Week 8★June 1st REMEMBERING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Homework Viewing
[click the title to YouTube link]
Dir. HU Jie/胡杰, 2007
Badiou, Alain. & Bosteels, B. 2005. The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?
positions: east asia cultures critique 13(3), 481-514. Duke University Press. Retrieved
March 22, 2018, from Project MUSE database.
Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel. 2010. “Alternative Archive: China’s Independent
Documentary Culture”, In Chris Berry; Lisa Rofel and Xinyu Lu, eds. The New
Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: University of
Hong Kong Press, 2010, pp. 135-154.
on the Cultural Revolution”, Public Culture 21.3: 538–49
Reference Readings
My questions:
1. How would you position Hu Jie’s AIG within the ecosystem of Chinese independent cinema (especially documentary) and its culture? What is the temporal framework and socio-political context for this culture (and why as such)? Then what is the role played by Chinese independent filmmaker then? Is their filmmaking “naturally” political?
Background: Between 1949~late 1980s, Chinese film studios were state-owned; production/circulation/exhibition of films in PRC were totally controlled and financially supported by the Party-State (China Film Corporation since 1949 monopolizing the importation of foreign films and their distribution;reformed into China Film Group Corporation/CFGC since 1999);
Since the late 1980s, Chinese film industry was undergoing drastic changes: the state-owned studios had to be responsible for their own management & generating profits; since 1990s, there were waves of measures of marketisation and privatisation, and the film industry was temporarily in paralysis
As the result of the economic reform, graduates were no longer guaranteed jobs by the State; young generation’s filmmakers (not only limited to BFA graduates) started to work outside-of-the-system/underground:rented video cameras from TV stations etc to shoot films on their own (they might purchase a quota from state film studio); did not submit the films for state censorship(the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television or SARFT; therefore could not be showed at domestic cinemas); smuggled films out of China for international film festivals; some works were banned, and filmmakers blacklisted
Being independent (or alternative): narrow definition as the “outside-of-system” film practice & being underground (politically dissident); “Chinese indie” as a more fluid critical concept, which could be used to examine a great diversity of independent films (genres, subjects & ideological persuasions) produced in the Post-Tian’anmen Era; the spirit of “independence”; free and independent thinking
2. What do you think of the role of Hu Jie in AIG (and as typical with his filmmaking in general when approaching historical issues)? What do you think of the comparison of Hu Jie with Lanzmann, according to Li Jie?
The mode of testimony in Hu Jie’s cinematic treatment of the Cultural Revolution is remotely reminiscent of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985). Like Lanzmann, Hu Jie revisits and accompanies his interviewees as they revisit the significant sites for the deceased.
What do you think of the im/possibility for indie (documentary) filmmakers to probe into the traumatic history of the past?
However intimately Hu Jie’s camera approaches its historical subjects, he is ever mindful and constantly reminds us of gaps and continuities between past and present — in other words, of his and our own historicity. (Li, p548)
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