In addition to being an artist, curator and writer China’s cultural renaissance man Ou Ning is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker. After making the experimental San Yuan Li in 2003 with Cao Fei and other members of the U-theque collective in Guangzhou, Ou Ning relocated to China’s capital, where he made Meishi St (2006) about the demolition of one of Beijing’s oldest areas in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics.

Meishi St will play in the Street Level Visions: Chinese Independent Documentary program screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) next month (see previous post), and Ou Ning will be in town for post-film Q&As and other public appearances.

To time with this event, we are reproducing this interview conducted by film writer and curator of the Street level Vision program, Dan Edwards, first published on the dGenerate Films website. Originally held in March 2010, the discussion contains a wealth of fascinating material not only on Ou’s background, but also the rise of China’s “digital” documentary generation.

Thanks to Ou Ning for his time and for speaking so openly about some controversial matters, and to Edwards and dGenerate for the piece. The interview was conducted mostly in English.

For the lucky ducks in Melbourne …

This year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) includes a special program of films selected from the past decade of China’s digital documentary boom. Curated by Dan Edwards, ‘Street Level Visions: Chinese indie docos’ cuts through the clichés of nightly news bulletins to show us China from the ground-up, through the eyes of some of the nation’s bravest filmmakers.

The program includes landmark films such as Zhao Liang’s Petition, Ou Ning’s Meishi Street, Hu Jie’s Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul, and the more recent Besieged by Waste by Wang Jiuliang, among others. Filmmakers, Ou Ning and Wang Jiuliang will also be in town for post-film Q&As and other events.

See the MIFF website for more on the films and session times. And spread the word.

Picture a film made as if looking through slats in a wall, peering into a dimly lit, traditional Beijing home. Cramped, intimate, and soaked in the sea-green of cheap lighting, Liu Jiayin’s feature films Oxhide and Oxhide II (牛皮，牛皮二) are concerned primarily with this sense of perception. Tight shots of hands, waists, objects, and only the occasional face – we wonder if someone has forgotten their camera and left the room.

But nobody has forgotten anything, and Liu Jiayin is clear in what she’s trying to achieve. Shot in her parents’ home, with she and her parents playing the roles of mother, father and daughter, Oxhide and Oxhide II are highly stylised, cinema depictions of Liu’s own particular view on the world.

Born in 1981, Liu Jiayin belongs to the most recent generation of Chinese filmmakers, and has already been credited as one of the most important of her time. I met her in a Beijing cafe last week, where I was treated to her plucky, Beijing wit and a self-possession that belies her age. Read on …

dGenerate Films is a US-based distributor of independent contemporary Chinese cinema, with a catalogue drawn from the salons, festivals and personal distribution networks of China’s underground film scene. Since their inception in 2008, they’ve built a catalogue of around thirty titles and have been instrumental in increasing the profile of independent Chinese cinema, both overseas and within China itself. They also have a cracking website with critical reviews and commentary on contemporary Chinese cinema in general.
I recently spoke with Kevin Lee, dGenerate’s Vice President of Programming and Education, about this burgeoning underground film scene, the documentary impulse, and the power of cheap technology.