Chinese independent documentary films arose as practices of “politics of difference” from the ear... more Chinese independent documentary films arose as practices of “politics of difference” from the early 1990s represented by Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990), which depicts artist immigrants assembled from parts of China at Beijing. Ten years later, China entered WTO in 2001 and then onwards, globalization is kept being displayed as a key subject matter in Chinese documentaries, and the production, circulation and reception of Chinese independent documentary films grow to be more commercialized and industrialized in terms of both content selection and formal patterning. This paper proposes to sample Last Train Home (2010), Up the Yangtze (2008), and Umbrella (2009) as representative portrayals about new migrants in a globalization era to show the changes happened in formal terms. Meanwhile, those films are representative in the way from financing, editing to exhibiting of showing the butterfly effect of globally consumption on cultural commodities. I will argue certain contextual specificities are selectively exposed and eliminated in globalized documentary filmmaking practices.
Chinese independent documentary films arose as practices of “politics of difference” from the ear... more Chinese independent documentary films arose as practices of “politics of difference” from the early 1990s represented by Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990), which depicts artist immigrants assembled from parts of China at Beijing. Ten years later, China entered WTO in 2001 and then onwards, globalization is kept being displayed as a key subject matter in Chinese documentaries, and the production, circulation and reception of Chinese independent documentary films grow to be more commercialized and industrialized in terms of both content selection and formal patterning. This paper proposes to sample Last Train Home (2010), Up the Yangtze (2008), and Umbrella (2009) as representative portrayals about new migrants in a globalization era to show the changes happened in formal terms. Meanwhile, those films are representative in the way from financing, editing to exhibiting of showing the butterfly effect of globally consumption on cultural commodities. I will argue certain contextual specificities are selectively exposed and eliminated in globalized documentary filmmaking practices.
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