Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 45：Creation and continuity (3): revision and motivation

Yesterday evening (6 July), the second cut of Hu Tao’s film ‘Favour’ was screened at a discussion workshop. Hu Tao’s film was made last year and had a first cut, but he didn’t think it was good enough. This year, the second cut was a revision of the first cut (first draft). Whether it’s a big change, a medium change or a small change, it’s a continuous process of creating a film. I’ll put the revisions to the film about Hu Tao in this series of notes, entitled “Revisions”. I expect to write a number of articles on this subject, as ‘revision’ is, after all, a sensitive point of ‘creation and continuity’, involving many issues of creation.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 44: Creation and continuity ( 2): Experience – location – positioning

In 2017, I started to experiment with my video creation under the title of “autobiography”. The term “autobiography” does not necessarily mean “memoir” or “self-reflection”. I prefer to understand it as a kind of attitude and a way of doing things.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 43: Editing Notes for The Autobiography (2)

In 2017, I started to experiment with my video creation under the title of “autobiography”. The term “autobiography” does not necessarily mean “memoir” or “self-reflection”. I prefer to understand it as a kind of attitude and a way of doing things.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 42: Editing Notes for The Autobiography (1)

The first draft of the film “Autobiography: The Struggle” was produced like the ground was broken. Only can I understand the struggle and torment of the process. This kind of creation is really a process of making a hole. Finally, I poked my head out of what I thought was a hole. It is full of emotions.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 41: Editing Notes for The Autobiography

In my previous notes on “Facing”, I asked “why (must) I face”. This is a question that contains a certain “way of being”, at least for me personally. Otherwise it is just “living a sloppy life”.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 40: Reading MemoryDocumentarians”

It took me three days to make the opening of the new film (about three minutes), using material from an interview I did with my mother. I interviewed my mother a total of two times when she was alive. The first time was in 1994. It was a taped interview made for the book about my father. The second time was in 1999. It was a video interview made for the same purpose. In both interviews my mother talked about my birth. What surprised me was that in the first interview my mother told me a “secret”. The reason for my surprise was that my mother had told me this untold story.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 39: Talking is the Road – Preface to “Walking on Earth: Follow-up Interviews and Survey Report on Contemporary Chinese Documentarians”

​”Talking is the Road”: I use these words that I like to describe Li Xiaofeng and Jia Kai’s book Walking on Earth: Follow-up Interviews and Survey Reports on Contemporary Chinese Documentarians. The book consists of two parts: “follow-up interviews” and “survey reports”. As I understand it, the former is “paving the way”, paving a road with conversations, introducing documentary filmmakers to the reader. The latter is similar to a “laboratory”, where the documentarians’ current existence, their creative trajectory, the extension or termination of their possibilities, as well as the emotions and hopes that accompany them. In the latter case, in my personal experience, this is the first time I have read such a “survey” that combine documentarians outside the system (independent production) and inside the system.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 38: Seven films, Seven Realities

Seven mainland documentaries have been selected for the 2018 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (TIDF): Lone Existence (dir. Sha Qing), Expressionism (dir. Xu Ruotao), Holly Bible 2 (dir. Li Hongqi), The Days 3 (dir. Wei Xiaobo), Turtle ROck (dir. Xiao Xiao), Shang Ajia (dir. Jin Jiang) and Dumb Men (dir. Hu Tao).

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 37: Portion and Enlargement – Zhu Shengze’s Another Year

Another Year can be introduced in one sentence: 13-meals time in a year for a working family in Wuhan. In terms of image composition, it is 13 fixed shots in the order of January to December, with the last one rotating back to the beginning of the following year.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 36: Facing Reality, Flying or Falling apart – Gu Tao’s Taming the Horse

Before I talk about the film, I’d like to tell you about Gu Tao, with whom I had an encounter 18 years ago. In 2000, when I was back in Kunming, I was contacted by a man from a local radio station who said he was an evening programmer with a program on music and reading, and wanted to ask me to do a program. This was the first radio programme in China to invite me to “talk on the radio”. I was curious about the person who contacted me. He was Gu Tao, in his early 20s at the time, with a very young face, and he said to me that he knew I did documentaries. But he had not seen them and only had read my documentary column in the then Book City magazine. He invited me to do a programme because of my writing.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 35: Thoughts of Sako Makoto——Self and Others

Liu Xiaolei sent a link to Japanese director Sako Makoto’s film “Self and Others” to the Qinjiatun group. I immediately watched it, because Sako is really an old friend. I didn’t know this film. So I watched it and wrote down some impromptu thoughts.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 34: Creation and Continuity (1): Choice – Fixation – Theatre

Notes on “Creation and Continuity”, which I started writing last year, concerns both the creation of the new director’s debut feature and “creative intensity and precision” (not just “creative continuity”). It is about the “creative vitality” of the director (not just “creative continuity”). These notes are not about theories and concepts, nor do I “analyse the business cards” of the masters (not my speciality or interest), but are only about the creative dynamics and trajectory of “fellow travellers” (not a “narrow vision”, just limited time and energy).

