Chinese documentaries took the spotlight at the first Chai- Chinese Documentary film festival in Leipzig. Kaixi Xu brings us more with the festival's guest speaker, director Xiaolu Guo.
The inaugural Chai- Chinese Documentary Film Festival launched to a sold-out crowd in Leipzig, Germany this month.
The festival showcased a diverse range of innovative documentaries exploring contemporary China by leading and emerging filmmakers from across the world.
Director Xiaolu Guo flew in from London to attend the screening of her film Once Upon A Time Proletarian at the opening of the festival on December 5. The film, which profiles thirteen people trying to make sense of China in the present day, inspired a lively discussion on Chinese culture and filmmaking. Guo noted the enthusiastic response of the audience at the dialogue which she led:
"It was very positive- there were lots of people at the opening night and I think the film did raise questions of debate about China now and the whole working class condition in China and how that reflects similar phenomena in the West, so the discussion was very nice."
Guo, who was born in a fishing village in south-eastern China in 1973, worked as a writer and director in China before moving to London in 2002. She explores themes such as personal identity and journeys as they relate to wider developments in China in her works, which include the Locarno-winning film, 'She, A Chinese'.
Guo observed that, as often the case with discussions on documentaries from China, questions about the country's socio-political landscape tended to dominate the discourse:
"I think that for documentary films from China, the questions they need to know are normally political questions rather than questions about cinema language or artistic format."
She added that this is reasonable considering the unique nature of Chinese documentaries:
"With Chinese documentaries- somehow the look of the documentary is very, very different from say, European or American ones- that really is linked to the very political situation after the 80's when the whole of China opened up."
For the festival's organizer Min Wang, documentary film provides a powerful medium for both the Chinese people and the international community to understand the changes taking place within the country at different levels:
"I proposed to the Confucius Institute in Leipzig to launch the Chai Chinese Documentary Film Festival to explore the social and cultural developments taking place in China from a raw and illuminating lens. Documentary film making really started from the 90s in China, which isn't a long history compared to Europe and America. The one-child policy and the rapid economic development have led to significant changes at various levels across Chinese society, in ways not often examined in mainstream discussion."
The festival's aim to provide a window into the multitude of cultures and lifestyles in contemporary Chinese society is reflected in its diverse programme. Featured films included The Next Life by Jian Fan and Go Grandriders by Tianhao Hua, which examine the lives of mothers of single children and elderly motorcyclists respectively.
Xiaolu Guo praised the varied selection of films on show at the sold-out festival:
"I think the list on the programme is very interesting, very diverse, and most of the films are very brave, very independent. Sometimes you do see a collection of films that are mediocre or commercial, and this list at the Chinese documentary film festival is really quite strong, I liked it very much."
The success of the first edition of the festival reflects the growth of documentary filmmaking in China. Among the films screened at the festival was China Heavyweight, an intimate examination of boxing in China with the coach of two young boxers from rural China, by Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang. China Heavyweight won the Taiwan Golden Horse award for best documentary in 2013 and became the most widely distributed documentary in China, following its release in more than 200 cinemas nationwide on December 20.
As more documentaries from China are produced and shown internationally, the Chai- Chinese Documentary Film Festival provides, in Guo's words, "a platform for the West and the East to study Chinese society firsthand".
The Chai- Chinese Documentary Film Festival was held by the Confucius Institute at the University of Leipzig from the 5th to 7th of December, 2013.