Independent Documentary Filmmaking Research Articles

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Class Inequalities within the British Documentary Film Industry

While there is a considerable amount of scholarship and grey literature about social exclusions within the UK cultural industries, the sociology of cultural labour has paid little attention to documentary film-making as a relatively elitist occupation that is maintained by systemic inequalities. Based on semi-structured interviews with several independent documentary film-makers about their own labouring subjectivities, and qualitative analysis of relevant academic literature and cultural policies, this article critically explores how class inequalities are understood, reproduced, negotiated or resisted within contemporary British documentary film-making. The research findings demonstrate that documentarians from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to face significant obstacles in the film-making sector than their privileged counterparts. While the majority of respondents are aware of structural disadvantages, champion more inclusive forms of creativity and are committed to improving discriminatory working conditions, a small number of participants believe that the social relations of documentary film production are meritocratic, can be characterised by their celebration of neoliberal values and a willingness to defend the industry's employment practices. The article concludes with a series of recommendations for creative organisations, government and policymakers.

Introduction: Hong Kong independent documentaries and their visibility

In their general introduction to the present Special Issue the authors trace the origins of and motivation behind much of the independent documentary filmmaking produced in the city during a period of great sociopolitical turbulence, leading up to the tight censorship protocols put in place after the mainland government’s promulgation of the repressive National Security Law in 2020. With reference to the individual essays that comprise this volume, they chart the sudden and unprecedented rise of documentary filmmaking in Hong Kong following many decades of public indifference to the genre. Limited public and underground screenings that took place before absolute censorship measures were implemented in 2021 showed huge box-office demand for these topical films, reflecting images of ordinary Hong Kong people and their struggle for political representation. This opening essay introduces a range of essays and one interview, mostly in relation to specific films, dealing with the now-contentious coupling of documentary films or television broadcasts and democracy. As the essays indicate, some directors and producers of these observational and participatory documentaries are still active overseas and many of the films discussed can now only be screened outside Hong Kong. Nevertheless, they bear witness to a spirit of resilience and resistance as well as a deep-seated desire for a genuine democracy based on universal suffrage constantly reneged on by the city’s various rulers, from the colonial era until now.

Kashmir: a long winding road to freedom

ABSTRACT Questions of political allegiance between India and Pakistan have turned Kashmir into one of the most militarised zones in the world. Although antagonism between India and Pakistan vis-à-vis Kashmir is predicated on territorial disputes, the Kashmir Valley since the end of the British rule in India in 1947 has struggled with the contentious issues of identity, freedom, armed intrusions, often resulting in mass murders, and illegal arrests of its people. Although independent documentary film-makers address these issues, and thus offer a complicated history and politics of Kashmir, Iffat Fatima, perhaps as the only independent woman documentary film-maker based in Kashmir, engages a wide-ranging issues including enforced disappearances, politics of memory/remembrance, resistance, neo-national ideologies, ‘states of exception’ in her films. Unlike the usual male dominated conflict zones, protests in Kashmir are characterized by its resisting and protesting women. In boldly articulating Kashmiri experiences through her independent films, Fatima foregrounds women’s participation as an essential aspect of Kashmiri protest producing different outcomes and relations. Situating herself in such a precarious space, Fatima in the interview at hand discusses her filmic self, her engagement with resistance movements in Kashmir, and women’s protest movements in Kashmir.

Film Review

Review| May 01 2021 Film Review: The Future Cries Beneath Our Soil [Mùa Cát Vọng] David Biggs David Biggs David Biggs is a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, focusing on environmental and Southeast Asian history. He is the author of Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta (University of Washington Press, 2010) and Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam (University of Washington Press, 2018).Phạm Thu Hằng has worked as a researcher at the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Art since 2004. She later joined HanoiDoclab, a breakthrough documentary and video art center in Hà Nội, where she made several short documentary films. She has since added her voice to the small but active and growing community of young independent documentary filmmakers in Vietnam. Phạm Thu Hằng recently obtained her master’s degree in documentary directing at a consortium of three universities in Europe under the Doc Nomads joint master’s degree program in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. Her filmmaking concerns many themes but mainly draws attention to rediscovering Vietnamese culture and the connection between the internal world in Vietnam and the world outside, especially in the context of contemporary globalization. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2021) 16 (2): 84–90. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2021.16.2.84 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Biggs; Film Review: The Future Cries Beneath Our Soil [Mùa Cát Vọng]. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 May 2021; 16 (2): 84–90. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2021.16.2.84 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of Vietnamese Studies Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The Regents of the University of California2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Contested Javaneseness in Sociocultural Documentaries of the Post-New Order Indonesia

