Why you should bother

The dominant style of documentary, mostly on television, had been one of highly choreographed socialist realism, telling stories from a top-down perspective designed to reinforce the official government ideology. It began in an unlikely place: Unsurprisingly, its bleak view of Chinese conservatism and isolationism inspired a lot of debate. It has been called a primary inspiration for the student demonstrations that ignited the following spring.

In roughly the same moment, filmmakers in Beijing began to dive into independent documentary production, mostly using TV equipment.

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The Last Dreamers Not necessarily even living in Beijing legally, they create films, paintings and theatrical productions while struggling to survive. Its spontaneous style was a major break from socialist realism, and its makeshift aesthetics would become the predominant form of the movement. This new way of portraying real life was given a name: These new films were filled with subject interviews, giving a voice to those who had previously been simply objects of study and manipulation. The filmmakers embraced a verite style, and saw themselves as simply individuals with cameras, documenting the story of Chinese society from the bottom up.

Geek Documentaries: A Primer - The Film Review

They often referred to themselves as artisans rather than artists, de-emphasizing their active authorship. Over time, however, things changed. Around this time, directors began to abandon the purely observational model of Bumming in Beijing and began to experiment with performance and reflexivity.

The Road to Paradise is a good example. The mini digital video camera arrived in China in and the resulting explosion of filmmaking made an already diverse movement even more complex.


  • You are here.
  • Primer (film) - Wikipedia.
  • Look Up High and See.
  • The Count of Lopinot.
  • One Tasty Night (The Griffin Brothers).

Moreover, the impact of New Chinese Documentary began to appear in the fiction films of the Sixth Generation. Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yuan , who both made nonfiction films themselves, brought the aesthetics of NCD into their narrative work.

The genre of documentary always has two crucial elements that are in tension: Their makers manipulate and distort reality like all filmmakers but they still make a claim for making a truthful representation of reality. Throughout the history of documentary film, makers, critics and viewers have argued about what constitutes trustworthy storytelling about reality.

This book introduces you to those arguments over time and in some of the popular subgenres. Throughout the chapter, surprising and telling details remind readers that the purpose and form of documentary have always been contested and challenged, as makers faced commercial, political, technological and artistic pressures, including those that were self-imposed as they sought to understand, utilize and push the form in which they worked. The second and largest chapter, "Subgenres" pages offers an exceptional overview of subject areas within documentary, "a film genre in which a pledge is made to the viewer that what we will see and hear is about something real and true--and frequently, important for us to understand.

Aufderheide defines each and places them in historical context, naming films and filmmakers and offering references to relevant scholarship. In this chapter, as in the first, the range of creative forms documentary expression takes even within subgenres may be surprising to some readers.

Geek Documentaries: A Primer

Furthermore, the ongoing evaluation of ethical considerations--by makers as well as critics--in these evolving forms is informative. Overall, this chapter strikes me as essential reading for any student of documentary.

Primer (2004) Official Trailer

The book's brief third chapter, "Conclusion" pages , introduces the widening continuum of documentary today, with technological and other changes putting production within reach of a growing and more diverse body of makers. This expansion "may create new subgenres or may eventually force rethinking," Aufderheide notes. How does a filmmaker responsibly represent reality?

What truths will be told? Why are they important, and to whom?

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What is the filmmaker's responsibility to and relationship with the subjects of the work? Who gets the opportunity to make documentaries, how are they seen, and under what constraints? Aufderheide concludes the book with a review of documentary scholarship and suggestions for new research directions, including greater attention to international scholarship and a closer look at "formulaic" and "sponsored" documentaries, including those produced for entertainment.