‘Image-Writing’: The Essayistic/Sanwen in Chinese Nonfiction Cinema and Zhao Liang’s Behemoth

Abstract

This chapter explores ‘image writing’, an independent nonfiction film practice of experimenting with and ‘writing’ through moving images as an artistic expression and cultural intervention in contemporary mainland China. As a concept similar to caméra-stylo that was advocated by Alexandre Astruc in his influential article ‘The Future of Cinema’ (1948), its motivation and aesthetic features are culturally and socially rooted in Chinese reality. The aesthetic form associated with yingxiang xiezuo can be understood as ‘essayistic’ in the sense that it is influenced by a Chinese literary essay tradition, Chinese language expression and socio-political conditions in China. Kiki Tianqi Yu argues that current criticism and theorisation around the essay film is largely rooted in western film studies; and that features of the essayistic or the ‘screen-writing’ process in cultures with different literary traditions, socio-political contexts and linguistic structures, such as those in China, require different methods of interrogation. The chapter includes a close reading of Chinese Zhao Liang’sBehemoth (2015), foremost his use of parallelism and juxtaposition.