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New Ethnographic Film in the New China
MARIS BOYD GILLETTE
Over the past two decades, a new ethnographic cinema of China has taken shape, one element of an explosion of
documentaries produced about the People’s Republic. In this volume, five China ethnographers discuss making
ethnographic films in China, thus addressing in part the need, long noted in anthropology, for filmmakers to write
about production and postproduction of ethnographic films. In this introduction, I sketch a history of ethnographic
films about China and reflect on these five new ethnographic films in light of past practices, the theoretical literature
on ethnographic cinema, and the ethnography of China. [anthropology, China, ethnographic cinema, ethnography,
filmmaking, history, research methods]
Introduction
I
n the last couple of decades, viewers have witnessed an explosion of documentaries about the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chinese filmmakers are producing the bulk of this work, with filmmaker Wu Wenguang widely recognized as a founding
figure of the new Chinese documentary movement
(Berry et al. 2010; Zhang 2004b; see also Sniadecki,
Zito this volume). Many of these films explore the
effects of marketization and globalization in China,
what Angela Zito has called “the underbelly of the
Chinese economic miracle” (Zito this volume).1 Noncitizen filmmakers are also contributing to this corpus,
exploring social issues such as AIDS (Yang 2006), the
Three Gorges Dams (Chang 2007), and labor migration
(Peled 2005).
A new ethnographic cinema of China has taken
shape during this same period. The mainstream media
for the anthropology of China remains the written word,
yet inside and outside the PRC, ethnographers have
turned to film to convey “a vivid sense of what it feels
like to be someone else,” as the well-known American
film scholar Bill Nichols puts it (Nichols 2010:8). In
the PRC, Yunnan University is widely recognized for
producing ethnographer–filmmakers, a development
begun through a 1994 collaboration with Germany’s
Goettingen Institute for Scientific Film (Chen and Lei
2009:103–104; Zhang 2004b:n. 8; see also Blumenfield
2010; Chio this volume). Outside China, a new generation of ethnographers is committed to incorporating
Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 1–10, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458.
film into their research from its inception, while some
more senior scholars are experimenting with the
medium after years, even decades, of field research and
print publication.
While the number of ethnographic films is
increasing, there are still few texts written about the
process of making ethnographic films, despite years of
complaints from anthropologists who study and teach
ethnographic films. For example, Peter Loizos concludes his 1993 book Innovation in Ethnographic Film
with a call for ethnographic filmmakers to produce
more study guides and information about filmmaking
processes, to facilitate the use of ethnographic film in
academic settings (Loizos 1993:191). Karl Heider,
whose 1976 book Ethnographic Film was recently
published in a second edition, contends that ethnographic films, while “self-explanatory for casual use,”
require an accompanying ethnographic text for deeper
use (Heider 2006:7). He observes that we do not know
who filmmakers intend as their audience, or why they
make the shooting and editing decisions they do, and
argues that ethnographic filmmakers have an obligation to write about how they “distort” reality and what
their aims are (Heider 2006:100, 107). More recently,
Carol Hermer has encouraged ethnographic filmmakers
to write about their specific purposes and methods of
production. She notes that while there is “much excellent theoretical writing on all aspects of ethnographic
film and its communication,” by and large the audience of any particular ethnographic film must “make
an educated guess as to what has taken place during
© 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/var.12026.
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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 1 Spring 2014
production and what the filmmaker’s viewpoint is”
(Hermer 2009:122).
In this special issue of Visual Anthropology Review,
ethnographers of China who decided to produce one or
more ethnographic films about the contemporary People’s Republic, rather than depend solely on the power
of the word, discuss their filmmaking processes. While
far from comprehensive, the volume helps address the
need for ethnographer–filmmakers to discuss their
intentions, production and postproduction decisions,
conceptual frameworks, and film models. Just as important to the readers of Visual Anthropology Review, the
authors also illuminate key aspects of making ethnographic films in China. Each ethnographer–filmmaker
encountered people, experiences, and sociocultural processes in contemporary China that warranted public
attention and cried out for the filmic medium, but which
he or she thought existing scholarship and media represented inadequately. The volume sheds light on contemporary ethnographic cinema as a conceptual
enterprise, research method, set of social relationships,
genre of communication, and contribution to the historical archive. The articles, and the films they are
about, present fresh approaches to the ethnographic
cinema of China, showing recent developments in a
history that began 25 years before the People’s Republic
was founded.
