region as a result of the unbalanced economic development among different regions in China. The short period of time they have spent in Guangdong has not enabled them to identify strongly with the region. They are more attached to their personal situations and surrounding realities. The compelling reality in the Pearl River Delta, which epitomizes China's economic reform movement and urbanization process of the last twenty years, highlights a thought-provoking phenomenon typical to both China in particular and Asia in general. It is regrettable that few artistic efforts have been made to probe into this reality. Therefore, the region's independent film and video producers' attention to reality has appeared particularly valuable in the past few years.

In fact, a regional artistic style of a production has little to do with where its artist was born and grew up. 72 Tenant Families, a 1963 movie by the Pearl River Film Studio (in collaboration with Hung To Film Studio Ltd. in Hong Kong), was shot in Cantonese. It can be seen as a typical Guangdong-style film, but its director, Wang Weiyi, was a left-wing filmmaker who relocated to the south after 1949. Moreover, its script was based on a stage drama produced by the Shanghai Dagong Comedy Troupe. The movie develops its regional style based on the chaotic and frantic Guangzhou society prior to 1949, local people's dynamic and dramatic ways of living and dialogue in Cantonese. Dialect is arguably one of the most important symbols of regional identity. Because the state requires a uniform spoken language (the "common language," or Mandarin), however, movies in dialect are discouraged or even prohibited. Probably because it was an early joint production, 72 Tenant Families was not subject to this restriction. In 1985, when Zhang Zeming was shooting Swan Song, he proved to be not so lucky. His movie, a realistic masterpiece devoted to searching for filmmaking language and aesthetics unique to the south China region, was dubbed into Mandarin as required by rigid policies. Officially promulgated in 2001, the National Common Language Law of the People's Republic of China requires that movies be produced in Mandarin, with the exception of actors playing the roles of national leaders. As a result, in Deng Xiaoping (2002) directed by Ding Yinnan, the leading actor speaks with a Sichuan dialect. However, in Ding's previous movie, Sun Yat-sen (1986), everyone has to speak Mandarin.

This probably is why Gan Xiaoer insisted on using Cantonese dialogue in his The Only Sons (2002). A native of Xinxiang, Henan Province, Gan came to Guangzhou for a teaching position at the South China Normal University upon graduation from the Beijing Film Academy's graduate school. Even though he is not a fluent Cantonese speaker, he still chose Cantonese as the language for The Only Sons, a drama he himself wrote, directed and stars in. His leading actress's Cantonese was even worse than his, but she managed all the way to the end. This independent production does not pick a dialect for the sake of advocating a regional style or for the purpose of reproducing real life; it does so to demonstrate an attitude of noncooperation. The attitude is commonly found among those Sixth Generation directors who are not able to obtain official filming permits. From this perspective, we probably could ignore the imperfection in performance due to actors' awkwardly spoken Cantonese by focusing on its concerns about the peasants living in Guangdong's rural areas who have to sell their children and wives, and who suffer a spiritual plight. In developing his storyline, Gan describes the misery of his characters to an extreme or even unrealistic extent. What he intends to do is not to pursue a dramatic cinematic effect, but rather to convey a moral: how can people be redeemed from such a near-terminal plight? This is now a religious issue. Gan exhibits his Christian belief vis-¨¤a-vis the ministers preaching in the countryside, and the cross and boat floating on water. Refracted sunlight, captured by the DV camcorder in the scenic landscape of northern Guangdong, is used to convey a tragedy, leaving an indelible contrasting image.

The way of handling natural light in The Only Sons rivals rural classics in the history of Chinese filmmaking (such as Li Shuangshuang directed by Lu Ren in 1962 with a photographic style characterized by striking contrast). It is very unusual for an independent DV production to achieve such delicate and refined images. The concerns about rural Christianity expressed in the movie have also greatly expanded the filmmaking discourse in China.

