2006- China Television Documentary Frontier Report

Author: Liu Xiaoli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features: "The Responsibility and Influence of Documentaries" is a topic that is somewhat difficult to discuss. But I think it's also time to address this topic. Because the central theme of this year's Documentary Summit Forum is social responsibility. The "Manifesto of Chinese Documentary Filmmakers" hanging here is very prominent. Having gone through the past decade and a half of documentary development in China, I feel that at this time, such a manifesto is indeed a symbol of the era. I first truly attended a documentary gathering in 1995 in Shanghai. It was a particularly wonderful scene. Everyone making documentaries was standing tall, feeling a strong sense of responsibility, and each person was beaming with pride. At that time, documentary filmmakers, within the media environment, had a sense of being elite, feeling a sense of responsibility, and society also gave them such an evaluation. The media at the time also gave it positive reviews. However, the good times didn't last long. I remember after 1997, when I attended similar gatherings, people seemed more downcast, their eyes no longer shining as brightly as before. Many friends shared that they felt they had entered a phase of confusion, unsure of how documentaries should move forward. The topics had been exhausted, the language seemed to have reached its limit, the influence was no longer as strong as before, and the market had not been established, making everything feel dim. So, even at welcome parties, the taste of the drinks seemed different. I felt that for about three or four years from 1997, 1998, and 1999, it was all in that state. I don't know if the feelings of the predecessors here are similar to mine. In reality, our documentaries have been developing, and each stage has its own unique aspects. In China, documentaries had a very good golden period in the early 1990s, when expectations for documentaries were getting higher and higher, and society had very high expectations for them. So, even though there was a relatively dim period in mentality, documentaries were still developing. In February of this year, I attended the World Documentary Congress in Washington. The number of people was much larger than here, about four times as many, with nearly 2,000 people attending the documentary conference. At that time, I was imagining our annual meeting or academic conference—how great it would be to have such a scene. I feel that I am already seeing the signs of this. When I attended the World Documentary Congress, it was like today—there were three venues, five venues, here signing contracts, there looking for topics; here finding particularly outstanding documentaries to mentor new documentary directors, and there discussing their films. It was indeed very rich. This year's Documentary Strategic Development Forum has already shown such a scene, and I think it is very good. We are now in such a period, and this scene has emerged—it is due to social reasons, but also the result of the long-term unremitting efforts of documentary filmmakers. Today, when I speak of responsibility and influence, there is also an implicit meaning of the market—once you have influence, the market naturally follows. In this edition of our forum, the theme of responsibility is set, and as for influence, the government officials from the departments sitting on the stage are attending our conference, which itself...