A Notional History of Ethnographic Film
in China
Documentary film arrived in (late imperial) China less
than eight months after the Lumiere brothers showed
their first shorts in Paris (Zhang 2004a:14, 114–115). In
August 1896, short documentary films were shown in
Shanghai, and a Japanese merchant showed ten documentary shorts with Edison’s kinetoscope in a Taiwan
coastal town (officially part of Japan at the time, as the
Qing government ceded Taiwan to the Japanese after
the first Sino-Japanese war in 1894). The first Chinesemade documentary, about Peking Opera, was produced
in 1905 (Chen and Lei 2009:72–73). Arguably, the
American sociologist and long-term China resident
Sidney Gamble made the first ethnographic film about
China 20 years later. A 1989 remake of his A Pilgrimage
to Miaofeng Shan, originally shot between 1924 and
1927, is readily available online through the Duke
University Library and YouTube (http://library
.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gamble/documentary/).2 In
1933, Chinese ethnologists Ling Chunsheng, Rui Yifu,
and Yang Shiheng made a series of films about the
Miao, Yao, and other peoples in southwest Hunan (Chen
and Lei 2009:76). Four years later, Lingnan University
professor Yang Chengzhi collaborated with filmmaker
Kuang Guangliu to make films about Hainan islanders
as part of a large-scale ethnography (Chen and Lei
2009:77). These were the last ethnographic films made
until after the founding of the People’s Republic.
After 1949, the Chinese Communist Party claimed
for itself the task of creating a New China (the phrase
itself is usually attributed to Mao Zedong), and quickly
turned to cinema as an important tool. The government
nationalized the film industry in 1952 and established
the Central Newsreels and Documentary Studio early in
1953 (Chu 2007:53; Zhang 2004a:192, 200). Political
ideology was the framework for all filmmaking: documentary, feature, and ethnographic. In the period before
1961, PRC films were to emphasize the contrast between
the bad Old Society and the virtues of the New China (Chu
2007:158–159). This message came through loud and
clear to audiences, as John Weakland’s 1966 article in
American Anthropologist on “Themes in Chinese Communist Films” demonstrates (Weakland 1966:479–480).
As Weakland notes, the bad old China was characterized
by feudalistic families, corrupt officials, and oppressed
women, whereas the good New China liberated women
and youth and ushered in an era of social cooperation.
However, sexual relations were something that one
should be cautious about in the New China (Weakland
1966:481).
In 1955, Mao Zedong ordered production of what
we usually consider the first ethnographic films produced in the People’s Republic (Chu 2007:65; Zhang
2004b:n. 8). These were films about ethnic minorities at
the time of Liberation, intended as a kind of salvage
Maris Boyd Gillette is an anthropologist and filmmaker currently living in Uppsala, Sweden. She has written several articles about
the porcelain industry in Jingdezhen, China. Broken Pots Broken Dreams, about Jingdezhen’s ceramic workers, is her first solo
documentary. Gillette has worked on a number of digital video community history projects in Philadelphia, including Precious
Places and Muslim Voices of Philadelphia. She is writing a book about Jingdezhen’s porcelain production from 1004, when its
wares first caught the attention of the imperial court, through centuries of government sponsorship, to the present moment of
private enterprise. She has also written extensively about Hui Muslims in Xi’an. Gillette is a professor of anthropology at Haverford
College and the European Institutes for Advanced Studies Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.
New Ethnographic Film in the New China
ethnography of past societies (Du and Yang
1989:21–26). Fei Xiaotong, well known in Chinese
circles as a student of Bronislaw Malinowski and a
pioneer of ethnography in China, administered the
project. Researchers and filmmakers scripted these
ethnic classification or Minzu Shibie films (dating from
1957 to 1966) and asked locals to participate—or
act—in them. Even so, the anthropologists who worked
on the films regard them as realist documentation, with
“no fabrications” or “subjective evaluations.” Their goal
was to capture a vanishing world before it completely
disappeared, but also to present a world that conformed
to Marxist notions of social evolution. The films were
not intended for public viewing and little information is
available about who actually saw them at the time of
their completion (Chu 2007:155; Du and Yang 1989).
