这东西居然变成英文和西班牙文了
Political Aesthetics or Aesthetical Politics on Ying Liang’s Film Work/Hu Di
Workshop Politics
In China, the “artist’s studio” and the imagined space it conjures has existed for a very long time; however, the idea of a “director’s studio” is relatively new. Film, due to the tremendous investment and enormous personnel requirements, has never been considered a medium of independent expression. Along with Chinese society’s gradual market-orientation and interest in entertainment, film has evolved from being a simple tool of political propaganda, as in the early days, to becoming a tool for both shallow commercial entertainment and despotic, mainstream political language. Only in the early 90s, did the “Sixth Generation Directors,” most notably Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, begin an independent film movement; around the same time Wu Wenguang, Duan Jinchuan, and Jiang Yue, among others initiated the “New Documentary Movement.” The emergence of these two new independent film waves changed the underlying structure in Chinese film. Coming from a non-official, elitist (jingying zhuyi) standpoint, these young directors initiated a secret channel for author-produced films in contemporary China, highlighting their independent modes of production, new camera techniques, unique individual viewpoints and unusual means of distribution. Afterwards, based on the reputation earned from previous works, these directors-run studios began operation. Here, I will discuss the background and operational methods in Ying Liang’s studio over different eras.
Ying Liang’s era is one of digitalization. Whether in terms of techniques or funding, the popularization of the DV has enabled the individual or a very small team to complete a film independently. The “New Documentary Movement” in the mid 90s exhibited the medium’s profound ability to penetrating social grounds and to cutting moments out of reality. With the appearance of independent feature films shot on DV, the brilliant creative power of these tiny machines was further engaged. DV undoubtedly brings film closer to the French film critic Alexandre Astruc’s idea of the camera-pen. The pen is not just a tool for documentation, more importantly, it gives form to ideologies. Compared to investments over millions of Yuan for traditional feature films, Ying Liang only needs a few tens of thousands Yuan to make a film.
There are two core members in his studio, Ying Liang himself and his partner Peng Shan. The two of them complete almost all the main tasks of producing, screenwriting, from filming to post-production by themselves. As we can see from a few interviews with Ying Liang published online, these limitations have no effects on his thoughts during his creative process, yet help him to achieve creative freedom. Not in consideration of practical issues that traditional films are highly concerned with, such as investment retrieval and screening permissions, he can invest himself completely in his work completely, with few limiting dimensions. The concept of the studio is nothing material, like their choice of medium (DV), their studio is actually just a mental space. Ying Liang is more of an artist than a film director. Even though contemporary artists are more and more dependent on factory processing or the “team” production and use of helping hands, the title “artist” still conjures up a stronger sense of individuality than that of “film director.” And because of this “team” quality in contemporary art, Ying Liang’s film productions are closer to contemporary art practices. This mode of film production embodies more “aura” (to borrow Walter Benjamin’s term) than a hand-made singular work of art, which is why I used the word “workshop” instead of “studio” in the subtitle of this article. Here, “workshop” is not used in a derogatory sense, the emphasis is a handmade quality, also a nod to Ying Liang’s mode of production.
Ying Liang’s attitude towards his involvement with Chinese reality and Chinese film is low-key, mild and compliant, but his work has sparked deafening echoes. In China, he is not the first person to produce films in the form of a “workshop,” but in terms of ideology, creativity and systemization in his work, Ying Liang is absolutely remarkable. “Workshop politics” alludes to winning an impossible war with an incredibly small number and limited force, breaking into the backyard of a film industry already besieged by capital barriers and political shields. “Workshop politics” is not battlefield combat, but bushwhacking, it demonstrates an alternative for film in a unique way.
Local Aesthetics
Locality is an important phenomenon in contemporary Chinese independent film. Since Jia Zhangke’s “Hometown Trilogy,” shot in Shanxi’s Fenyang and Datong, young directors often choose their hometown as the locale of the story and filming for their first couple of films. In recent independent film productions, Yang Jin’s The Black and White Milk Cow and Er Dong shot in Shanxi, and Weng Shouming’s Fujian Blue filmed in Fujian are especially noteworthy. In addition, Crossing the Mountain was shot among the Wa community in Yunnan by a northeastern-born female director, Yang Rui. Though this film was not shot in her hometown persay, the director’s intention of dislocating the center with the margins is quite obvious. She challenges the “Chinese sensibility” ostensibly constructed by mainstream films with her local aesthetics.
Ying Liang’s three feature length films thus far, Taking Father Home, The Other Half and Good Cats are all shot in Zigong, Sichuan. Even though Ying Liang is from Shanghai, Zigong is the hometown of Peng Shan, his partner; and although the director himself has had almost ten years of living experience in Zigong, the specific reason for his choice to live and work in Zigong rather than going back to Shanghai is unclear. Ying Liang’s intention to displace Shanghai as “center” with the marginal city Zigong is obvious. In contemporary Chinese independent films, local dialects replace standardized Mandarin, locality replaces generality, marginalized people replace mainstream society, and average people replace professional actors. Through this we see the strong intention of dispelling the main body of China, which is controlled by China’s official language system. The national film industry of China is a shield against Hollywood’s global invasion, but similarly, our national film regulations suppress local films and folk imagery with its function of sustaining the nation’s orthodoxies. In our national film industry, local and folk imagery is alien, incapable of being controlled and almost ghostly. The nationwide independent film movement reclaims a rich and specific reality within China through its documentation and contemplation of a localized reality, it unveils a common destiny of living in contemporary China under the pretext of maintaining individual local characteristics.
