MCLC: Zhou Hao's "Datong"

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Zhou Hao’s “Datong”
Source: Global Times (12/20/15)
Record of a mayor: Golden Horse winner takes sharp look at Chinese society
 
Taking the Best Documentary Award at the Golden Horse Awards for the past two consecutive years, director Zhou Hao has been thrust into the spotlight since his latest win for his politically focused film The Chinese Mayor was announced on November 21.
Winning the Golden Horse Award last year for his work Cotton, a documentary centered on the life of workers and farmers that act as the glue which holds the Made-in-China industry together, Zhou went one step further with his "people-perspective" in this year's winning documentary The Chinese Mayor. A main feature of the film, this focus perspective on one individual gained the film quite a bit of attention even before it won any awards since the director's intention was to present the life of a mayor of a major Chinese city who had built a reputation for carrying out massive demolitions.
An objective view
Named after the city shown in the documentary, the Chinese title of the film is Datong. Situated in the northern part of Shanxi Province, Datong was once a strategically important city for China. Once the capital city for the Wei Dynasty (220-265) and the auxiliary capital for several other dynasties, Datong is well-known for its rich historic and cultural relics such as the Yungang Grottoes.
The city is also important for other reasons as it boasts the highest concentration of coal in the country, generates electricity for many parts of North China and once played a significant role in the economy during a time when China relied heavily on extensive growth. However, going hand-in-hand with its reputation for huge coal reserves and abundant power plants, the city was infamous for its murky skies and dirty streets covered in coal dust.
No exception to the tide of urbanization that has swept the country over the past decades, Datong also faced a dilemma when it came to getting rid of the old to make way for the new, which sometimes meant tearing down historic architecture.
As mayor of Datong between 2008 and 2013, Geng Yanbo, the sole protagonist of Zhou's documentary found himself caught up in controversy for his aggressive plan to demolish old houses. Many local Datong residents praised him for his industrious efforts to improve their living conditions, while others criticized him for recklessly dismantling historic relics or hurting the city's economic development.
Typical of local Chinese officials during China's massive urbanization efforts, Geng's story unfolds under Zhou's lens to reveal a picture of China's unique political ecosystem. As mayor, he was seen as a big official in the eyes of most city residents. With a single order he could make their houses disappear overnight. But at the same time, his authority also faced huge resistance, both obvious and subtle, from higher-levels of the government such as corrupt members of the Municipal Party Committee, or lazy officials at lower levels, and even real estate developers who used inferior materials to build substandard housing.
Taking a moderate and objective stance, Zhou's documentary doesn't look to provide any answers or point any fingers. The tone of the entire film is to restore what originally was and let the audience come to their own conclusions. As such, he avoids mixing any personal perspectives into the documentary that may affect the judgment of audiences.
Representing society
Once a photographer with the Xinhua News Agency and later Southern Weekly, Zhou possesses an experienced sense of what should and should not be recorded under his lens. However, going from journalist to an independent documentary director was not easy. Trying his hand at directing in 2001, Zhou gradually grew from an inexperienced filmmaker who had no clue about even the basics of documentary filmmaking to a director capable of handling complicated and sensitive subjects such as those seen in The Chinese Mayor.
Audiences familiar with Zhou may have noticed that a majority of his films are about people -- sometimes a group of people living at the bottom rung of society, sometimes a single person who typifies a certain trait in society. His documentaries such as Cotton, Senior Year and Houjie all reflect certain groups of people.
Houjie was Zhou's first documentary. Made in 2001 while he was still a photographer at the Southern Weekly, it takes aim at a group of people living in Dongguan, a city once famous as a major Chinese manufacturing base and infamous for its covert sex trade. Meanwhile, Senior Year is a documentary recording the life of a class of senior high school students about to take the national college entrance exam. It won the Hong Kong International Film Festival Humanitarian Award (Documentary) in 2006.
His "single-person" series has also gained quite a lot of attention as independent films. Long Ge (2008) focused on drug dealers and users, while The Transition Period (2009) explored the life of a CPC secretary belonging to a local county committee. Both films uncover various representative or unnoticed phenomenon in Chinese society.
Filming so many seemingly impossible subjects, Zhou is frequently asked how he manages to make these films.
"There actually is no secret. I just tell them honestly what I want to do instead of lying to them. I ask them, 'Can I film you?' and they agree. It's simple," Zhou said in an interview with Life Week.
Not taking sides in his films, his objective representation has allowed him to become fast friends with each of his subjects. Over the past decade or so he has kept the phone numbers of all the people he has filmed.
"What my films try to show, is a world in which there are no absolutely good people, nor absolutely bad. This is life," Zhou told Life Week.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on December 22, 2015
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