Over the last decade, independent Chinese documentary has received increasing attention in English-language scholarship. Researchers in film and cultural studies have worked with colleagues in anthropology, history and literature to address urgent issues raised by courageous independent filmmakers in mainland China who operate outside the official system to document sensitive social problems, repressed historical memories and vanishing urban landscapes, and preserve them as alternative archives. As the first English monograph to explore this academic subject, Robinson's Independent Chinese Documentary is a welcome addition to a growing number of articles in edited volumes and scholarly journals. A film specialist, Luke Robinson excels in textual analysis and opts out of a comprehensive historical account or a broad industry survey. As he puts it, “were I to focus on reception or distribution … the casual reader would no doubt take from this book an impression of independent Chinese documentary quite distinct from the one presented here” (p. 11).

Nonetheless, Robinson's choice of depth over breadth has produced a coherent, sustained examination of a crucial dynamics at work in independent Chinese documentary – “what is known as xianchang: literally, ‘the scene’ or site of a film” (p. 5). In the Introduction, Robinson clarifies that, as a “certain spontaneous quality understood as inherent to such filmmaking … xianchang as a practice was considered to be intrinsically open-ended and indeterminate” (p. 5). After recognizing “the apparently spontaneous, open-ended and unpredictable spirit of xianchang,” he proceeds to evoke its approximate English counterpart – liveness – and poses this question: “How could the visceral experience of shooting live, so central to their own identity as filmmakers, best be translated into an aesthetic effect for the viewer?” (p. 6). Thus conceptualized, xianchang is not just a documentary filmmaking practice but also an aesthetic experience transmittable to the viewer. Moreover, it works as a poetics of contingency that speaks directly to post-socialist China where everything moves with astonishing speeds.

The concepts of xianchang and contingency run through all chapters. Chapter one, “Mapping independent Chinese documentary,” offers a brief overview of independent Chinese documentary and charts its transformation from the studio (official) to the street (independent), from analogue to digital in the 1990s. For Robinson, “The techniques that supported xianchang – the handheld camerawork, the long takes and tracking shots, the natural sound and lighting – were thus meant to capture the experience of shooting ‘on the scene’” (p. 29). Chapter two, “Metaphor and event,” differentiates two major types of independent documentary: first, public documentary operates in a metaphorical mode in which images are representative of something else; second, private documentary concentrates on an unfolding contingent event itself and refuses to be appropriated into a separate realm of signification. In Robinson's reading, the difference between the two is their mediation on the contingent: whereas the first sought to contain it in the early 1990s, the latter tended to embrace it after the mid-1990s.

Chapter three, “Time, space and movement,” draws on Deleuze's theory and distinguishes non-teleological time in independent documentary from teleological time in official zhuantipian (special theme) TV programmes. Robinson discusses various shades of xianchang – “time as time” in At Home in the World (Sihai weijia) and “time without movement” in In Public (Gonggong changsuo). Specifically, the long take is singled out as a favourite method linked to global art cinema. Chapter four, “Ethics, the body and digital video,” investigates xianchang as a corporeal process and emphasizes embodied experiences. Robinson notices a shift in representations of the queer body from objectifying, voyeuristic (from straight directors) to performative and empowering (from queer directors). For him, Queer China, “Comrade” China (Zhi tongzhi) reclaims the corporeal image as a signifier of queer desire, while New Beijing, New Marriage (Xin Qianmen Dajie) uses performance to foreground queer agency. Chapter five, “Sound and voice” analyses off-screen sound as critical in establishing the liveness of location shooting due to its appearance as uncontrollable. This chapter then traces the emergence of the talking head as testimony in the late 1980s and its subsequent deconstruction and reiteration.

Finally, in the Conclusion, Robinson returns to xianchang as documentary practice and poetics of contingency – both particular to post-socialist China – and admits that his book does not engage other possible ways of studying independent Chinese documentary. Nevertheless, he hopes that his book “has opened up a comparative perspective from which to examine the blooming of independent documentary film in the contemporary PRC, not as a unique event, but as an integral part of a global history of the documentary image, and of film's relationship to capitalist modernity” (p. 159). While the limited space has prevented Robinson from further substantiating this comparative perspective, Independent Chinese Documentary promises to be an ideal entry into this relatively new subject. Luke Robinson's provocative readings will surely inspire further research and attract readers interested in contemporary Chinese culture, media and politics.