China’s documentary film industry saw explosive growth at the country’s box office last year, although the spike in interest is coming from films about the entertainment industry—and not on more hard-hitting social subjects.
Three domestic documentary features raked in 21.5 million yuan ($3.4 million) last year in theaters, 15.5 times higher than revenues from the previous year, according to a recent report.
The lion’s share of that increase came from a single film based on the world tour of Taiwanese boy band Mayday, which generated 21.1 million yuan. Another music-focused documentary, one about Chinese rock legend Cui Jian, came in second, grossing 300,000 yuan.
The numbers nonetheless leave some industry insiders optimistic.
“I am extremely happy about it,” said Fan Lixin, an award-winning director whose credits include “Last Train Home,” a documentary about migrant workers’ difficult journey home during Spring Festival, that brought him two Emmy awards.
“In China, documentary films have long been used as a propaganda tool for political purposes,” Mr. Fan said. “Others talk about issues like petitioning or AIDS that are too sensitive for big screens in China.”
But “the 15-time growth rate means a comeback of real documentary features,” he said.
A quasi-documentary based on the namesake reality show, “Dad, Where Are We Going?” was one of China’s highest-grossing films this year, bringing in about 700 million yuan at the box office. Experts say this kind of film will help to usher in a trend of reality-show-based documentaries in the world’s second-largest film market.
“[The ones that made the money last year] are all fan-based documentaries that are easily made commercially successful,“ said Mr. Fan, who will soon release a new documentary about a hit Chinese singing TV show. “This kind of documentary will be mainstream in the near future because they are easier to survive. Documentaries at this moment need to survive in theaters.”
The report, conducted by China Documentary Research Center, also showed that “China Heavyweight,” an award-winning documentary film that follows a boxing coach searching for talent in rural Sichuan, took home a mere 70,000 yuan nationwide last year.
Market immaturity is blamed for the flop of social-conscious documentaries. “The general mentality of the Chinese audience is still restless. They prefer lighthearted works,” said He Suliu, director of the China Documentary Research Center.
China’s state regulator said in 2010 it would support the development of domestic documentaries that “vividly show China’s development and progress,” part of its recent efforts to boost the country’s culture industry.
That government support led to the tripling in the production volume of domestic documentaries from 2010-13, according to state media report. The airtime dedicated to documentaries on TV tripled during that period as well, and the regulator this year began requiring all 34 provincial satellite channels to broadcast domestic documentaries for an average of 30 minutes per day, part of a crackdown on “excessive entertainment” on TV.
Though the recent hit food documentary TV series “A Bite of China” has struck a chord with viewers, the China Documentary Research Center’s Mr. He points out that China still is short of good documentaries the public can resonate with. “We still lack professional teams in this industry who are audience-conscious.”
“The reason ‘A Bite of China’ became so popular is that it offers what many people look for: simple happiness and warmth,” he said.