Filmmaker says Beijing’s censorship has been stifling creativity
BEIJING: Beijing’s tight censorship over the making of documentaries have led to a mass boycott among filmmakers.
That has emerged from an interview with dissident filmmakers Wang Fen and Ai Weiwei, when questions were raised as to why they did not choose to make documentaries on events from 1989-2000, at the height of mass pro- democracy protests in China.
Speaking on this anomaly, Wang said: “There were not many documentaries made during this period. In addition, Chinese media regulators recently tightened control over Chinese filmmakers showing their films overseas, so some filmmakers were discouraged and decided not to participate. As a result, we didn’t get to include any films made between 1989-2000.”
Moreover, the development of documentary filmmaking in China was still very limited in the 1990s. Back then, very few had access to filmmaking equipment .
This changed in the year 2000, when home video cameras suddenly became available and affordable. That led to an explosion in the number of documentaries produced by young filmmakers.
Invariably, many chose highlight injustices in China.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is currently presenting the documentary series “Turn it on: China on Film, 2000-2017,” along with “Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World,” an exhibition curated by Phil Tinari, Alexandra Munroe, and Hou Hanru, to showcase work by Chinese artists and groups “whose critical provocations aim to forge reality free from ideology, to establish the individual apart from the collective, and to define contemporary Chinese experience in universal terms.”
Wang Fen and Ai Weiwei are curators of the documentary series.
On the idea of curating a documentary series about China to at the Guggenheim, Wang said: “The curatorial process was very smooth. The Guggenheim Museum was organising the art exhibition ‘Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World,’ which Ai Weiwei’s works are a part of. One of the curators of the exhibition, Alexandra Munroe, had a meeting with Weiwei to discuss how they could make the art exhibition a more comprehensive study about China. Weiwei told Ms Munroe that if they wanted to help people further understand China and the history and current state of Chinese contemporary art, showing documentaries about these themes could be a great way. Ms Munroe loved this idea. So they decided to curate a documentary series to be presented concurrently with the art exhibition.”
She added that even before Weiwei had invited for the project, she had mentioned the concept to Huang Wenhai, a fellow documentary filmmaker.
On what they hope to achieve, Wang said: “We present the documentaries as a series for the audience to gain a more comprehensive understanding of China. The documentary is an independent art form and it comes from reality.
When a documentary is made, its length reflects the filmmaker’s understanding of the subject and how he/she wants to present the story.
We didn’t want to just add some clips into the art exhibition, as it’s not how the filmmakers intended their works to be presented when they made them.”