Independent Chinese Documentary

In the past twenty years, China has witnessed the flowering of an independent documentary cinema characterized by a particular verite aesthetic. Independent Chinese Documentary traces the roots of this style back to the 1980s, and the gradual abandonment of studio-based filmmaking, dominant during the Maoist era, for shooting live and on location. Known in Chinese as xianchang - or being on 'the scene' - this documentary practice is partly distinguished by its embrace of the contingent. Through a series of synoptic case studies, this book considers the different ways in which contingency manifests in independent Chinese documentary; the practical and aesthetic challenges its mediation presents for individual film directors; and the reasons for the quality's significance, set against the backdrop of China's ongoing postsocialist transition, and the consequences of this process for the very act of documentary representation itself.