This article fleshes out how two Indonesian sociocultural-themed documentary films of the post-New Order era articulate the counter-imaginaries of Javaneseness. They are Jamu (Javanese Traditional Medicine) and Kulo Ndiko Sami (We are Brothers). The emergence of bringing the issue of Javaneseness to light has its cause on its complex politicization in the New Order regime. Javaneseness was ideologically manipulated as the hegemonic narrative of the state to construct an image of Indonesian society. Javaneseness incorporated by the regime was of a desired aristocratic model in combination with other non-Javanese worldviews.This desired strand of imagining was then politically used to simplify the whole gamut of Javanese cultures and marginalize other ethnic cultures. With the collapse of the New Order, sociocultural activists and filmmakers of the grassroots regarded the burgeoning of independent documentary filmmaking as momentum to utilize documentary film as a medium to project alternative interpretations of Javaneseness. The article proposes a symptomatic reading of the examined films by looking at their aesthetics and ideological aspects framed and situatedwithin the oppositional views of the imagined community by Benedict Anderson and Partha Chatterjee. By drawing on the films’ aesthetics and ideologies that articulate Javaneseness, this article aims to show two points. First, the counter-imaginaries of the New Order’s Javaneseness are projected through the documentaries and such projections prove to be dynamic. Second, inclusive views on how to represent ethnicities in contemporary Indonesia need promulgating.

Reminiscences of a journey to Okinawa: landscape film as essay, and Takamine Gō’s Okinawan Dream Show (1974)

ABSTRACT This study places itself at the intersection between essay film, landscape film (fūkei eiga), and Okinawa. It aims to understand how such an intersection contributes to rethinking independent (documentary) filmmaking in Japan (and Okinawa) during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I highlight Okinawa-born, Kyoto-based filmmaker Takamine Gō, particularly his first nonfiction feature, Okinawan Dream Show (1974). Whereas ‘landscape film’ is used to frame and describe a spectrum of discursive articulations and the concomitant filmmaking practices centreing around ‘fūkei’ (landscape), I unpack landscape film with insights borrowed from the discussions of essayistic cinema. I shall argue that Okinawan Dream Show leverages interstitial strategies to configure a temporal and affective assemblage to envision an Okinawan landscape that is both lost and yet to come.

Propagandist or objective observer? Independent documentaries in/on Hong Kong's recent social movements

PurposeThis article explores recent changes in Hong Kong’s independent documentary filmmaking during a decade of escalating protests in the territory, focusing in particular on cinema's role in Hong Kong's “movement field.”Design/methodology/approachThe article focuses on Ying E Chi, an important distributor and promoter of Hong Kong independent films; the annual Hong Kong Independent Film Festival it organizes; three recent documentaries it distributes that are relevant to the 2019–2020 protests. The findings in this article are based on interviews, the textual analysis of relevant films and participant observation at film screenings.FindingsThis study argues that independent documentaries function in Hong Kong's “movement field” in three main ways: by contributing to and providing a space for civic discourse, by facilitating international advocacy and by engaging in memory work. Its contributions to civic culture, it asserts, are reflected in the films' observational aesthetic, which invites reflection and discussion. Public screenings and lengthy post-screening discussions are important ways in which these functions are realized.Originality/valueThis article builds on existing literature to propose a new way of thinking about cinema's role in Hong Kong social movements. It also analyses three important recent films that have not yet been covered much in existing academic literature.

The Ethics of Japanese Social Documentary in the Wake of 3/11

ABSTRACTOver the past eight years, independent documentary filmmakers in Japan have produced over one hundred works concerning the 3/11 disaster in Tōhoku. Since the controversy over Mori Tatsuya's film 311, the issue of documentary ethics has loomed large in the discussion of these films. Specifically: how may we understand the filmmaker's social and ethical responsibility in documenting a disaster such as 3/11? Despite the importance of this sensitive issue for audiences, it has received little scholarly attention. In this article, I analyse three exemplary films which are directly concerned with 3/11: Ōmiya Kōichi’s The Sketch of Mujō, Fujiwara Toshi's No Man’s Zone, and Funahashi Atsushi's Nuclear Nation. While all three films focus on the survivors of the disaster, each takes a distinctive approach: Ōmiya reflects on the interplay between impermanence [mujō] and collective memory; Fujiwara queries our presuppositions and place as spectators of disaster; and Funahashi explores the system of power that maintains the nuclear village. I propose an axiographic analysis of these films as a contribution to our understanding of the disaster, shedding light on not only the ethical stance of the filmmakers, but also on the mechanisms of the larger, mass-mediated image regime in contemporary Japan.