We do know, however, that in 1961, after films about
the Li, Wa, Ewenki, Kucong, Dulong, Yi, and Tibetans
were made, the Ministry of Culture hosted a meeting
where filmmakers and anthropologists discussed the
relationship between political ideology and historical
actuality, the role of reenactments, and the emphases of
the films (Chu 2007:156).
From 1949 into the early 1980s, almost all ethnographers who were not PRC citizens were prohibited from
doing field research in mainland China. Yet many were
fascinated with the systems of social relationships,
ritual practices, and economic organization characteristic of what was often called “traditional” China.
During these years, ethnography based in Hong Kong
(urban areas and the rural New Territories) and Taiwan
dominated the anthropology of China. A few ethnographers, most notably Gary Seaman, got behind the
camera to capture the lifeways of small-scale communities and the colorful, even exotic popular religious
practices found in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Some ethnographers collaborated with filmmakers on ethnographic films, including founders in the field of China
anthropology such as Margery Topley, Barbara Ward,
Bernard Gallin, C. Fred Blake, Hugh Baker, and Norma
Diamond.
The 1960s and 1970s saw production of 25 or more
ethnographic films about China, based in Hong Kong
and Taiwan. These films conveyed the sensory dimensions of local experience more than contemporary
anthropological books and articles, which mostly
focused on social structure. Speaking generally, films
such as Hungry Ghosts (Kehl 1970), Ways of the Middle
Kingdom (Gibb 1971), Dragons on the Sea (Gibb 1973),
Gary Seaman’s (1974) Chinese Popular Religion Series,
the Taiwan Series (Chen and Tsai 1974), the China
Coast Series (Miller 1974), and Da Jiu (Gibb 1977) took
collective practices and groups as the main unit of
GILLETTE
3
inquiry. They were realist and didactic in orientation.
Many had voice-over narrators and dubbed translations
over participants’ voices. Several focused on popular
religion and ritual, and those that looked at economics
usually explored local modes of production without
considering their integration into broader economic
systems. These films generally eschewed explicit discussion of politics.
For the most part, reviewers appreciated these films
as shedding light on the lives of ordinary Chinese and
providing rich visual material for academic and public
audiences. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) praised Hugh Gibb’s Dragons on the Sea,
which drew heavily on Barbara Ward’s ethnographic
research on boat people between 1950 and 1973, for
“imaginatively capturing the details of their everyday
doings and colourful traditional festivities” (Observer
1973). Anthropologist Stephan Feuchtwang agreed that
the film was “entertaining, well-shot, and informative,”
but also complained about the “profusion of detail” and
“the frustration of being taken on a tour rather than into
a deepening insight” (Feuchtwang 1975). Feuchtwang
similarly critiqued Gibb’s Da Jiu as a “patch-work” of
too many subjects (Feuchtwang 1977:6). He noted
Gibb’s “banal emphasis on the passing of tradition,”
pointing out that Gibb could equally well have discussed the ways that Hong Kong’s colonial government
kept traditions like this large-scale ritual alive (7). In
this specific ritual, a British colonial official opens the
civic portion of the ceremony, but Gibbs did not follow
up on this important context. Feuchtwang recommends
Gary Seaman’s Chinese Popular Religion Series as a “far
superior” treatment of Daoist religious practice.
Seaman received high accolades for showing whole
rituals in a manner that is “real,” “vivid and revealing,”
and “graphic” (Gonzales 1975a, 1975b, 1975c; see also
Feuchtwang 1977). Yet at least one anthropological
viewer wanted more context, asking why the rituals
Seaman filmed took place and how locals reacted. Nancie
Gonzales notes that Seaman made a conscious choice to
depict only public ritual practices, in an effort to adhere
to village norms and produce films that were considered
“appropriate.” Still, she writes, “it is difficult to imagine
what the function and meaning of these rituals may be
for the participants themselves,” and notes the absence of
“that ‘personal’ feel,” which interviews with ritual participants would promote (1975c).
Anthropological reviewers of the Taiwan Series and
China Coast Series also wished for more context
(Strauch 1977; Wolf and Wolf 1977). Margery and
Arthur Wolf, who reviewed the Taiwan Series for
American Anthropologist, thought the films created
erroneous understandings among viewers and only
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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 1 Spring 2014
recommended the short on wet rice agriculture (Wolf
and Wolf 1977). Where Seaman’s work lacked interviews, the Wolfs argue that Chen included too many.
