The protagonists of Luke Robinson's book are Chinese documentary filmmakers no longer working within film studios but shooting independently out on the streets. Their works reflect institutional changes within cinema and television, which entail not only filming on location but also aesthetic choices aimed at conveying effects of spontaneity, liveliness, and contingency. These terms are closely related with the study's central keyword, “xianchang.” As multi-layered and elusive as the concept of independent documentary itself, xianchang is “‘the scene’ or site of a film, but also the act of filming on location” (p. 5). It is at once a physical space, an authorial disposition that allows for unexpected elements to unravel before the camera, and the representational strategy that mediates such elements. Best exemplified by scenes of emotional crisis that “emphasize the reality of the subject matter in terms of its contingency,” it is “the defining element of a newly emergent documentary praxis . . . considered to be intrinsically open-ended and indeterminate” (p. 5). Further defined as a “poetics” (p. 6) designed to capture the “copresence” of the documentary filmmaker and the event that is being filmed (p. 30), it constitutes a radical departure from the utterly controlled use of images that characterized Chinese documentary up to the 1980s, and reflects a historical condition in which “contingency has been normalized as integral to everyday existence” (p. 34).
Chapter 1 traces the rise of independent documentary, detailing its links with Chinese Central Television in the late 1980s and the technological changes that led to its diversification about a decade later, particularly the impact of digital video. Emphasizing that xianchang is also an effect of mediation, the remaining four chapters explore the techniques that convey or create it. One of the strengths of these chapters is that they identify a series of contrasting approaches to xianchang while also proposing certain trends within Chinese independent documentary. They suggest that Chinese independent documentary has moved toward a foregrounding of contingency and an emphasis on the particular and the personal. Digital video has further blurred the line between filmmakers and subjects of representation, allowing for less exploitative modes of representation and increasingly self-reflexive practices. While these trajectories seem based on an evolutionary model of documentary (from observational to self-reflexive) with which some readers may take issue, they have the merit of providing guidance through an extremely heterogeneous field without overlooking its complexities.
Chapter 2, for instance, contrasts documentaries in which unexpected events serve as metaphors of a larger context to those that foreground their uniqueness. A metaphoric use is associated with “public” documentaries while an embracing of the unexpected is associated with “private” documentaries. The chapter follows previous scholarship as well as some filmmakers' own assessments in identifying a shift from public to private documentary in the late 1990s, but astutely points out that “the distinction between public and private is perhaps not as absolute as certain directors would like to make out” (p. 71), concluding that elements of the private documentary might have in fact been present from early on.
Chapter 3 argues that Chinese documentary has moved from the rigidly teleological organization characterizing such works as River Elegy (1988) toward a more fragmented temporality and “an awareness of time as unstable and unpredictable” (p. 77). The chapter then discusses the different employment of the long take and camera movement in Wu Wenguang's At Home in the World (1995) and Jia Zhangke's In Public (2001), claiming that the latter reflects the transnational nature of Jia's recent work as well as his adapting to the expectations of global art cinema.
Chapter 4 revolves around issues of ethics, particularly the ways in which digital documentaries portray queer subjects. Here xianchang is defined as a “contact zone” (p. 109) characterized by unequal power relations that is however “open to negotiation and compromise” (p. 129). The chapter identifies a trend from earlier documentaries that involved a voyeuristic exhibition of the body to later works by queer filmmakers in which the film's subjects are able to assert their agency. The assertion that the filmmaker's queer identity guarantees that a documentary is not voyeuristic (pp. 111–12, 118) is questionable. The chapter is nonetheless effective in mapping out the diverse collaborative performances through which directors and filmed subjects give visibility to queerness.
Chapter 5, finally, shows that sound is a powerful signifier of the tension of immediacy and mediation that characterizes xianchang, for location sound creates a sense of authenticity while reminding viewers of the film's “constructed nature as a document” (p. 143).
Tightly organized and clearly written, Robinson's book integrates an articulate discussion of the aesthetics of location shooting into a broad overview of independent Chinese documentary. It combines a well-researched account of the institutional and historical context with original close readings of a considerable number of documentary films, including some important works that have never been discussed extensively elsewhere. It will certainly serve as a reference point for students of Chinese documentary film for years to come.