Ethics and Experience in the Making of Still Tomorrow: In Conversation with Travis Fan

In the blockbuster-dominated landscape of contemporary Chinese cinema, independent documentaries have been all but left behind. After several of China’s largest independent film festivals such as Yunfest and the Beijing Independent Film Festival were forced to shut down, Chinese theatergoers appeared to subsist on a diet of Hollywood superhero movies and local action-fantasy films, caper-comedies, and youth romance movies. During the late 1990s, low-budget Chinese indie documentaries from directors such as Wu Wenguang 吴文光 and Zhang Yuan 张元 used to have the power to change cultural debates; those days have been left far behind.Then, Still Tomorrow, which is a modest documentary about the Poet Yu Xiuhua 余秀华, was produced and earned an estimated 1.7 million RMB at the Chinese box office—a major triumph for a documentary film about a poet in the age of the superhero blockbuster. When looked at alongside other recent documentaries that have been granted not only commercial theatrical release but garnered boxoffice success, such as the record breaking portrait of comfort women Twenty Two (Ershier二十二) in 2017, we see not only the emergence of a new space for independent documentary filmmaking in China, but also a new lens that places women’s issues front and center. Still Tomorrow (Yaoyao huanghuang de renjian 摇摇晃晃的人间) is a stunning, and at times devastating, portrait of one woman’s personal journey that intersects with a series of topics rarely paired together: disability, poetry, celebrity, gender, desire, internet, and the rural-urban divide. At the same time, the film itself, through its remarkable success, has also plotted a new commercial trajectory for independent documentary film in China today.This interview took place at the UCLA Film School on May 4, 2017, after a screening of Still Tomorrow at the Darren Star Screening Room. The discussion begins with the filmmaker’s background and explores his early career in television journalism in China before exploring some of the production details behind his award-winning documentary.

Seeing Revolution Non-Linearly: www.filmingrevolution.org

Filming Revolution, launched in 2015, is an online interactive data base documentary tracing the strands and strains of independent (mostly) documentary filmmaking in Egypt since the revolution. Consisting of edited interviews with 30 filmmakers, archivists, activists and artists based there, the website is organized by the themes that emerged from the material, allowing the viewer to engage in an unlimited set of “curated dialogues” about issues relating to filmmaking in Egypt since 2011. With its constellatory interactive design, Filming Revolution creates as much as documents a community of makers, attempting to grapple with approaches to filmmaking in the wake of momentous historical events. The non-hierarchical polysemous structure of the project is meant to echo the rhizomatic, open-ended aspect of the revolution and its aftermath, in yet another affirmation and instantiation of contemporary civil revolution as a non-linear, ever-unfolding, ongoing event.

From Deconstruction to Activism

This article explores how the increasing visibility of new collectives in contemporary China has shaped independent documentaries. Countering a prevalent approach to documentary studies that emphasizes the individual and the subjective, this article suggests that how to represent collectivity has preoccupied Chinese documentary filmmakers from the inception of this art form. Yet early independent documentary filmmakers of the 1990s did not have a clear agenda on the representation of collectivity. The crowd in their films appears as an indistinguishable entity, akin to a passive or inactive social agent. More recent documentaries present significantly more complicated interactions between the camera and the crowd and deliberately tap into the problem of representation of contemporary crowds not just from a formal perspective, but from a political perspective as well.

Chinese Independent Documentary Films: Alternative Media, Public Spheres and the Emergence of the Citizen Activist

:This article argues that contemporary independent documentary filmmaking in China has been used as a tool by Chinese citizens to intervene in the public sphere and to provoke social change. I therefore propose to look at the phenomenon of Chinese video activism under the umbrella of alternative media. In particular, I take into consideration the “rhizomatic” media approach, which focuses on the interaction of alternative media with authority, the market and civil society. The case studies I present consist of several documentary projects completed between 2004 and 2010 that opened up spaces of dialogue between filmmakers and local authority, mass media and civil society. The paper claims that documentary films have an impact on audiences, whose members are consequently motivated to engage in discussion and action. I argue that activist video-making in China is reshaping the identity of urban citizens: through filmmaking, urban citizens claim their right to access information and demonstrate their will to participate and intervene in social issues.