The “local aesthetics” of independent film are reflected by shooting on actual locations and by using average people as actors. We can see different landscapes such as rural villages, fields, the urban-rural fringe zones, the old downtown area, new downtown area and more from Ying Liang’s three feature lengths. Zigong is a miniature model of contemporary China; it embodies a unique landscape where many fractured layers of contemporary Chinese history are piled up. It’s also a “scene” from contemporary China, since all evolution of urban landscapes and shifts in human relationships that happen in larger cities also take place in a marginalized cities like this one in the southwest.
The decision to shoot on locations for such “scenes” is not merely due to shortage of funds, it’s also driven by a sense of responsibility to document reality. This makes independent story films closely akin to new documentaries. The only difference is that of the “dispositif ”; but in essence, they are the same. On using average people as actors, there are some young directors such as Ying Liang, Yang Jin and Yang Rui have contributed revolutionary experiments. Jean-Luc Godard invited a group of friends from Cahiers du Cinéma when shooting Breathless. These actors could be called non-professional actors, but because they were all professional film critics, they were already very familiar with film acting techniques. Not surprisingly, the main stars in Breathless were both international film stars at that time, Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. In this respect, Chinese independent film has gone further than the French New Wave. “Average people” as actors is not what this term generally entails, such as passers-by or extras that appear in the background, average people as actors has become a reality in Chinese independent film. A lot of the common people in Ying Liang’s films are Peng Shan’s relatives, friends and neighbors. Their jobs in real life are far from acting, and acting in Ying Liang’s films won’t bring them any real profit, but the fact that people who were once confined to the audience are participating in film productions is very meaningful. In Le Spectateur Emancipé, Jacques Rancière rebutted the common notion that the audience is passive, putting forth the notion that the audience can be active through their own decision making, comparisons and illustrations. In Ying Liang’s film practice, these audience has become participants and creators in the films. This shift of roles is political. Participating in film productions doesn’t affect their real life, but will surely influence their points of view on later things.
Aesthetics of Limitation
Before we discuss the systemic issues of Chinese independent film reflected in Ying Liang’s work, we will go into textual details about the unique “aesthetics of limitation” in his work. Rather than a flaw, their limited nature is the most open quality about Ying Liang’s work. In the relationship between limits and openness, limits have become a political form of aesthetics, in other words, a political aesthetic. Political aesthetics are different from political aestheticism. Aesthetical politics doesn’t directly address political issues through aesthetics. The marriage between aesthetics and politics is a joint sensibility (partage du sensible).
First I shall analyze a technique that I call “inhibited imagery.” In Ying Liang’s work, the narration benefits from his strong scripts, the audience can enjoy the movie comfortably along with the plot and the characters’ emotional development. However, he often deliberately omits the direct representation (représenter) of some violent scenes, skillfully insinuating violent events that have occurred through other methods. Inhibiting certain imagery sometimes is a result of limiting filming conditions, but this is sometimes Ying Liang’s own ethical choice. Whether it be limited conditions or ethical choices, suppressing reproduction of imagery construes aesthetics and politics.
In commercial films, we see many mechanical methods of image reproduction. If we see fighting from the front, there will accordingly be fighting in the back; imagery reproduces any event. Ying Liang rejects this mechanical reproduction of imagery flow, provides certain blanks and omissions, and therefore achieves something similar to the “Alienation Effect” in words of Brecht. Jacques Rancière said, the effectiveness of aesthetics (l’efficacité esthétique) specifically means formal production of the exhibiting artwork and all of its direct relationships to the special effects produced among specific spectators.1 Ying Liang’s method of dealing with aesthetics leaves room for imagination: in Taking Father Home, when Dao Ba, who is on the same bus driving into the city with Xu Yun, realized the pickpocket who had stolen a passenger’s wallet was getting off the bus, he got off to fight with him. The fight scene is not revealed through imagery, the camera continues to focus on the bus interiors, quietly documenting the reaction of the passengers who are just watching, then Dao Ba getting back on the bus with the wallet. Rancière again: “Political film nowadays is a film kept at a distance from other films. It displays its distance from modes of communication such as words, sounds, images, gestures and emotions, arriving at its contemplation of forms.”2 This perfectly construes the scene I just described. At least it proves that the design of the scene is political.
The patricidal scene in Taking Father Home might be a major scene in a commercial film, but was deliberately omitted by Ying Liang: after Xu Yun confirmed that his father was not coming home with him, he followed his father into a room nearby. Then we hear the thunder, cut to the next shot of the pouring rain. The camera focuses on the room exteriors from a different angle at a further distance. The audience wonders what’s going on inside the room. Thunder and rain drowned out every possible sound, and the camera shakes slightly, like the weeds in the wind. The new buildings in the background are covered in a layer of fog. The next shots are close-ups of Xu Yun’s hand holding a knife covered in blood after he killed his father, and the back of the father’s head lying on the floor. These shots validate our assumptions from the previous scene.
