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."
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