Judith Strauch (1977) has stronger praise for the China
Coast Series, which she lauds as “visually excellent” and
an “interesting and valuable ethnographic picture,” but
she notes the absence of an emic point of view, and
finds the films occasionally “incoherent” and “dull.” She
too wishes for more context.
During the 1980s, after Mao Zedong’s death and
Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open China and implement
a market economy, the scope for ethnography in the
PRC gradually increased, for PRC and noncitizen
anthropologists alike. Political restrictions influenced
what kinds of ethnographies were possible, as all ethnographic projects required government approval and
sponsorship by a work unit. Since studies of minority
ethnic groups (shaoshu minzu) and rural communities
were accepted fields in the Chinese academy, many
ethnographers worked with ethnic minorities and/or in
rural communities (e.g., Anagnost 1985, 1987; Harrell
1989, 1990, 1992; Schein 1989, 2000; Yan 1992, 1996).
This new research took a different direction from that
conducted in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many ethnographers explored questions of social change and government policy, given the state’s dramatic efforts at social
engineering.
Most of the PRC-made ethnographic films during
the 1980s were about ethnic minorities. Many were
made by researchers at universities and research institutes in Beijing and Yunnan (Chen and Lei
2009:94–97, 102, 108–109). Documentary film scholar
Yingchi Chu characterizes these films as moving away
from the “dogmatic formula” of the Maoist period
(Chu 2007:161–162). While the state still steered production, filmmakers had more decision-making power,
and a “broader spectrum of images” could be shown.
In addition, these films had to respond to market
forces. Government officials wanted them to promote
tourism and economic development in minority
areas.
Political sensitivities partly explain why many
fewer ethnographic films were produced by noncitizen
filmmakers during the 1980s and 1990s. The first ethnographic films about the New China by non-Chinese
citizens were part of the English Disappearing Worlds
series. In 1982 and 1983, filmmaker Leslie Woodhead
collaborated with anthropologist Barbara Hazard to
make two films in Wuxi (Inside China: Living with the
Revolution and Inside China: The Newest Revolution),
and André Singer worked with Shirin Akiner to make
one on the Kazakhs in Xinjiang (The Kazakhs of China).
Their focus was historical, political, and familial. The
Wuxi films examine how government policies under
Mao and Deng affected family economic opportunities,
gender roles, the relationships between generations, and
so on. The Kazakh film follows a herding family as they
move from plains to higher pastures and prepare for
their daughter’s wedding. It shows negotiations between
the village’s production team and higherlevel administrative authorities who managed village
resources.
Alan Jenkins, then a senior lecturer in Geography
at Oxford Polytechnic, published a production study of
the two Wuxi-based Disappearing Worlds films (with
an occasional remark about the Kazakh film) in
Anthropology Today (1986). Jenkins describes the
extensive negotiations that Granada Television and
Chinese officials had before coming to an agreement
that Granada could produce two “ethnic” films and
one about Han Chinese (Jenkins 1986:7–8). Ultimately,
this agreement broke down, and the third film, which
was to be sited in Yunnan, was cancelled. For the Han
Chinese documentary, Granada’s filmmakers wanted to
work in an area where ethnographic work had been
done, but there were few PRC-based ethnographies to
choose from (8). Ultimately they selected Jiangsu,
hoping to work in the village where Fei Xiaotong had
done his 1939 study Peasant Life in China. However,
Chinese officials would only allow them to work in
suburban Wuxi and the crew was not permitted to live
on-site (Jenkins 1986:8–10). During filming, Chinese
“minders” who “stuck like glue” accompanied the
crew, steering them to “a very model family containing a dynamic, photogenic party official” (Jenkins
1986:9). Granada also had to compromise on the issue
of anthropological expertise, hiring sociologist Barbara
Hazard for her work on state–peasant relations.
Hazard had never worked in Wuxi and did not speak
the local dialect.