Thinking on the necessity of the second room shot when watching the film, after watching it again, I discovered that the second shot wasn’t filmed at the same time as the first one. At the end of the first shot we can only hear the thunder but can’t see any rain. Due to Ying Liang’s production scale, getting artificial rain when filming the rain scene would be near impossible. He could only re-shoot when it rained again to indicate that the violent act occurred at the same time with the rain. Accidentally, I discovered a better example of the aesthetics of limitation than the omission of violent scenes aforementioned. The aesthetics of limitation are applied to the use of natural, environmental, and human resources, in short: realistic elements that attempt to complete the film to the utmost possible extent. The final product always bears marks of things and people from that particular time. We can see the director’s effort in merging reality and narration. Because of this, Chinese independent film has reached a certain height. The shot of the second room seems essential here, because we need a blank shot between the first shot and the third one to extend the duration of the killing act and release some emotions at the same time. I’m not sure whether it’s a coincidence, or the intention of the director, but on some level we have internalized the imagery at that moment in time.
Next I would like to discuss the scene operation techniques common in Ying Liang’s films, which I call “zero degree imagery.” On the surface, Ying Liang’s scene-manipulation seems considerably primitive: long shots with fixed cameras, narrow vision created by depths of field, sequence shots comprised of one shot per scene after one another and echo the acts in the previous scene. This primitive mode has long been verified as a form of modernity. Andre Bazin’s argument about modernity in film was conducted through analyzing similar sequence shots in Orson Welles’ work, and long shots or sequenced shots have long been a trademark of contemporary international art films, especially in East Asian art films. In Ying Liang’s works, primitive techniques of scene-manipulation are intensively utilized. He has further explored the potential of ancient techniques in the digital age. Of course, limitation on production craftsmanship is also a factor in Ying Liang’s scene-operating choice. The camera can’t be frequently moved to film moving shots as in commercial productions. It seems relatively more economical to pick the best location from each scene to film a long shot.
The police station scene in Taking Father Home reminds us of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s in Flowers of Shanghai.3 The camera tilts down to focus on the corner of the room: a bench in the front with Xu Yun sitting on it, with his head down; in the back two office desks are joined together, a police officer is fixing an electrical fan on the side. Off-screen (hors champ), a female police officer whose face is never revealed is talking about how a forensic expert’s son doesn’t dare to eat his mother’s cooking anymore after seeing her handling corpses. One police officer, who’s fixing the fan, and another off-screen police officer are in dialogue with her. At the time, the division between the onscreen and off-screen created by the camera’s position doesn’t seem to interfere with our imagination of the police station space, the visible and invisible roles, and the sounds seems more obtrusive than the imagery in the audience. A police officer who is wounded in the neck brings in a drunken man from the bottom-left corner of the frame, the importance of the onscreen and off-screen spaces shifts. Although the female officer is still talking, the audience’s attention is slowly directed towards the onscreen space. The drunken man sits on the bench behind Xu Yun as ordered by the police officer, and then leaves from whence he has entered. Then, another police officer (possibly the one who has responded to the female officer off-screen) comes into the frame to scold the unruly drunkard. Around the bench, the officer and the drunkard begin a long game of tag, continuously running on and off screen. After that, the officer wounded in the neck comes into the frame, sits down next to Xu Yun (who has maintained his position since the beginning) and asks about his situation. This entire time, the other police officer, busy with the fan, stops from time to time to comment on what’s happening. It is important to stress that the camera hasn’t moved a bit in the entire sequence shot; Camera performance is close to zero.
Within such a confined space, the scene-manipulation is truly interesting. The so-called primitivity is only on the surface. The director’s design for the shot is much more complicated than the usual practice of shot after shot. The definitive frame of the screen is blatantly ignored, and limitation have become openness. Bazin analyzed different effects of frame and screen in Painting and Cinema: “The frame creates spatial inwardness, whereas the imagery presented on the screen seems to extend infinitely outwards. The frame is centripetal and the screen is centrifugal.” 4 The infinite extension of the screen unveils the film system, or in Rancière’s words, regime de l’art. The remaining task may not be to reveal, but to “place bodies, divide unique space and time, and define one and parts, in and out, near and far in every possible way.” 5
Deconstructing Reality
I have no doubts about regarding the younger generation independent directors such as Ying Liang as the successors to the two waves of film realism, the Sixth Generation and the and New Documentary Movement. Here I’d like to point out the nuances of this kind of realism. Judging from the overall tendency of independent directors like Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wang Chao and the New Documentary Movement, the realism they present is a form of “restorative realism,” which means they regard reality as an aim that has to be reached, following “realness” as a rule, using imagery and sound to restore China’s unique and bizarre society. Of course, this creative technique is the fundamental reason for the respect and influence thus accorded Chinese independent film, and has thus been carried on most extensively. Ying Liang, Weng Shouming, Yang Rui––successors of independent film––created another form of realism, a form of “individual realism.” But their individual creative techniques are completely different from one another.
