2006 China Television Documentary Frontier Report

Author: Liu Xiaoli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features: "The Responsibility and Influence of Documentaries" is a rather difficult topic to discuss. But I think it's time we addressed it. 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 moment, such a manifesto is indeed a symbol of the times. 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. Documentary filmmakers, at that time in the media environment, had a sense of being elite, feeling responsible, 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 had reached a phase of confusion, unsure of how documentaries should move forward. Topics had been exhausted, language had reached its limit, influence had diminished compared to before, and the market hadn't been established. It felt very bleak. 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 continuously, with each stage having its own unique characteristics. In China, documentaries had a very golden period in the early 1990s, when expectations for documentaries were constantly rising, and society had very high expectations for them. So even though there was a relatively bleak period, 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 sessions happening simultaneously, five sessions in total. Here, people were signing contracts; over there, they were scouting for topics; here, they were finding particularly outstanding documentaries to mentor new documentary directors, and over there, they were 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's very good. We are in this period now, and the emergence of such a scene is due to both societal reasons and the long-term unremitting efforts of documentary filmmakers. Today, when I speak of responsibility and influence, there is also an implicit meaning behind it—market. With influence comes market. In this edition of our forum, the theme of responsibility is set, and as for influence, the government officials sitting at the head table attending our conference themselves...