Unlike mainstream movies that either beautify or separate from reality, the most commendable aspect of independent film and video producers is their tremendous outpouring of passion in looking at the land beneath their feet and the people living around them. Through the lenses of DV camcorders, people can watch the real lives and societal panorama of China unfold in an extensive fashion- - from rural to urban settings, and from private family to public spaces. In Kecun Street (2002-2003), a drama produced by another independent artist, Fu Hao, the vulnerable social groups featured in The Only Sons have migrated from a confined rural society to a hustle-and-bustle environment in a metropolitan area. They are overwhelmed by the flood of commercialism. With slow-moving camera and low-light shooting, Fu tells us stories about young people's struggles and exile in a village within the city of Guangzhou. Because of this kind of top-down observation, existence at the bottom and marginal stories of urban living in Guangzhou are, for the first time, woven into the context of independent dramatic productions. Fu, who traveled all the way from Xinjiang to the south to make a living, tries to reproduce a "huge, intangible factory of fate" based on his own personal life experience, and to build a monument to "eroded, gray and harsh youth."1 Kecun Street tells the story of a love, brief and hopeless, between a traveling pharmaceutical salesman and a girl who works in a hair salon. It is fictional but full of true feelings."Villages within a city," the "legacy"2 of the region's urbanization programs, are a very common phenomenon in the Pearl River Delta. Typically, these villages illustrate that urban planning has lagged behind a fast developing reality. As problems, such as compensation for land acquisition, household registration and re-employment of peasants, piled up, villages previously located on the outskirts of a city often became "villages within a city" as a result of urbanization. Unable to land jobs, villagers built apartments on their property to earn income. Most of their tenants are migrants from other areas, making "villages within a city" susceptible, as a community, to problems such as prostitution, gambling and drugs. The Pearl River Delta region has been China's frontline since the nineteenth century as international capitalism and free-trade culture have moved in. Furthermore, it has become a hot area for China's economic reform since the 1970s. As described by Rem Koolhaas and his students in Great Leap Forward, the Pearl River Delta has experienced the most intense process of urbanization in modern China. All the conflicts and contradictions generated during the process have inevitably turned the region into what Hou Hanru calls a "zone of urgency".3 In Guangzhou alone, there are over 120 one hundred and twenty "villages within a city, " which have been the focal point of many independent DV artists.

Fu Hao chose Kecun, one of those villages in Guangzhou, as the setting for his Kecun Street to explore in a fictional way the individual existence of those villagers. Members of U-th¨¨que shot and studied San Yuan Li, another village in the city, applying the methodology of video sociology, and resulting in their collective work San Yuan Li (2003).

San Yuan Li was shot in a manner similar to what "city flaneurs" do. With a loose shooting outline, it was filmed separately by a number of DV camera people who spent a great deal of time wandering around the city and village of San Yuan Li. Each of them shot video of scenes and events that interested him. Finally, all of the footage was edited into a video epic without any narratives or dialogue, but unified by original music scored for the film. It returns to the documentary form of the 1930s known as "city symphony" to record the architecture and human ecology of this typical "village within a city," with a filming style characterized by a highly concentrated content and a fast pace. This DV documentary was invited to the 50th 50th Venice Biennale to exhibit, with multimedia aids such as print publications and a web Web site, its creators' impressions and description of San Yuan Li.

In San Yuan Li, the city is expanding explosively into its rural outskirts. On its way, it has devoured the patriarchal social structure existing in the rural society, and sucked the humble lives of peasants and migrants into its huge stomach before generating all its problems and issues. Like scavengers, and like Charles Baudelaire, "a lyric poet in the era of high capitalism" as Walter Benjamin calls him, DV cameramen wandered through streets and alleys and rummaged through construction sites and piles of junk (ashes resulting from the consumption of urban energy) in search of poetic images.