I attempt to begin discussing the differences in using other media in their films over two generations of directors. The tradition of incorporating sounds or imagery from public media such as radio, television etc. into the film began with Jia Zhangke’s Pickpocket (Xiao Wu). It’s safe to say that this film delineated the basic form of Chinese independent film. I can clearly recall the public radio broadcast about “intensive crackdown” on the streets of Fenyang, the noises of Hong Kong gangster movies coming from the video room, and the sights and sounds of the music video “Xin Yu” in Pickpocket. Jia Zhangke’s own words validated this tendency of “restorative realism”: “I just said that I felt no difference from story films when I shot documentaries, and vice versa, there’s no difference from documentaries when I shot story films. To a certain extent, I wish to attain documentation in my films. Years later when people watch Pickpocket, the voices and noises in it are the sounds of China from that time, and you can testify––this is my consideration for my work.” 6
These sights and sounds are also incorporated into the narrative as dramatic elements. Like the television news frequently inserted in Unknown Pleasures, the sights and sounds of public media have become a compulsory part of existence invading people’s daily life. They are documented as parts of what constructs reality. In Weng Shouming’s Fujian Blue, the dual functions of the personal medium of DV are discovered. Based on my film experience, with the exception of certain films that deliberately remove traces of the filming process, this is the first Chinese independent film where characters are seen using DV. First, the boys in the film used it for the purpose of blackmail, filming one of their mothers in bed with her lover, they also used it later to film each other. Especially in the last black and white parts of the film, the boys’ footage merged with the director’s and it became impossible to differentiate the two. Certainly the former is just as invasive as a public media, yet it remains a private medium. The latter reveals a clear intention to diminish the distinction between the shooting subjects and subjects being shot. In front of or behind the camera are all young people carrying DVs, observing the world from their own viewpoints.
Yang Rui displays a more extreme revolt against public media in Crossing the Mountain, with the imagery of a young ethnic Wa man sawing a television and carefully planned accompanying noises, expressing a kind of “individual reality.” 7 Ying Liang’s method of inserting public media is similar to Jia Zhangke’s, but more alienated, he deconstructs the firm material reality reflected on the screen as opposed to merely documenting it, therefore creating a sense of contemporary crisis. Especially the flood at the end of Taking Father Home and the Diphenyl leakage incident in the second half of The Other half, both eradicate a tangible reality and narration.
Ying Liang has a deep sense both for deconstructing reality and for surrealism,8 which is evident in his bits and pieces collage-style narration. In an interview in the journal One-way Street Vol. 2, Ying Liang further explains to the interviewer that “danger,” rather than “risk,” exists in Chinese society.9 The unpredictability of things themselves is a “danger.” There’s a very important cue in The Other Half, albeit irrelevant to the main plot: Xiao Fen frequently passes by a small store by her home on her way to work. At first, it was the “Hua Xian Zi Tailor Shop,” and every time the mistress opened the store she would move the plastic mannequins outside. Later, the woman was killed, and “Hua Xian Zi Tailor Shop” turned into “Er Wa Mahjong House.” But in the end, “Er Wa Mahjong House” caught on fire.
Anyone who has lived in China acknowledges the speed of things changing and the abrupt violence present in daily life. The incredible thing is, after the blackout following what appears to be the end of the film, a black and white video comes on, it is a tape of people trying to put out the fire from “Er Wa Mahjong House” playing backwards. The accompanying soundtrack is Deng Gang telling Xiao Fen about how he opened a Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai. This surreal collage at first catches people off-guard, but thinking carefully, isn’t this logic frequently testified to by our contemporary living experience in China? Ying Liang deconstructs Chinese reality, then recomposes in a personal and abstract manner. In the second half of the film, in the empty, evacuated city caused by Diphenyl leakage, Ying Liang reveals the vacuum of reality through a series of Antonioni-esque empty shots. The nuance of the film takes a sharp turn and becomes surrealistic.
The story in The Other Half is about deconstructing femininity. All the females sit in front of a camera whose gaze represents the male lawyer, they state their relationship issues and hoping to receive legal advices. In the end, even the female protagonist, Xiao Fen, a secretary at the law firm, has taken a seat in the female position. All the male characters in The Other Half are unreliable: Xiao Fen’s sleazy boyfriend Deng Gang, her father who has left the family, even her date, a man absorbed in his own career. Taking Father Home is a deconstruction of masculinity: the three “fathers” in the film affect Xu Yun’s growing up in different ways, and in the end they are all broken down. Xu Yun’s final decision of patricide as a coming of age ceremony is testimony of his adoption of Dao Ba’s philosophy, “only the strong survive.”
In his first two films, Ying Liang has deconstructed humanity, and then he deconstructs animal nature. Cats have a simple co-existant relationship with humans, but perhaps because of Deng Xiaoping’s famous quote (“It doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat,” a reference to capitalism, socialism and generating market economy.) everybody aims to be “a good cat” in society, and this has reduced humanity to its most animalistic nature. The “law of the jungle” seems to permeating our society, and Good Cats is deconstructing precisely this animal nature. Performances and music by the rock band A Lamb’s Funeral float in out throughout the film, contributing to its bloodthirsty and desperate atmosphere.
At this point, I suddenly think of Hong Yu’s motto in Edward Yang’s film Mahjong: “Now, in this world, no one knows what they want, everybody is waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.” This is also a muted relevance to Deng Xiaoping’s “good cat” argument: do all people facing difficulties in the process of modernization have to depend on such staunch resolutions for their sense of direction?
1Jacques rancière, 1. Le Spectateur émancipé, la Fabrique, 2008, p.64.
2same as above. p.91.2.
3see author's master dissertation 3. Du plan-séquence au plan-scène : une réflexion at Université Paris diderot-Paris 7, chapters on Flowers of Shanghai.
4andré Bazin: 4. What Is Cinema? p.177.
5rancière, 5. Le Spectateur émancipé, p.61.
6Jia Zhangke:《贾想1996-2008：贾樟柯电影手记》，北京，北京大学出版 社，2009年3月，p.245.
7http://fanhall.com/group/thread/17199.html?part=27.
8Yi mou：《应亮：孤独的勇气》，银川，宁夏人民出版社，apr. 2010，p.1158.
9same as above, p.116.9.
