Filming the Everyday

This cutting-edge book examines the rapidly developing scene of Chinese independent documentary, arguably the most courageous player in contemporary Chinese visual culture. The book’s emphasis on current issues and its discussion of aesthetic experiments will appeal to all readers interested in China’s culture, media, politics, and society.

Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Yingjin Zhang is Distinguished Professor of Literature and Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Acknowledgments Part I: Cultural Context 1. Introduction: Documenting China Independently, by Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang 2. Who's Afraid of the Documentary Camera? Refiguring Reality, Memory, and Power in Chinese Independent Documentary, by Yingjin Zhang 3. For Whom Does the Director Speak? The Ethics of Representation in Documentary Film Criticism, by Yomi Braester, Part II: Rural Reconfigurations 4. From Root-Searching to Grassroots: Returning to the Countryside in Contemporary Chinese Fiction and Independent Documentary Film, by Angie Chau 5. Zou Xueping's Postsocialist Homecoming, by Paul G. Pickowicz Part III: Embodied Filmmaking 6. Looking Back while Marching Forward: Reconfiguration of Selfhood in the Folk Memory Project, by Tong Wang 7. The Memory Projectand Other Ways of Knowing: Filmmaking, Affect, and Embodied Knowledge, by Laura Kissel Part IV: Documentary Enactments 8. Gendering Intersubjectivity in New Chinese Documentary: Feminist Multiplicity and Vulnerable Masculinity in Postsocialist China, by Alvin Wong 9. From Bumming to Roaming: Xu Tong's The Drifters Trilogy, by Yiman Wang 10. Documenting through Reenacting: Revisiting the Performative Mode in Chinese Independent Documentaries, by Hongjian Wang Appendix: Michael Berry, "Memory/Document: In Dialogue with Wu Wenguang's Memory Project" Documentary Filmography About the Contributors