This way of observing and filming urban lives is also used by Jiang Zhi in his documentary Moments (2000-2003). Carrying a DV camcorder with him wherever he went, the artist documented everything in his life he found interesting. Just like a diary, Moments recorded fragments of urban lives in Shenzhen. What impresses the viewer most is how workers and migrants living near an industrial area entertain themselves: a crowd of people stands around a TV on the sidewalk, watching a Hong Kong comedy. Their joy and fascination were captured by the artist's zoom lens without their noticing. This allows the observation of the observer- - migrant workers were attracted by the Hong Kong movie, and we are attracted by the workers. In another episode about life in Shenzhen, an entertainer is performing a "Chinese version" of a Madonna-type show, in which the entertainer entices her audience sexually with provocative lingerie and erotic talk. These pictures document the current lifestyle of people living at the bottom of the social ladder, who draw little attention from the mainstream media. They also document another change or transition in life in an era of pervasive commercialism.

The manufacturing and processing industry in the Pearl River Delta region has long been the provider of many low-paying job opportunities for laborers from China's inland provinces. Since a great number of peasants have left their families and villages to find work in the region, a massive influx of people has occurred. Apart from working in factories, those migrant workers stay in their dorms or rented rooms, leading a boring and dull after-work life. In Jiang Zhi's Moments, we see those workers who are "fun seekers," whereas in Houjie Township, a documentary by Zhou Hao and Ji Jianghong, we follow the camera into the lives in those rented rooms.

A small industrial town in Dongguan, Houjie has many labor-intensive plants owned by investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan. These factories suffered economicallyafter the events of September 11th, 2001. As orders decreased significantly, a large number of workers lost their jobs. To bypass the more difficult challenge of shooting scenes inside the factories, Zhou and Ji focused their lenses on the everyday lives of migrant workers. In the film, which covers a period of more than a year, its creators dig through the triviality of workers' lives with professional journalistic keenness to record their private monologs, the suspicion and quarrels among them and the harm they inflicted upon one another. The film also reveals the dangerous social realities of those rented properties, including robberies, revenge murders and gas explosions. In order to capture their real inner world, Zhou and Ji even taught migrant workers how to use a DV camcorder and let them have the camcorder in order to conduct interviews and shoot film among themselves. These workers have struggled painfully in a dangerous, hopeless and sad existence, which is translated through broad and profound images into powerful sorrow and indignation in order to reach the hearts of viewers. The documentary features many people in a fiercely powerful presentation. Its appeal to the audience is greater than that of dramas because it eloquently shows the power reality itself projects.

Apart from these dramas and documentaries that focus on the reality of the Pearl River Delta, DV artists in Guangdong have also achieved remarkable results in making experimental films. In 1999 Cao Fei filmed Imbalance 257 when she was still in her junior year at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. With no filming experience under her belt, she borrowed a DV camcorder and shot the film with a group of college friends. In her debut film, Cao ridiculed the lives of bitter, young students on college campuses with a combination of slogans, cartoons, graphic designs, pop music and prank performances. It is not a work of deep reflection, but rather an improvised creation that connects with Godard's experimental spirit without guidance from her professors. In her later films, Chain Reaction (2000), Rabid Dogs (2003) and Hip Hop (2003), Cao adopts an eerie and playful style from Shuji Terayama and David LaChapelle and some musical movies to further release her inner anxiety, mock the lifestyle of success and express her infatuation with ordinary lives. Her works display an obvious playful tendency, and her use of advertising lighting and vulgar pop music implies apparent ironies. Moreover, her precise and fast-paced editing adds an explosive, carnival-like atmosphere to her DV films.

By profession, Shi Gang is an urban planner. His short films address issues of urban spaces and architectural forms with a passionate interest in exploring the significance of images themselves. In National Day (2000), Hhe achieves, in National Day (2000), an effect of disconnection between images and voices by continuously switching from the narrator in the foreground to the performer in the background, creating spatial perspective and compositional tension. In Super Woman (2003), numerous hand-painted images and 3-D animation clips overlap with such texts as "super-city," "super-dog," "super-toy," and "super-path" written by Shi Gang, complementing and excluding one another. It can be viewed as an "animation of hypertext,"4 or a "text written with animation." With the help of computerized captions, Internal Movies (2003), a single-camera experimental short film, completes a dialogue about video images with a single actor. These films, which display a strong sense of form and an affection for dialectical thinking, challenge, without a doubt, their audience's viewing experience nearly to the extreme. Yet, based on on-line responses, they apparently do not lack supporters. Being happy with what he does, Shi Gang has been productive in his creative work.