地址：http://www.artinchina.es/EnIndependentCinemaTextDetails.aspx?id=26&tid=95&page=
Workshop Politics
In China, the “artist’s studio” and the imagined space it conjures has existed for a very long time; however, the idea of a “director’s studio” is relatively new. Film, due to the tremendous investment and enormous personnel requirements, has never been considered a medium of independent expression. Along with Chinese society’s gradual market-orientation and interest in entertainment, film has evolved from being a simple tool of political propaganda, as in the early days, to becoming a tool for both shallow commercial entertainment and despotic, mainstream political language. Only in the early 90s, did the “Sixth Generation Directors,” most notably Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, begin an independent film movement; around the same time Wu Wenguang, Duan Jinchuan, and Jiang Yue, among others initiated the “New Documentary Movement.” The emergence of these two new independent film waves changed the underlying structure in Chinese film. Coming from a non-official, elitist (jingying zhuyi) standpoint, these young directors initiated a secret channel for author-produced films in contemporary China, highlighting their independent modes of production, new camera techniques, unique individual viewpoints and unusual means of distribution. Afterwards, based on the reputation earned from previous works, these directors-run studios began operation. Here, I will discuss the background and operational methods in Ying Liang’s studio over different eras.
Ying Liang’s era is one of digitalization. Whether in terms of techniques or funding, the popularization of the DV has enabled the individual or a very small team to complete a film independently. The “New Documentary Movement” in the mid 90s exhibited the medium’s profound ability to penetrating social grounds and to cutting moments out of reality. With the appearance of independent feature films shot on DV, the brilliant creative power of these tiny machines was further engaged. DV undoubtedly brings film closer to the French film critic Alexandre Astruc’s idea of the camera-pen. The pen is not just a tool for documentation, more importantly, it gives form to ideologies. Compared to investments over millions of Yuan for traditional feature films, Ying Liang only needs a few tens of thousands Yuan to make a film.
There are two core members in his studio, Ying Liang himself and his partner Peng Shan. The two of them complete almost all the main tasks of producing, screenwriting, from filming to post-production by themselves. As we can see from a few interviews with Ying Liang published online, these limitations have no effects on his thoughts during his creative process, yet help him to achieve creative freedom. Not in consideration of practical issues that traditional films are highly concerned with, such as investment retrieval and screening permissions, he can invest himself completely in his work completely, with few limiting dimensions. The concept of the studio is nothing material, like their choice of medium (DV), their studio is actually just a mental space. Ying Liang is more of an artist than a film director. Even though contemporary artists are more and more dependent on factory processing or the “team” production and use of helping hands, the title “artist” still conjures up a stronger sense of individuality than that of “film director.” And because of this “team” quality in contemporary art, Ying Liang’s film productions are closer to contemporary art practices. This mode of film production embodies more “aura” (to borrow Walter Benjamin’s term) than a hand-made singular work of art, which is why I used the word “workshop” instead of “studio” in the subtitle of this article. Here, “workshop” is not used in a derogatory sense, the emphasis is a handmade quality, also a nod to Ying Liang’s mode of production.
Ying Liang’s attitude towards his involvement with Chinese reality and Chinese film is low-key, mild and compliant, but his work has sparked deafening echoes. In China, he is not the first person to produce films in the form of a “workshop,” but in terms of ideology, creativity and systemization in his work, Ying Liang is absolutely remarkable. “Workshop politics” alludes to winning an impossible war with an incredibly small number and limited force, breaking into the backyard of a film industry already besieged by capital barriers and political shields. “Workshop politics” is not battlefield combat, but bushwhacking, it demonstrates an alternative for film in a unique way.
Local Aesthetics
Locality is an important phenomenon in contemporary Chinese independent film. Since Jia Zhangke’s “Hometown Trilogy,” shot in Shanxi’s Fenyang and Datong, young directors often choose their hometown as the locale of the story and filming for their first couple of films. In recent independent film productions, Yang Jin’s The Black and White Milk Cow and Er Dong shot in Shanxi, and Weng Shouming’s Fujian Blue filmed in Fujian are especially noteworthy. In addition, Crossing the Mountain was shot among the Wa community in Yunnan by a northeastern-born female director, Yang Rui. Though this film was not shot in her hometown persay, the director’s intention of dislocating the center with the margins is quite obvious. She challenges the “Chinese sensibility” ostensibly constructed by mainstream films with her local aesthetics.
Ying Liang’s three feature length films thus far, Taking Father Home, The Other Half and Good Cats are all shot in Zigong, Sichuan. Even though Ying Liang is from Shanghai, Zigong is the hometown of Peng Shan, his partner; and although the director himself has had almost ten years of living experience in Zigong, the specific reason for his choice to live and work in Zigong rather than going back to Shanghai is unclear. Ying Liang’s intention to displace Shanghai as “center” with the marginal city Zigong is obvious. In contemporary Chinese independent films, local dialects replace standardized Mandarin, locality replaces generality, marginalized people replace mainstream society, and average people replace professional actors. Through this we see the strong intention of dispelling the main body of China, which is controlled by China’s official language system. The national film industry of China is a shield against Hollywood’s global invasion, but similarly, our national film regulations suppress local films and folk imagery with its function of sustaining the nation’s orthodoxies. In our national film industry, local and folk imagery is alien, incapable of being controlled and almost ghostly. The nationwide independent film movement reclaims a rich and specific reality within China through its documentation and contemplation of a localized reality, it unveils a common destiny of living in contemporary China under the pretext of maintaining individual local characteristics.