Independent documentary filmmaking in Jamaica: an interview with Esther Figueroa

Esther Figueroa, PhD, is an independent Jamaican filmmaker with over twenty-five years of experience in political documentary cinema. A self-taught activist filmmaker, her work focuses on local knowledge, Indigenous cultures, social injustice, community empowerment and, most recently, environmental issues. Her poignant documentaries give voice to those outside of mainstream media and aim to counter dominant narratives and practices that are driven by commercial and political interests. This interview, which took place via Skype on 20 September 2010, concentrates on Figueroa's documentary work in Jamaica, particularly her latest feature-length documentary Jamaica for Sale (2009/2010), and discusses her filmmaking career in the context of Caribbean cinema and society.

Departing from Songzhuang: Interviews with Chinese independent documentary film-makers Feng Yan and Wang Wo

Departing from Songzhuang: Interviews with Chinese independent documentary film-makers Feng Yan and Wang Wo

Alternative visions and representation: independent documentary film-making in contemporary China

ABSTRACTIndependent documentary filmmaking in contemporary China offers an alternative vision to official, mainstream, and commercial productions. This essay shows how the practices of independent filmmakers constitute alternative perspectives by first exploring representations of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS orphans in China, and then by examining reconstructions of sociopolitical history silenced by official discourse and ignored in collective memory. Also discussed are gender politics in documentaries which use women as discursive or visual subjects and the question of why the perspective of gender remains marginal to the documentary film practices.

Bulldozers, Bibles, and Very Sharp Knives: The Chinese Independent Documentary Scene

A report on the state of independent documentary filmmaking in China in 2009, covering in particular the Yunnan Multicultural Visual Festival (or Yunfest, as it is known) in Kunming and the China Documentary Film Festival in Songzhuang. A variety of factors have converged to make an anti-authoritarian documentary movement possible, but it may be ending as directors become professionalized.

Navigating on the Ruins: Space, Power, and History in Contemporary Chinese Independent Documentaries

Independent documentary filmmaking in contemporary China started a few sparkles after 1989, with works like Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990) and Wang Guangli’s I Graduated (1992). Followed by more developed works from Zhang Yuan, Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and Kang Jianning, China began to see perhaps its first independent documentary group: the New Documentary Movement. Later, with the advent of the DV technology in the mid-1990s, the freedom of one-man’s-film-studio became easily realizable; China further witnessed a spate of independent documentaries pouring forth, with a greater variety in subject matter and style, and a greater variety of faces, lives, spaces, and voices along with them.

The Woman at the Keyhole: Women's Cinema and Feminist Criticism

The term seems, if not necessarily simple to define, then at least straightforward enough. But term has acquired two different meanings which, to some minds, are diametrically opposed. It is at hypothetical intersection of these two meanings, rather than with favoring of one over other, that I begin. First, women's cinema refers to films made by women. They range from classical Hollywood directors like Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino to their more recent heirs, like Claudia Weill and Joan Silver; and from directors whom many feminists would just as soon forget, like Leni Riefenstahl or Lina Wertmiuller, to other contemporary European directors concerned directly and consciously with female modes of expression, like Chantal Akerman and Helke Sander. They range as well from independent documentary filmmakers like Julia Reichert (co-director of Union Maids) and Connie Fields (Rosie Riveter) to more experimental independents attempting to reconcile feminist politics and avant-garde form, like Michelle Citron (Daughter Rite) and Sally Potter (Thriller). To attempt to account for wide diversity of films represented in even this simple definition of is a gigantic task in and of itself. The term cinema, or more precisely, woman's film, has acquired another meaning, referring to a Hollywood product designed to appeal to a specifically female audience. Such films, popular throughout 1930s, 40s, and 50s, were usually melodramatic in tone and full of highpitched emotion, from which came pejorative title: the weepies. Indeed, Molly Haskell characterizes woman's as most untouchable of film genres. Here is how Haskell defines genre: At lowest level, as soap opera, 'woman's film' fills a masturbatory need, it is soft-core emotional porn for frustrated housewife. The weepies are founded on a mock-Aristotelian and politically conservative aesthetic whereby women spectators are moved, not by pity and fear but by self-pity and tears, to accept, rather than reject, their lot. That there