MCLC: documentary makers keep rolling

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: han meng (hanmeng at gmail.com)
Subject: documentary makers keep rolling
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Source: USA Today 
(2/8/12):http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-02-08/china-document
aries/53013794/1

Reel China: Hard-pressed documentary makers keep rolling
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING ­ Their subjects include people living at the margins of
society, fighting property demolition, tracing the death of relatives
persecuted under Chairman Mao, and even a government official
discussing the corruption and bullying rife in his City Hall.

As China's Communist Party boosts efforts worldwide to soften its
image, a determined and growing band of independent filmmakers
documents the complex, often uncomfortable realities of China's past
and present.

"The authorities believe these films, and the people who make them,
are all problematic," says Zhang Qi, organizer of an independent film
festival in a sprawling artists' village in east Beijing. "Officials
fear it's a big land mine that could explode at any time."

>From running ads in New York City's Times Square to broadcasting in
U.S. cable markets, China spends big money to get its views aired.
This week, propaganda-heavy China Central Television (CCTV) launched
programming for American viewers produced out of a new office building
steps away from the White House.

Among the producers of the English-language news broadcasts will be
several U.S. journalists hired from Bloomberg TV, NBC and Fox News in
bureaus throughout North and South America. CCTV says its operations
in the USA will have autonomy from the People's Republic of China. At
home, the PRC is tightening decades-long controls on the content of
movies and TV programs to promote Chinese culture it prefers: safe,
socialist and state-run.

Beijing police raided the opening ceremony of Zhang's independent film
festival, and a strict censorship system blocks many films from being
seen by mainstream Chinese. Still, the independent documentaries reach
a tiny audience within China, and their directors insist the stories
are so good and important that they will keep on shooting.

"The political challenges are greater than the financial, so
filmmakers must still be careful in choosing their topics," says Zhu
Rikun, a veteran documentary producer and supporter. Last May,
authorities canceled a documentary film festival Zhu was directing and
banned his Fanhall Films website, a forum for debate.

Despite the harassment, the number of independent documentary makers
has passed 100 over the past two years, he says. The digital age has
slashed equipment costs, while the Internet and pirated films,
commonplace in China, offer cheap inspiration to budding directors,
Zhu says. Foreign film festivals provide crucial support, he says.

State broadcaster CCTV launched a channel for documentaries last year,
"but they are not independent, they are still propaganda," Zhu says.

Among the films Zhu doubts would ever be shown on CCTV is Xu Xin's
Karamay, which tells the story of a fire in 1994 that killed 288
schoolchildren who were ordered to remain seated to allow officials to
leave first.

"Such a film is like a hidden history, as nobody wants to talk about
such topics in public," says Zhu, who reopened his website last month
by switching to a server outside China. "This film can make Chinese
people rethink about life, our history and society."

In China, "the government has a complete stranglehold on culture,"
says David Bandurski, a Hong Kong-based film producer and China media
analyst.

Chinese film directors face censorship "effective enough to shut them
out of the mainstream scene, so they don't impact domestic public
opinion," he says.

So many contemporary issues are considered sensitive that directors
who seek official approval and thus the right to screen in movie
theaters often set fictional films "in the romanticized, dynastic
past," he says. Instead of becoming a culturally strong nation as
Beijing plans, China risks becoming "a nation of cultural relics,"
Bandurski says.

Gritty reality is in plain view in the films of director Xu Tong,
whose "vagabonds" trilogy documents people at the bottom of Chinese
society.

"I want to show the complexity of society," he says. "These are real
social situations. Even if I can't show the films in cinemas, or not
many people can see them now, I don't care. I have the duty and desire
to record their stories."

Xu is proud of the independent film community's perseverance in the
face of censorship. Director Zhang Bingjian is still smiling even
though police hassle him when he shoots, and censors block his films.

"China is such an exciting place now; it's too interesting a subject,"
says Zhang, 52, who spent a decade in the USA. His film Ready Made
follows two ordinary people, including a woman whose resemblance to
Mao leads her to a double-life impersonating him for money at
nightclubs and malls.

Films such as Ready Made, which offer plenty of laughs, show that
"Chinese documentary" does not always mean bleak and political, says
He Zhong, founder of Trainspotting, a film-themed restaurant in
Beijing that shows independent, unapproved films. Police have never
interrupted a screening, which "shows more that I am careful, rather
than that the authorities are tolerant," says He, who did not show
sensitive films such as Karamay and Zhao Liang's Petition, which
follows desperate citizens in their futile search for justice.

"We don't want confrontation," says film festival organizer Zhang Qi,
"we just want to be able to express our own voice."