Wu Wenguang interview     

I was born in 1956 in the Yünnan Province in China. During the Cultural Revolution that followed, my father was sent away for 13 years to be re-educated. All my family was dispatched to various parts of China during that time. I too was sent to the countryside for four years, as was my sister. At the age of 79, my father returned. We were told my father had "problems", so at first I didn’t feel sad about his absence. I truly believed the Party was right and, like others, I wanted to follow their ideology. I hated my father and felt shame for what I thought he had brought on our family. I went willingly to the countryside. Then in '78 I went to university to study Chinese and not until '79 did the whole family get re-united.

I became a documentary maker after the era of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. In the years following 1978, me and fellow students and workers started to have doubts about blindly following the Party's ideology. I wanted to express my own ideas, to think in a free way. By "free" I don't mean I wished to follow Western ideas, because that too is an ideology; rather that I just wanted to follow what I thought was right. China changed after '78, from being a closed society to a gradually opening one. I began to read the work of Heidegger, Sartre, Rousseau and others that expressed these free ideas; that is where my major inspiration for my documentaries came from. Like a hungry child, I read a great deal in a short time.

I started to write poetry, which I still do, as well as short stories and a long novel, which charts my development since the Cultural Revolution as I gradually made the transition from '"collectivist'" to "individualist", which took nearly ten years. After graduation from university in '82 I was assigned to a secondary school to teach Chinese. I didn’t choose that work however, and after three years I managed to find a job in a television station as a journalist, producing propaganda advertisements. I found that very boring, so in '88 I moved to Beijing and joined China Central Television (CCTV) on a programme celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Chinese Republic. The programme was similar to a documentary. In the period prior to the Tiananmen Square incident, China was quite open; there was freedom and so we tried to make something worthwhile, not just propaganda. Actually, the whole of Chinese society before Tiananmen Square was very heavily influenced by Western democratic ideas of freedom. We didn't have it though – we just tried to have it.

I have just finished my fifth documentary, but to understand why I became a documentary filmmaker it is important to recognise that Tiananmen Square, in '89, was a watershed in our history. Like many others, I felt excited by the prospect of more freedom. Many people took to the streets, I too went to the Square, but the whole world knows about that day already. I started to develop a new way of thinking; as China was not ready to adopt Western notions of freedom, I had to follow my own convictions and become an independent. Some friends went to France, England and the US to study. I too applied to go. As my friends were leaving China, I thought it would be interesting to produce something about their departure. I wasn't sure it was a documentary, but I started to shoot anyway. At once I came to the realisation that this was what I really wanted to do in life. I had no money for the production, so together with a friend who worked in cinema, we borrowed a Betacam from CCTV. Although I knew how to use the camera I didn’t know anything about documentary – I hadn’t seen any documentaries yet at that time. Only in 1991 did I start seeing any at international film festivals.

At CCTV, we were encouraged to handle subjects in a clear and straightforward manner, so of course, when I made my own film, I made it without music or voiceover. I’d rather use very simple captions relating to places, people and even a summary or brief explanation of events – I never use commentary. It was very satisfying to produce something entirely for myself without having to be restricted by the sensitivities of CCTV. But in order to earn a living, I had to continue working at the station. Then in '92 I began working on a documentary called 1966, Wo De Hong Wei Bin Shi DAI (1966, My Time with the Red Guards) in which I explored my feelings about the Cultural Revolution. I also wrote a book that, together with the documentary, reflected my positive feelings towards it. In '94 I started Si Hai Wei Jia (At Home in the World) a continuation of 1966…, (a continuation of Bumming in Beijing, <Liu Lang Beijing>,which was my first documentary that I started to shoot in 1988, and finished in 1990) with the same five characters that were in the first film. Every five years I visited these people to record how their lives had changed. They are all now living in Europe and the US. As I couldn’t get sponsored in China, I looked for overseas finance. A Chinese friend in Tokyo invested and I also received some funding from an arts festival. So it was that I became the first "independent" documentary maker in China. Now there are a few other independents in documentary, and even one in feature films.

Other than free showings in bars, universities or libraries and those kinds of public places, my documentaries have never been seen on television or in the cinema in China. Not that my work is regarded as politically unacceptable, rather that my films are quite independently produced and the cinemas and television belong to the state. It is very difficult for independents to get permission to show their work in the government-controlled media. The public are not really interested in films that are longer than 30 minutes anyway; if they want documentaries at all, they want short easily understood popular films. However, since '99 more and more young people want to produce documentaries, experimental movies and shorts. Some try to organise screenings and are looking for places to present their work, and in fact we have found some suitable venues in Beijing.

Prior to 1999 I knew my work would not be broadcast in mainland China, so I never even submitted it to the television service. But in '99, an editor from the Beijing studios, who knew that I was filming Jiang Hu (Life on the Road) asked me whether I would let his studio broadcast it. However, the head of that studio turned down his proposal, saying that the documentary did not give the audience a sense of a bright future in China. Now I am in post-production on my sixth documentary. I made my previous films on video with a small crew, but on the last two I have worked with just an assistant using either a Sony PD150 or a Sony 110 camera, and I do all the post-production myself at home with Premiere 6.0 edit software. I have given up using big cameras (like the Betacam), and a full editing suite so as to work alone. In this way I have found the freedom to work like a freelance writer and that makes me extremely happy.