The “local aesthetics” of independent film are reflected by shooting on actual locations and by using average people as actors. We can see different landscapes such as rural villages, fields, the urban-rural fringe zones, the old downtown area, new downtown area and more from Ying Liang’s three feature lengths. Zigong is a miniature model of contemporary China; it embodies a unique landscape where many fractured layers of contemporary Chinese history are piled up. It’s also a “scene” from contemporary China, since all evolution of urban landscapes and shifts in human relationships that happen in larger cities also take place in a marginalized cities like this one in the southwest.
The decision to shoot on locations for such “scenes” is not merely due to shortage of funds, it’s also driven by a sense of responsibility to document reality. This makes independent story films closely akin to new documentaries. The only difference is that of the “dispositif ”; but in essence, they are the same. On using average people as actors, there are some young directors such as Ying Liang, Yang Jin and Yang Rui have contributed revolutionary experiments. Jean-Luc Godard invited a group of friends from Cahiers du Cinéma when shooting Breathless. These actors could be called non-professional actors, but because they were all professional film critics, they were already very familiar with film acting techniques. Not surprisingly, the main stars in Breathless were both international film stars at that time, Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. In this respect, Chinese independent film has gone further than the French New Wave. “Average people” as actors is not what this term generally entails, such as passers-by or extras that appear in the background, average people as actors has become a reality in Chinese independent film. A lot of the common people in Ying Liang’s films are Peng Shan’s relatives, friends and neighbors. Their jobs in real life are far from acting, and acting in Ying Liang’s films won’t bring them any real profit, but the fact that people who were once confined to the audience are participating in film productions is very meaningful. In Le Spectateur Emancipé, Jacques Rancière rebutted the common notion that the audience is passive, putting forth the notion that the audience can be active through their own decision making, comparisons and illustrations. In Ying Liang’s film practice, these audience has become participants and creators in the films. This shift of roles is political. Participating in film productions doesn’t affect their real life, but will surely influence their points of view on later things.
Aesthetics of Limitation
Before we discuss the systemic issues of Chinese independent film reflected in Ying Liang’s work, we will go into textual details about the unique “aesthetics of limitation” in his work. Rather than a flaw, their limited nature is the most open quality about Ying Liang’s work. In the relationship between limits and openness, limits have become a political form of aesthetics, in other words, a political aesthetic. Political aesthetics are different from political aestheticism. Aesthetical politics doesn’t directly address political issues through aesthetics. The marriage between aesthetics and politics is a joint sensibility (partage du sensible).
First I shall analyze a technique that I call “inhibited imagery.” In Ying Liang’s work, the narration benefits from his strong scripts, the audience can enjoy the movie comfortably along with the plot and the characters’ emotional development. However, he often deliberately omits the direct representation (représenter) of some violent scenes, skillfully insinuating violent events that have occurred through other methods. Inhibiting certain imagery sometimes is a result of limiting filming conditions, but this is sometimes Ying Liang’s own ethical choice. Whether it be limited conditions or ethical choices, suppressing reproduction of imagery construes aesthetics and politics.
In commercial films, we see many mechanical methods of image reproduction. If we see fighting from the front, there will accordingly be fighting in the back; imagery reproduces any event. Ying Liang rejects this mechanical reproduction of imagery flow, provides certain blanks and omissions, and therefore achieves something similar to the “Alienation Effect” in words of Brecht. Jacques Rancière said, the effectiveness of aesthetics (l’efficacité esthétique) specifically means formal production of the exhibiting artwork and all of its direct relationships to the special effects produced among specific spectators.1 Ying Liang’s method of dealing with aesthetics leaves room for imagination: in Taking Father Home, when Dao Ba, who is on the same bus driving into the city with Xu Yun, realized the pickpocket who had stolen a passenger’s wallet was getting off the bus, he got off to fight with him. The fight scene is not revealed through imagery, the camera continues to focus on the bus interiors, quietly documenting the reaction of the passengers who are just watching, then Dao Ba getting back on the bus with the wallet. Rancière again: “Political film nowadays is a film kept at a distance from other films. It displays its distance from modes of communication such as words, sounds, images, gestures and emotions, arriving at its contemplation of forms.”2 This perfectly construes the scene I just described. At least it proves that the design of the scene is political.
The patricidal scene in Taking Father Home might be a major scene in a commercial film, but was deliberately omitted by Ying Liang: after Xu Yun confirmed that his father was not coming home with him, he followed his father into a room nearby. Then we hear the thunder, cut to the next shot of the pouring rain. The camera focuses on the room exteriors from a different angle at a further distance. The audience wonders what’s going on inside the room. Thunder and rain drowned out every possible sound, and the camera shakes slightly, like the weeds in the wind. The new buildings in the background are covered in a layer of fog. The next shots are close-ups of Xu Yun’s hand holding a knife covered in blood after he killed his father, and the back of the father’s head lying on the floor. These shots validate our assumptions from the previous scene.