Even with these challenges, reviewers lauded the
two final Wuxi films as “a dramatic breakthrough in
ethnographic filming for a general audience” that featured “ ‘native’ peoples telling their story direct to
camera, rather than the then dominant convention of a
western presenter telling their story” (Jenkins 1986:12;
see also Henley 1985:8–9, 14). A reviewer in the
Observer emphasized the “constant sense of recognition,
of common humanity” that the films produced, noting
that the film crew “travelled to China and found themselves in Coronation Street . . . Mrs. Zhu [c]ould be Hilda
Ogden” (Banks-Smith 1983). The Kazakh film was
described as “the scoop” of the China trilogy for the
insights and unparalleled access it gave into an understudied northwestern minority and minority-majority
relations (Feuchtwang 1983).
New Ethnographic Film in the New China
Anthropologists who reviewed the films still
wanted more context, of course, particularly about government policy (Feuchtwang 1983; Watson 1983). The
Kazakh film was not “a concerted probing of Kazakh
existence in China,” Stephan Feuchtwang wrote: tensions were shown, but not investigated, despite the film
crew’s claim that they were not hampered by the presence of government officials (Feuchtwang 1983). Rubie
Watson writes that the Wuxi films effectively presented
the new materialism brought about by the market
reforms, but they did not explain these policies or tell us
enough about young people (Watson 1983). She and
other reviewers noted that the filmmakers needed to talk
about the Communist practice of “speaking bitterness,”
where older citizens are asked to describe the hardships
of the pre-Communist past (Jenkins 1986:12; Mirsky
1983; Watson 1983). Since audiences are not informed
about this speech genre, they are unable to recognize
the ways in which the Wuxi interviews were shaped by
it.
Carma Hinton’s well-known One Village in China
Series, most of which came out in 1984, adopted a
similar approach to that of the Disappearing Worlds
films. The films look at social changes in farming,
family, and ritual life and are driven by interviews with
locals. Hinton grew up in China and spent time in the
north China village where her father, William Hinton,
conducted ethnography. The films she made in Long
Bow reflect her close relations with villagers and sensitive understanding of local life. In particular, Hinton’s
film Small Happiness (1984) is a compelling portrait of
changing gender relations and family dynamics in a
rural community over a 70- or 80-year period. Small
Happiness remains one of the most-used ethnographic
films about China of the 20th century.
Reviewers of the One Village in China Series commented on the films’ naturalism, observational footage,
and the “unparalleled access” made possible by the
Hintons’ long relationship with the villagers (Graves
1987; Ikels 1985:741; Kehl 1984). The conversations
appear “relaxed,” and villagers displayed a wider range
of emotions and viewpoints than audiences had previously seen. Hinton’s commentary provided important
contextual information; only the fourth film, All Under
Heaven, is critiqued for inadequate historical background (Graves 1987). In general, the films were celebrated for their frankness and the sense of intimacy
they created between film subjects and audiences.
Hinton went on to make many other films, including one on the Tian’anmen movement in 1989 (The Gate
of Heavenly Peace, 1995) and another on the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (Morning Sun, 2003).
Among other things, Hinton is recognized for her inter-
GILLETTE
5
views, which elicit revealing participant testimony. The
later films differ from the One Village in China Series in
their overt political focus. They are topic-driven rather
than location-driven, and by some standards less ethnographic than the earlier work.
Scholars describe increasing numbers of ethnographic films produced in the PRC during the 1990s,
particularly after 1993. Hundreds of documentaries
about minorities were made, many by independent filmmakers (Chu 2007:180). Many foregrounded participant
testimony and tried to speak to the concerns of the film
subjects (Chu 2007:181; Zhang 2004b). Both documentary and feature films from the late 1990s and 2000s are
characterized as having an “ethnographic sensibility”
(Schein 2013; see also Zhang 2004a:281–292, 2004b).
They have generated enormous scholarly interest,
resulting in numerous articles and edited volumes (e.g.,
Berry et al. 2010; Blumenfield 2010; Chu 2007; Schein
2013; Zhang 2004a, 2004b; Zito 2013).
Looking more narrowly at visual anthropologists,
several ethnographic filmmakers are regularly noted for
their work. Zhuang Kongshao is recognized for producing a set of films between 1992 and 2004 about cultural
heritage, food, ritual, and applied anthropology (Chen
and Lei 2009:98–99). Anthropologist Deng Qiyao also
made several films during this period, on the Zhuang,
Lahu, and other Yunnan minorities. Sun Zhongtian,
professor at Northeast Normal University, won an award
for the documentaries he made about northeast China
minorities for CCTV (Chen and Lei 2009:111–112). Guo
Jing is also widely cited for his participatory videos
made in collaboration with Tibetans living near and on
Mount Kawakarpo (Chu 2007:181–182).
