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.

In October 2008, photographer Wang Jiuliang began a project investigating waste disposal in and around Beijing. Following the trucks that collected his daily rubbish, he discovered eleven large-scale refuse landfills scattered around the close suburbs of the city, each one growing daily alongside the skyscrapers, housing developments, and general urban boom that surrounded them.

Beyond this, Wang also uncovered an underground industry in which rubbish was being removed from the inner city and taken to hundreds of illegal dumpsites around the urban fringe. Here, people were making their homes and their living, building houses from discarded construction materials, wearing clothes they had gleaned in the trash, and making their dinners from the city’s food scraps. They raised pigs on leftover organic matter. Local shepherds brought sheep and cattle to graze between the bottles and plastic bags.

Zhang Ding in Last Words (Phase 1)
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
July 16 – August 28, 2010.

Born in 1980, Zhang Ding belongs to the most recent generation of Chinese video artists, growing up beyond the shadow of the Cultural Revolution and in a world saturated with images of the West and a new aspirational China. Rather than commenting on China’s history, or even its recent economic reforms, Zhang’s work is marked by feelings of alienation from contemporary society, a sense of retreat into fantasy, and an ongoing struggle with desire. For Zhang the political is personal, and highly mediated. Mixing video art and installation, Zhang creates worlds of light and sound, surreal cinematic dreamscapes, and intimate performance pieces. Originally from the Western province of Gansu, Zhang now lives and works in Shanghai, a city he has made something of a muse for his work.

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.