Thinking on the necessity of the second room shot when watching the film, after watching it again, I discovered that the second shot wasn’t filmed at the same time as the first one. At the end of the first shot we can only hear the thunder but can’t see any rain. Due to Ying Liang’s production scale, getting artificial rain when filming the rain scene would be near impossible. He could only re-shoot when it rained again to indicate that the violent act occurred at the same time with the rain. Accidentally, I discovered a better example of the aesthetics of limitation than the omission of violent scenes aforementioned. The aesthetics of limitation are applied to the use of natural, environmental, and human resources, in short: realistic elements that attempt to complete the film to the utmost possible extent. The final product always bears marks of things and people from that particular time. We can see the director’s effort in merging reality and narration. Because of this, Chinese independent film has reached a certain height. The shot of the second room seems essential here, because we need a blank shot between the first shot and the third one to extend the duration of the killing act and release some emotions at the same time. I’m not sure whether it’s a coincidence, or the intention of the director, but on some level we have internalized the imagery at that moment in time.
Next I would like to discuss the scene operation techniques common in Ying Liang’s films, which I call “zero degree imagery.” On the surface, Ying Liang’s scene-manipulation seems considerably primitive: long shots with fixed cameras, narrow vision created by depths of field, sequence shots comprised of one shot per scene after one another and echo the acts in the previous scene. This primitive mode has long been verified as a form of modernity. Andre Bazin’s argument about modernity in film was conducted through analyzing similar sequence shots in Orson Welles’ work, and long shots or sequenced shots have long been a trademark of contemporary international art films, especially in East Asian art films. In Ying Liang’s works, primitive techniques of scene-manipulation are intensively utilized. He has further explored the potential of ancient techniques in the digital age. Of course, limitation on production craftsmanship is also a factor in Ying Liang’s scene-operating choice. The camera can’t be frequently moved to film moving shots as in commercial productions. It seems relatively more economical to pick the best location from each scene to film a long shot.
The police station scene in Taking Father Home reminds us of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s in Flowers of Shanghai.3 The camera tilts down to focus on the corner of the room: a bench in the front with Xu Yun sitting on it, with his head down; in the back two office desks are joined together, a police officer is fixing an electrical fan on the side. Off-screen (hors champ), a female police officer whose face is never revealed is talking about how a forensic expert’s son doesn’t dare to eat his mother’s cooking anymore after seeing her handling corpses. One police officer, who’s fixing the fan, and another off-screen police officer are in dialogue with her. At the time, the division between the onscreen and off-screen created by the camera’s position doesn’t seem to interfere with our imagination of the police station space, the visible and invisible roles, and the sounds seems more obtrusive than the imagery in the audience. A police officer who is wounded in the neck brings in a drunken man from the bottom-left corner of the frame, the importance of the onscreen and off-screen spaces shifts. Although the female officer is still talking, the audience’s attention is slowly directed towards the onscreen space. The drunken man sits on the bench behind Xu Yun as ordered by the police officer, and then leaves from whence he has entered. Then, another police officer (possibly the one who has responded to the female officer off-screen) comes into the frame to scold the unruly drunkard. Around the bench, the officer and the drunkard begin a long game of tag, continuously running on and off screen. After that, the officer wounded in the neck comes into the frame, sits down next to Xu Yun (who has maintained his position since the beginning) and asks about his situation. This entire time, the other police officer, busy with the fan, stops from time to time to comment on what’s happening. It is important to stress that the camera hasn’t moved a bit in the entire sequence shot; Camera performance is close to zero.
Within such a confined space, the scene-manipulation is truly interesting. The so-called primitivity is only on the surface. The director’s design for the shot is much more complicated than the usual practice of shot after shot. The definitive frame of the screen is blatantly ignored, and limitation have become openness. Bazin analyzed different effects of frame and screen in Painting and Cinema: “The frame creates spatial inwardness, whereas the imagery presented on the screen seems to extend infinitely outwards. The frame is centripetal and the screen is centrifugal.” 4 The infinite extension of the screen unveils the film system, or in Rancière’s words, regime de l’art. The remaining task may not be to reveal, but to “place bodies, divide unique space and time, and define one and parts, in and out, near and far in every possible way.” 5
Deconstructing Reality
I have no doubts about regarding the younger generation independent directors such as Ying Liang as the successors to the two waves of film realism, the Sixth Generation and the and New Documentary Movement. Here I’d like to point out the nuances of this kind of realism. Judging from the overall tendency of independent directors like Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wang Chao and the New Documentary Movement, the realism they present is a form of “restorative realism,” which means they regard reality as an aim that has to be reached, following “realness” as a rule, using imagery and sound to restore China’s unique and bizarre society. Of course, this creative technique is the fundamental reason for the respect and influence thus accorded Chinese independent film, and has thus been carried on most extensively. Ying Liang, Weng Shouming, Yang Rui––successors of independent film––created another form of realism, a form of “individual realism.” But their individual creative techniques are completely different from one another.