Although this sketch focuses on ethnographic films
about the New China (or People’s Republic), no discussion of ethnographic cinema from the Chinese world
could be complete without mention of anthropologist
Hu Tai-li. Hu works exclusively on Taiwan and presents
her work as such, rather than suggesting her cinema
stands for China as a whole, as did many of the early
ethnographic films from Hong Kong and Taiwan. She
produced her first film on a large ritual conducted by a
Taiwanese aboriginal tribe (Hu 1985), and subsequently
has considered many aspects of aboriginal life. Perhaps
her best-known film is Voices of Orchid Island (1993), in
which she presents three “invasions” of an aboriginal
island south of the main island of Taiwan: tourism,
medicine, and nuclear waste—with anthropologists
subtly indicated as a fourth kind of invader. Voices of
Orchid Island eschews narrative voice-over and highlights observational footage.
In broad strokes, this notional history sets the stage
for the ethnographer–filmmakers of China included in
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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 1 Spring 2014
this volume to discuss why and how they made the films
they did. The ethnographic filmmakers whose work is
featured here faced few political restrictions. They
entered a field characterized by a strong movement
away from didactic presentations and voice-over narrators, and dominated by naturalistic approaches and
film subjects who spoke “in their own voice” (more or
less). Representations of minorities had emerged as the
privileged subjects of ethnographic films in the New
China, with religion and ritual a second theme. These
filmmakers were aware of, and in many cases had
participated in, ethnographic discussions about social
change and state policy in post-Mao China. In their
films and articles, they speak to the legacy of China
ethnography, ethnographic film on China, and the range
of media representations about China that circulate
today.
Only a fraction of the total number of
ethnographer–filmmakers currently working in China
could be included in this special issue. Each contributor
participated in the film festival and workshop entitled
“Forbidden No More: New Ethnographic Film in the
New China,” sponsored by Haverford College on February 24–26, 2012. I organized the event in conjunction
with an undergraduate class that I teach on the Anthropology of China, inviting ethnographers whose writings
and films I used for that course. The class is offered at
the intermediate level and does not require language
proficiency beyond English. This meant there were
many ethnographers publishing and making films in
other languages whose work I could not include. My
home institution was extraordinarily generous in the
resources it devoted to “Forbidden No More,” but even
so, limitations of funding and time also constrained
participation, particularly for PRC-based ethnographic
filmmakers. Fortunately, recent years have seen a spate
of publications on documentary filmmaking in China,
including some that address ethnographic cinema specifically (e.g., Berry et al. 2010; Chu 2007; Zhang 2004b;
Zhuang 2009). We can also look forward to new publications, as emerging and more established scholars
(including some represented here) revise and publish
dissertations, presentations, and conference papers on
the topic.
Ethnographic Cinema and Media Worlds
Nonfiction film (and to some extent fiction film) has an
“indexical stickiness,” as anthropologist and filmmaker
Peter Loizos puts it (Loizos 1993:6–9; see also Chu
2007:13–17; Zito 2013). The indexical relationship
between nonfiction film and the real gives ethnographic
film enormous descriptive potential (Heider 2006:63;
Seaman 1977:365). It excels at communicating the concrete, the personal, the individual, and the specific
(Loizos 1993:67–68; MacDougall 1998:73–81). As ethnographic filmmaker and author David MacDougall has
written, it engages the viewer’s body and emotions and
invites the viewer to learn through a kind of
direct experience (MacDougall 1998:61–63; see also
Sniadecki this volume).
Ethnographic film is both detached from and linked
to historical reality, albeit in different proportions and (I
hope) with different significance than fiction film. Its
power relates directly to the filmmaker’s ability to frame
and make available the historical world in a way that
gives viewers something special. The filmmaker crafts
viewers’ experiences, though she does not entirely
control them (see Martinez 1992; Moggan 2005). As Bill
Nichols (2010:17) writes, viewers cannot escape the
filmmaker’s perspective, though they may not agree
with it.