When I begin filming, I don't normally think too much about my approach. The main topic of interest usually emerges during shooting and in the process of adding more people and more events to the film. When I feel all the material I have could form a meaningful documentary, I say to myself, "OK, it’s time to edit" and I do this myself. My way of working enables me to afford a year to make, for example Life on the Road). The title is a popular phrase that means "those who live outside the system". The film follows a group of travelling performers working in rural China. After a week or two they totally accepted me and were completely oblivious of the camera. I lived with them for few months. I don't like to write a script as I prefer to just observe reality. I sat among them and filmed as one of them – just a person with a small camera. In China, if people spend time thinking and talking together it is easy to develop good relationships, because you are seen as a friend, especially after getting drunk together. On one occasion, during a performance, they had a problem with the people of the local village. There was a disturbance and a fight. The police intervened and I tried to find a way to solve their differences, which made it impossible to carry on shooting. I became completely involved because by then they were my friends. When all was resolved we did plenty of laughing, talking and, of course, drinking. I don’t believe in objectivity – the first and most important thing is to develop relationships.

If you are dealing with real people and their life stories it is almost inevitable that issues over privacy will arise. The way I handle it is that if the person I am shooting requests not to be filmed I will, of course, comply. And if I know the content may cause others a problem, I will cut it as well. Unfortunately though, it is sometimes the case that an undesirable effect will not turn up until the film is shown.

Normally there are stories in my movies; although Life on the Road is about one group of performers there are small stories within it. I am interested in people who, for one reason or another, are forced to abandon their position. I like to reflect in my films their desire to pursue their dreams; some go abroad, others stay to realise their dreams, be it the arts or making money. So far, my films have had this in common. I am very happy with the situation I am in and what I am doing here in China. I am not too old, only 46, so I wonder what the future holds for me? I have seen big changes during my life like the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. OK, of course, I have a lot of constraints placed on me in China, but my future is certainly here.

To be honest, I don’t think I have achieved anything in documentary filmmaking yet. What I have done so far is just to do what I want to do. But regarding personal achievement, I would say that I have gradually built up my own style and independent thinking during these ten years of documentary shooting and editing. That is what I am most proud of. So at the moment, all I want to do is make one film after another. However, my own preferred documentary style is not always popular with others, nor even commercially viable. I just came back from Laos where I organised a video workshop for 10-year-old children. Maybe I will go back there to film some documentaries related to the people of Laos, because I really enjoyed my time there and the people as well. Last year I visited some ethnic groups in Yünnan Province where I was born. I shot some material for research purposes, but so far, I haven’t decided what to do with it yet.

I see a big problem ahead now. After '97 more and more young people began to make documentaries. The availability of small digital cameras in China has made it easier for them to become filmmakers. I now see quite a few new films each year; six or even eight, whereas before '97 there would be maybe one a year or even every two years. So I believe this new technology is a big opportunity for the documentary maker. But I don’t think the documentary will ever be big business. However, nobody now can stop young people from making documentary films. I'm not sure about what the future of documentary film will be in China because the present situation makes it so difficult to say. It seems we are just at the beginning and I believe there is hope.

I have just written an article entitled, "Just On the Road", in which I go over what was happening during the '90s. I wanted to reflect on the way I looked at the process of making documentary at that time – my own perspective in a way. At the beginning, I was not clear about ideas like independence and democracy. In the article I wrote that even now I am not sure about the real meaning of independence for documentary making in China. When I started making documentary films, I realised that I was not really free to work how I wanted at CCTV. I complained that CCTV did not allow any real freedoms. So I decided to become an independent and make something for myself, and actually I then managed to make better documentary films. During the '90s it went really well. In those years more and more people in China started looking at ways to make money, including some involved in documentary film. They opened companies to work for the television broadcasters. But I feel that if television is the only source of income for the so-called independent, then we don’t have a real understanding of the word independence. This is just a start; we are trying to learn what it is to be independent as we didn’t make the transition to it through any real freedom. So we could say we are just on the road. I have the feeling that most young people are only trying to make films so as to become famous, and they want in particular to become successful on the international circuit. Their work is of a different nature to mine; they want to achieve quickly, and are not willing to take a long-term approach.

So I don’t know what will happen in this field. What I do know is that the documentary changed my life. I could never have been an artist in fiction, inventing a story. I don’t like dramatisation, and as for reconstruction, I have never used it before, but am just starting to. I don't know enough about it to comment at this stage. I have always looked at the reality of my life, of the situations I found myself in. It is difficult to express, but the documentary is real life for me and in the process of making documentaries I feel that I am facing real life and in this way I do not try to avoid it, I do not try to escape it and that makes be braver – this is very important. I am the person I am through this experience.
© David Goldsmith, Varese, March 2003