I attempt to begin discussing the differences in using other media in their films over two generations of directors. The tradition of incorporating sounds or imagery from public media such as radio, television etc. into the film began with Jia Zhangke’s Pickpocket (Xiao Wu). It’s safe to say that this film delineated the basic form of Chinese independent film. I can clearly recall the public radio broadcast about “intensive crackdown” on the streets of Fenyang, the noises of Hong Kong gangster movies coming from the video room, and the sights and sounds of the music video “Xin Yu” in Pickpocket. Jia Zhangke’s own words validated this tendency of “restorative realism”: “I just said that I felt no difference from story films when I shot documentaries, and vice versa, there’s no difference from documentaries when I shot story films. To a certain extent, I wish to attain documentation in my films. Years later when people watch Pickpocket, the voices and noises in it are the sounds of China from that time, and you can testify––this is my consideration for my work.” 6
These sights and sounds are also incorporated into the narrative as dramatic elements. Like the television news frequently inserted in Unknown Pleasures, the sights and sounds of public media have become a compulsory part of existence invading people’s daily life. They are documented as parts of what constructs reality. In Weng Shouming’s Fujian Blue, the dual functions of the personal medium of DV are discovered. Based on my film experience, with the exception of certain films that deliberately remove traces of the filming process, this is the first Chinese independent film where characters are seen using DV. First, the boys in the film used it for the purpose of blackmail, filming one of their mothers in bed with her lover, they also used it later to film each other. Especially in the last black and white parts of the film, the boys’ footage merged with the director’s and it became impossible to differentiate the two. Certainly the former is just as invasive as a public media, yet it remains a private medium. The latter reveals a clear intention to diminish the distinction between the shooting subjects and subjects being shot. In front of or behind the camera are all young people carrying DVs, observing the world from their own viewpoints.
Yang Rui displays a more extreme revolt against public media in Crossing the Mountain, with the imagery of a young ethnic Wa man sawing a television and carefully planned accompanying noises, expressing a kind of “individual reality.” 7 Ying Liang’s method of inserting public media is similar to Jia Zhangke’s, but more alienated, he deconstructs the firm material reality reflected on the screen as opposed to merely documenting it, therefore creating a sense of contemporary crisis. Especially the flood at the end of Taking Father Home and the Diphenyl leakage incident in the second half of The Other half, both eradicate a tangible reality and narration.
Ying Liang has a deep sense both for deconstructing reality and for surrealism,8 which is evident in his bits and pieces collage-style narration. In an interview in the journal One-way Street Vol. 2, Ying Liang further explains to the interviewer that “danger,” rather than “risk,” exists in Chinese society.9 The unpredictability of things themselves is a “danger.” There’s a very important cue in The Other Half, albeit irrelevant to the main plot: Xiao Fen frequently passes by a small store by her home on her way to work. At first, it was the “Hua Xian Zi Tailor Shop,” and every time the mistress opened the store she would move the plastic mannequins outside. Later, the woman was killed, and “Hua Xian Zi Tailor Shop” turned into “Er Wa Mahjong House.” But in the end, “Er Wa Mahjong House” caught on fire.
Anyone who has lived in China acknowledges the speed of things changing and the abrupt violence present in daily life. The incredible thing is, after the blackout following what appears to be the end of the film, a black and white video comes on, it is a tape of people trying to put out the fire from “Er Wa Mahjong House” playing backwards. The accompanying soundtrack is Deng Gang telling Xiao Fen about how he opened a Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai. This surreal collage at first catches people off-guard, but thinking carefully, isn’t this logic frequently testified to by our contemporary living experience in China? Ying Liang deconstructs Chinese reality, then recomposes in a personal and abstract manner. In the second half of the film, in the empty, evacuated city caused by Diphenyl leakage, Ying Liang reveals the vacuum of reality through a series of Antonioni-esque empty shots. The nuance of the film takes a sharp turn and becomes surrealistic.
The story in The Other Half is about deconstructing femininity. All the females sit in front of a camera whose gaze represents the male lawyer, they state their relationship issues and hoping to receive legal advices. In the end, even the female protagonist, Xiao Fen, a secretary at the law firm, has taken a seat in the female position. All the male characters in The Other Half are unreliable: Xiao Fen’s sleazy boyfriend Deng Gang, her father who has left the family, even her date, a man absorbed in his own career. Taking Father Home is a deconstruction of masculinity: the three “fathers” in the film affect Xu Yun’s growing up in different ways, and in the end they are all broken down. Xu Yun’s final decision of patricide as a coming of age ceremony is testimony of his adoption of Dao Ba’s philosophy, “only the strong survive.”
In his first two films, Ying Liang has deconstructed humanity, and then he deconstructs animal nature. Cats have a simple co-existant relationship with humans, but perhaps because of Deng Xiaoping’s famous quote (“It doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat,” a reference to capitalism, socialism and generating market economy.) everybody aims to be “a good cat” in society, and this has reduced humanity to its most animalistic nature. The “law of the jungle” seems to permeating our society, and Good Cats is deconstructing precisely this animal nature. Performances and music by the rock band A Lamb’s Funeral float in out throughout the film, contributing to its bloodthirsty and desperate atmosphere.
At this point, I suddenly think of Hong Yu’s motto in Edward Yang’s film Mahjong: “Now, in this world, no one knows what they want, everybody is waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.” This is also a muted relevance to Deng Xiaoping’s “good cat” argument: do all people facing difficulties in the process of modernization have to depend on such staunch resolutions for their sense of direction?
1Jacques rancière, 1. Le Spectateur émancipé, la Fabrique, 2008, p.64.
2same as above. p.91.2.
3see author's master dissertation 3. Du plan-séquence au plan-scène : une réflexion at Université Paris diderot-Paris 7, chapters on Flowers of Shanghai.
4andré Bazin: 4. What Is Cinema? p.177.
5rancière, 5. Le Spectateur émancipé, p.61.
6Jia Zhangke:《贾想1996-2008：贾樟柯电影手记》，北京，北京大学出版 社，2009年3月，p.245.
7http://fanhall.com/group/thread/17199.html?part=27.
8Yi mou：《应亮：孤独的勇气》，银川，宁夏人民出版社，apr. 2010，p.1158.
9same as above, p.116.9.
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