Another director, Huang Weikai, uses black humour to look into how the mass media disseminate erroneous information in Ladden's Body Could Be Nothing But a Copy (2002), a short comedy presented in a calm, collected and composed manner. In his Er Ge (2002), Zhang Jiaping tells the story of three bored young people who are in search of a non-existent place, Er Ge, creating video and audio effects that resemble Jim Jarmusch's dark, mysterious style showcased in his Dead Man (1996). Several Centimeters (2002) and Overnight Rice (2003) are local animated films created by Tiaotiao (Xu Wentao) after long being immersed in Hong Kong's kung fu movies and Zhou Xingchi's wulitou (nonsense) style, as well as being influenced by Bill Plympton's X-rated animation. Tiaotiao's crazy creation and humorous playfulness achieve the same results as some of Cao Fei's works.

According to the information collected and compiled by U-theque, a total of 18 eighteen experimental films, ten dramas, nine documentaries and five animated films were created by independent film and video artists in Guangdong between 1999 and 2003. These figures indicate that independent production in the region has just gotten underway. Even if we could include works beyond U-theque's range of observation, we still could not change the fact that independent DV creation is not well developed in Guangdong. Much of this phenomenon has to do with the tradition of commercialism and the consequences of economic openness in the Pear River Delta region. The real issue of this problem can be illustrated by looking at the evolution of the Pearl River Film Studio, the only state-run studio in southern China. In its early years in the 1950s and 1960s, the Studio continued the excellent tradition of the Shanghai left-wing film movement and produced outstanding movies such as Nan Hai Chao (1962), co-directed by Cai Cai Chusheng and Wang Weiyi, and 72 Tenant Families (1963). In the 1970s, which were dominated by "model films," production in the Studio was completely wrecked. The 1980s and early 1990s were the golden era of Chinese movie production, during which the Studio produced a number of titles that can be regarded as classics of Chinese-language film, including Xiang Yin (1983) directed by Hu Bingliu, Swan Song, Sun Yat-sen and Heartstrings (1992) directed by Sun Zhou. Since emerging in the mid- to late-1990s, the advertising production industry has started to corrode the Studio. With nearly all the soundstages and equipment being leased to advertising producers, the Studio only manages to make several "mainstream" movies each year as mandated by governmental directives. It is difficult to continue local film creation and production. Meanwhile, film education is not even on the agenda, as there is no film school in the region. Even though Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts has established a new media program to offer its students video filming courses, its inadequately-qualified faculty and its educational philosophy's overemphasis on practicality make the program practically non-functional. Despite the advent of independent production, these factors do not bode well for the long-term prospects of the film and video industry in the Pearl River Delta region.

Guangzhou, December 31, 2003

Notes:

1. See Fu Hao,: "Kecun Street: About usUs, our Our youth Youth and existenceExistence," Modern Weekly 27 (, Alternative Issue 27: Moving Images of Pearl River Delta), (Guangzhou: September 2003), Guangzhou.
2. See Ou Ning,: Shadows of Times and San Yuan Li Project for the 50th Venice Biennale, U-theque, (Guangzhou: May 2003)., Guangzhou.
3. See Hou Hanru,: "Zone of Urgency," the 50thth Venice Biennale (Catalog)exhibition catalogue (Venice, 2003). , 2003, Venice.
4. See Shi Gang,: "Self Introduction," Modern Weekly, 27 (Alternative Issue 27: Moving Images of Pearl River Delta) (Guangzhou:, September 2003, Guangzhou).
5. See Modern Weekly 27, (Alternative Issue 27: Moving Images of Pearl River Delta), (Guangzhou: September 2003)., Guangzhou.

Translated from Chinese by Yishu