Nichols (2010:xix) observes, “Film is central to the
representation of values and beliefs, customs and
practices in modern culture.” Nonfiction film has a
special role in this regard, as documentary can challenge the media representations that dominate how
most people get access to reality (Nichols
1991:107–109). Loizos (1993:191–192) argues that
anthropologists have a special obligation to attend to,
think about, and contest how the media represents the
people we study. Faye Ginsburg goes a step further,
arguing that anthropologists need to situate their work
in relation to mass media, study media as a subject of
ethnographic inquiry, and recognize media work as a
kind of political action (Ginsburg 1994). The
ethnographer–filmmakers in this volume all locate
their films in relation to texts, documentaries, news
reporting, fiction film, photography, and ethnographic
cinema. Despite the persuasive force of Ginsburg’s
“(mild) polemic,” this is still a significant departure
from most ethnographic writing, as ethnographers
typically only position their texts in relation to print
media, and usually only to academic print. It sets the
ethnographer–filmmakers in this volume apart from
other ethnographic filmmakers working in China.
The articles in this volume reveal how ethical concerns and political advocacy color these ethnographers’
filmmaking projects. The ethnographers represented
here are far more explicit about their intentions and
agendas than previous generations of ethnographic
filmmakers working in China. Chio and Gillette directly
relate their films to popular media narratives about
China: representations about what is and is not Chinese,
what kind of place China is, geopolitical concerns
New Ethnographic Film in the New China
about China’s influence in the world. Zito discusses her
decision to film urban retirees who rarely if ever get the
spotlight in documentaries or writings, and whom many
Chinese consider unworthy of attention. Dean and Dean
describe their efforts to countermand the impression
that Daoism is somehow a thing of the past by showcasing the revival, reinvention, and fantastic scale of
popular religious practice in contemporary Fujian. Chio,
Sniadecki, and Zito reflect on what they, as noncitizen
ethnographer–filmmakers, bring to the world of
Chinese documentary, and how their films complement
and differ from those by PRC-based independent
filmmakers.
All of the filmmakers felt that the filmic medium
enabled knowledge that texts could not and transmitted
that knowledge to audiences beyond those who read
scholarly writing. The films are not “B roll,” illustrating
knowledge dependent on words, oral or written. The
sights and sounds give access to sensation, embodied
exploration, and emotional identification that are ends
in themselves. Sniadecki explicitly rejects linguistic
properties in Chaiqian. His focus is sensory: bodies
doing (various kinds of) work in a particular place. Chio
also directs us to see, feel, and understand working
bodies, not only manual labor but also the performances
and salesmanship required for success in tourism.
Gillette sought to convey working bodies and places
while privileging the development of emotional identification between viewers and film participants. Zito not
only provides character portraits, both human and nonhuman, but also visually and aurally re-creates the
flows and stoppages that punctuate calligraphic practice. Dean and Dean use film to reproduce the magnitude, richness, chaos, and sensory overload
characteristic of the New Year’s rituals on the Putian
plain—although the final result is still rather less, as
they point out, than what you could experience if you
lived in a place where ritual opera was performed 250
days a year.
Ethnographic Cinema, History,
and Anthropology
History as process and product strongly affected the
ethnographers’ filmmaking. Chio speaks in detail about
omitting, condensing, or ignoring history to create portraits of the two villages in her film. Gillette discusses
how the desire to show history influenced what kind of
footage she used, including period archival footage
from locations other than Jingdezhen. Dean and Dean
position their work explicitly as a correction to the
historical record. They use Kenneth Dean’s voice-over
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7
narration to communicate historical processes, coupled
with visual images that suggest recent innovation (such
as the use of robots in devotional practices). Zito
includes printed quotations from classical calligraphy
texts to convey continuity between contemporary
writing in water and China’s long-standing tradition of
calligraphic practice. She insists that “third places” be
included in the historical record. While Sniadecki privileges the “here-and-now” of his encounter with migrant
workers, he, like the other filmmakers, understands his
film as a contribution to the historical archive.
Sniadecki emphasizes how what he calls the density of
the image provides resources for alternative historical
narratives.
