About the director
Voices from the Village: Theatre Troupe on the Road, directed by Xulong Chen, won the first runner-up prize at the Third CMEFF Chinese Music Ethnography Biennial in December 2023, and it was added to the Chinese Ethnographic Museum permanent collection in October 2024. Xulong Chen, an independent scholar from Dingxi, Gansu Province, is currently a member of the Chinese Society of Anthropology of Arts, the Visual Anthropology Branch of the Chinese Ethnology Society, and the Chinese Nuo Opera Research Society. His primary research focuses on the anthropology of art, ethnology, and the inheritance and preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) resources. His academic outputs encompass both textual and visual texts. Initially concentrating on the itinerant performances and livelihood of folk artist Xixing Lu, Chen gradually extended his fieldwork to include visual records of national, provincial, and municipal ICH inheritors. This trajectory shifted when he encountered the research project, The History and Current Status of Chinese Shadow Puppetry, by Professor Kang Baocheng’s team at Sun Yat-sen University.
In an interview with the filmmaker (online interview, 17 May 2025), Chen revealed that his engagement with shadow puppetry originated during his residency work in villages. Throughout this period, he employed visual documentation techniques to record local historical, cultural, and natural landscapes. As the resident work concluded, he expanded his scope to investigate shadow puppetry in the Longzhong region of Gansu. Inspired to adopt a holistic cultural perspective, he initiated a 3-year fieldwork project on Longzhong shadow puppetry. Accumulating extensive visual materials through sustained ethnographic practice, Chen began reviewing and reorganizing his footage for the Third CMEFF Chinese Music Ethnography Biennial.
About the film
The film focuses on the current situation of many shadow theatre troupes in Longzhong area, Gansu Province, China, emphasizing their deep connection with local folk beliefs. Filmed over 3 years (2020–2023), it showcases important centres of Longzhong’s farming culture across multiple regions in the Longzhong area: in the Anding District of Dingxi city, Tongwei County, Huining County, and Yongjing County. The film documents the survival of numerous shadow theatre troupes and the intertextuality between the shadow theatre and the folk beliefs of local farming culture.
In Longzhong, shadow theatre is passed down through families. The theatres often promote traditional virtues and satisfy the local believers’ good wishes in the form of entertaining both deities and people. Despite the impact of urbanization on the traditional rural structure and the changes in people’s lifestyles, shadow theatres still take root in the fields in the form of traveling performances and serve as an important vehicle for spreading folk beliefs. As the film title suggests, this “traveling” mode is not only a way of performance and inheritance, but also a strategy to meet the needs of local believers.
A six dimensional narrative model
The narrative logic of the film was designed based on the central content and cultural connotations embodied in shadow theatre. It begins with an in-depth exploration of four central themes: the theatre owner, the theatre routes, inheritance, and perseverance. The narrative is divided into six sections: the theatre owner, the theatre troupe, folk customs, performance, the theatre routes, and the inheritance. These sections collectively form a cohesive narrative framework. The film opens with a long shot of the northwest mountains, where howling winds create a sense of desolation, symbolizing the ecological environment that nurtures this form of shadow theatre. The opening scene transitions to Liu Mancang (an inheritor of ICH) playing the banhu (bowed string instrument) in his courtyard at home. The film concludes with two performers walking towards the mountains once again, accompanied by music, completing a circular narrative structure.
In the “folk customs” section, a series of black-and-white shots depict Liu Maocang’s preparation for the performance of keeping promises. These shots narrate the spring sacrifice rituals in traditional Chinese agricultural society. During these folk competitions, people express their devotion to deities through offerings and sacrifices. The black-and-white cinematography not only enhances the sacred atmosphere of communication between humans and deities, but also accentuates the rituals’ solemnity. The use of black-and-white shots in this context serves to separate the rituals from everyday life, imbuing them with a sense of timelessness and reverence.
The film employs several long takes of character statements, some lasting nearly 5 min. Additionally, there are instances of jump cuts between groups of character statement shots. However, upon closer examination of the performers’ statements, it becomes evident that these statements encapsulate the spiritual essence of the shadow theatre, which serves as a medium for conveying the traditional virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness. As an educational tool, it plays a pivotal role in shaping local values and worldviews. While the presence of jump cuts in the character statement shots may at first feel visually disruptive, they are strategically employed to convey the cultural depth and edifying functions of shadow theatre. Therefore, rather than evaluating the transitions solely from a technical standpoint, it is essential to consider the film’s content and narrative objectives.
The film’s acoustic montage is equally distinctive. It extensively employs audio dissolve techniques to connect multiple shots, using sound as a transitional device. Within the constraints of the film’s two-dimensional representation, the continuity of shadow theatre music is leveraged to achieve smooth transitions, ensuring effective narrative cohesion. This approach constructs two parallel narrative threads within the film. The first is an explicit editor’s narrative thread. It begins from the perspectives of four categories of shadow theatre practitioners: national-level ICH inheritors, provincial-level inheritors, municipal-level inheritors, and folk artists. Through their perspectives, the film narrates the stories of shadow theatre artists and their troupes, revealing the diverse “theatre routes” chosen by various troupes and demonstrating their cultural resilience. The second is an implicit narrative thread. The play “Sitting in the State of Yue” is subtly woven throughout the film, from its beginning to development, climax, and conclusion. By featuring this play across different troupes, the film establishes a logical connection between them, preventing a sense of disjunction during transitions. Moreover, the play itself embodies the traditional virtues rooted in early Chinese agricultural culture. Through performances by various troupes and interpretations by different troupe leaders, the play’s content is brought to life. The use of this play not only highlights the educational significance of traditional moral concepts for the community but also underscores the dual characteristics of folk attributes and dramatic elements that have been preserved in shadow theatre.
The camera work in the film reflects the director’s keen attention to musical details and a heightened sensitivity to behaviours and elements laden with social, cultural, and religious significance. For instance, in the “troupe” section, the film employs close-up shots to capture the expressions of the Dazhuang Shadow Theatre Troupe—both the troupe leader and the band members. It also focuses on musical instruments as material carriers of musical behaviour, the hand-performing details of band members during performances, and the natural and humanistic ecological environment of the stage. In the “folk customs” section, the editing of historical shadow theatre footage adheres to a four-dimensional model akin to that of the “troupe” section. This four-dimensional editing model, underpinned by a holistic perspective of music culture, endows the film with significant academic value.
Conclusion
During the film-making period, Xulong Chen also published an academic monograph, A Study on The Folk Attributes of Chinese Shadow Theater and Its Dramatization (Reference Chen2024), as well as several papers, including “The Roles and Performances of Chinese Shadow Theatre under Folk Beliefs” (Xulong Chen and Xufeng Chen Reference Chen and Chen2022). The written works and the film form a multidimensional intertextuality. By studying these two forms of texts, one can comprehensively understand the director’s long-term fieldwork and research findings. Collectively, they provide a comprehensive resource of immense value to scholars of Chinese shadow theatre.
