Take it Personally: A Certain Tendency in Chinese Independent Documentary

Chinese independent documentaries have gained wide respect for their archiving of alternative social realities that are still regularly excluded from representation in official media. The speaker will explore a line of "personal documentary" and its exercise of a subjectively-driven intervention in historical thinking through the moving image.

For over two decades, Chinese independent documentaries have gained wide respect for their archiving of alternative social realities that are still regularly excluded from representation in official media. In contrast to the prevalent and much discussed verité practice that contributes impressively to such alternative documentation by way of a cool, "objective" observation of a given phenomenon, the speaker distills an initially neglected line of "personal documentary" and explore its exercise of a subjectively-driven intervention in historical thinking through the moving image. She will delineate the formal features as well as theoretical implications of this extraordinary practice and support her discussion with various examples that range from "I Have Graduated" (dir. Wang Guangli, 1993), "West of the Tracks" (dir. Wang Bing, 2003), the oeuvres of Wu Wenguang to some of the newest works.

Speaker: Qi Wang Film Studies, Georgia Tech

Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6321