Christian Churchill (2005) has written that the ethnographer’s mind operates as a “transitional space”
between historical event and its representation. Between
the “capturing” of field data and the published ethnography comes a “transformational process” that rests on
the ethnographer’s capacity for empathy and her ability
to be at home in two “languages,” that of the ethnographic subject and that of the audience. Nichols
(2010:17), discussing filmmakers, uses the metaphor of
the tour guide, who directs how film viewers stroll
through the cinematic world. In ethnographic film, this
world is “stuck” to the historic world, but mediated by
the filmmaker.
What these characterizations suggest is that
ethnographer–filmmakers must be conscious of, and
responsible to, a set of social relationships that constitute the historic world. The filmmakers’ sensitivity to a
particular set of human relationships that were their
field research informs how and what they craft, evoke,
and translate, that is, “carry across” (trans-latum) the
more transient social relationship that they form with
viewers. The authors in this volume speak concretely
about the social relationships that informed their filmmaking at every stage of the process from production,
through postproduction, to film screenings and subsequent conversations. They describe in detail how participants’ concerns, the critiques of other filmmakers,
and their understandings of their audiences shaped their
work.
The New China and the New
Ethnographic Cinema
Nary a day goes by without the PRC appearing in the
headlines of major newspapers around the world. Today
the topics were air pollution in Chinese cities and how
the Chinese Communist Party can sustain rapid economic growth and liberalization while retaining a
8
VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 30 Number 1 Spring 2014
monopoly over political power (Buckley 2013; Guardian
2013). Tomorrow will bring other stories. With China’s
meteoric rise to become an economic powerhouse and
major player in global politics, the PRC spends a lot of
time in the media spotlight, perhaps more than ever
before.
Ethnographers working in China can and should
contribute to public dialogue and understanding about
Chinese society. Film is a particularly compelling
medium for ethnographers to evoke experiences and
share what they know. Cinema addresses the whole
body and mind, affording opportunities for experience,
reflection, and public debate. As ethnographer–
filmmakers, we can take advantage of our scholarly
training to illuminate the conditions of our knowledge
production. The articles found here exemplify how we
can enhance public understandings of our ethnographic
films by clearly and concretely discussing our filmmaking practices.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Janet Hoskins, Nancy Lutkehaus,
Gary Seaman, the University of Southern California China Institute, and the USC Center for Visual Anthropology for organizing
the conference and screenings entitled “Cultural Dimensions of
Visual Ethnography: US-China Dialogues,” which was the
genesis of this project (April 8–11, 2010). I thank the Hurford
Arts and Humanities Center, the Center for Peace and Global
Citizenship, and the Distinguished Visitors Fund of Haverford
College for their support of the film festival and workshop “Forbidden No More: The New China in Ethnographic Film” (February 24–26, 2012). This volume would not have been possible
without all the enthusiastic participants in that event. In particular, I am grateful to the ethnographer–filmmakers who
attended: Tami Blumenfield, Jenny Chio, Kenneth Dean, Benjamin Gertsen, Stevan Harrell, Tik-sang Liu, J.P. Sniadecki, and
Angela Zito. I thank the editors of Visual Anthropology Review
and anonymous reviewers for the special issue, who contributed
useful feedback and suggestions for the final edition. Finally, I
thank the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and the
EURIAS Fellowship Programme for providing the resources
needed to complete this work.
Notes
1
2
I use the word film to mean all forms of film and digital
video. All of the filmmakers whose work appears in this
volume worked in digital video.
The international Sino-Swedish Expedition to northwest
China, led by Swedish explorer and geographer Sven
Hedin and including the Danish ethnographer Henning
Haslund Christensen, Danish cinematographer Paul Karl
Lieberenz, and Chinese archaeologist Xu Xusheng,
also produced some films during their stay in the
Gobi Desert and Tarim Basin between 1927 and 1929
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinesisch-Schwedische_
Expedition, Chen and Lei 2009:73–75, http://www
.olympiabookfair.com/antiquarian-books/d/
cinematography-archive-featuring-the-travels-and-works
-of-paul-lieberenz-from-1923-to-1954-includes-originalphotographs-letters-journals-passports-original-filmtypescripts-copper-engraved-plates-etc/49176). The films
were first screened in 1929. I have never seen them, but
Chen and Lei (2009:73–75) identify them as “anthropological.” While the online descriptions mention the stunning landscape, expedition caravan, and a sandstorm, they
say nothing about more recognizably ethnographic
content. The evidence also suggests that these films were
in fact shot later than Gamble’s.
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