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 33: Shazi Ying, Remember! – Shao Yunzhen’s My Village 2011-2016

The final screening of Shao Yuzhen’s new film in Qinjiatun took place on 1st of October. Shao Yuzhen, who lives in the village of Shaziying in Shunyi, Beijing, has been involved in the Villagers’ Video Project since 2005, when she took up DV and completed her first short film, I Shoot My Village, at the age of 55. Since then, she has continued filming in the village and by 2012, she had completed five feature-length documentaries under the title “My Village for XX Years”.

Post-screening – Written after the Caochangdi Weekend Online Bilibili Streaming on 24 September 2021

On Friday night, 24th September, it was the turn of my film Investigating My Father to be the Caochangdi Weekend live broadcast on Bilibili. The highest audience figure for the live screening was 2,150 people (a Bilibili record). For the post-screening exchange we gathered in our usual venue, the Tencent conference room (the maximum number of participants was 68). After host Mengqi’s opening remarks paved the way for my appearance, the first thing I said was, “Creation is bliss”.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 30：Farewell, Tu Haiyan

Yanzi wrote a long email, confessing her inner creative struggle, conflicts, and choices. I had not heard from Yanzi in the past month; I understood that she was thinking things over. Immediately after reading the email I felt regret that Yanzi might give up on her first film, which was nearing completion.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 29：Instead of Throwing Stones at a Cesspit, Turn around and Plant a Tree

I use this slightly lengthy subheading to show my state of mind. During my period in the village when I returned at the beginning of the winter, the old people, in their memories and descriptions of the current situation, sent by Mengqi from 47km, talked of “ruins”. This could be considered a kind of “realist epistemology”. One of the effects of this is to have enough knowledge and understanding of what has happened before and what is happening now, including what might happen in the future, to ensure that you won’t feel calm. But at least you won’t get scared, break out in a cold sweat, get discouraged and think it’s the end of the world.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 28: Reading the Village: Memory → Fear, Ruins, Relics, Growth, Flight

Zhang Mengqi’s notes on the village, ‘Jiangjiawan: Rereading Memories’, begins with a transcription of an interview from six years ago (2012), quoting the interviewee, Wang, talking about his situation at the time of ‘Land Reform’. He was seven or eight years old, his parents had passed away, he was an orphan, and he lived with his grandmother and uncle.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 27: Zhang Huancai

I have been fortunate enough to know certain people over the course of my life, and Zhang Huancai is one of these. I’m lucky that Huancai is a young man from Shijiazhai, Shaanxi Province, who has had raging literary ambitions since he was in high school, who lives in the countryside, and, once the camera was in his hands, immediately held on to it, held his breath, and focused on the surrounding villagers, including his own wife. In eight years he has produced the six feature-length films that make up the “My Village” series. My work turned a corner in 2010 due to various influences, one of which was the “village videos” of Huancai.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 26: Investigating My Father in Songzhuang

I finished Investigating My Father in 2016. It was screened in Songzhuang, Beijing in mid-April the following year. The screening took place on a Saturday afternoon. At a time when independent video screenings were becoming scarce, Songzhuang was still a stronghold. I felt this screening was “an event”, primarily because I had a new film and had finally found in this environment a place to meet the audience.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 25: Women’s Rise and Fall

Women have a natural affinity with the ‘personal image’, which belongs to them first and foremost. But ‘the brightest are easily defiled’. But is it true that the sensitive and delicate women who are born with creative qualities are also fragile and easily broken? Is this the case?

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 24: Image as Writing: Fiction, Everything and Nothing

Returning to the question at the beginning of the essay, “What is fiction?” For us, whether “video writing”, or “video prose”, or “video fiction” – there is no answer.

“Fiction”, which is nothing, is everything. An excerpt from a saying about fiction (one I like): fiction is the pushing of the unspeakable to the extreme.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 23: Image as Writing →From Fiction

I am increasingly of the opinion (at least in the last 15 years) that it is better to pursue “personal images”than to talk about “independent images”. The so-called independent image (once called “underground cinema”, as I experienced it in the 1990s) is, to put it bluntly, a kind of ideological trademark (a veneer) that some people are willing to use (a discursive habit, which I see as academic laziness, of using “underground”, “banned”, “power of resistance”, etc. The title of my speech for a seminar on the anniversary of some independent film festival in China was, “Independence is a verb”).

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 22：A Cat and the Everyday, Conversation is the Way

Zhang Mengqi’s Viewing Material : Scenes of ‘Old Man He’ is three scenes in the life of an old man recovering from a serious illness in the village of 47 Kilometres.  After watching it, I felt like writing something as a follow up, as a “reflection” on viewing this filmmaker’s work.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 21：Memory, Exploration and Detail

As 2016 ends, it’s time for the Folk Memory Project to start its winter filming.  Since the summer of 2010, when the Folk Memory Project started, winter is a time for participants to return to their villages to film, with 2017 being the seventh of these winters.

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 20：Flying

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 19：Yu Shuang’s Huangpo Tan

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 18:  Overcoming Fear and Fly – Watching the First Cult of Lolo’s Fear

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 16:  A Legend – Watching the First Cut of Yu Shuang’s New Film The Old Sister of Huangpotan

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 15: Editing Team – Summary of the work of the Folk Memory Project 2020 II

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 14: Footage Workshop

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 13: Gao Ang and Her Jiaoxing Village II

Gao Ang participated in the workshop discussion after watching the third version of Jiaoxing Village in June last year. The difference between the third and first versions is that the first is about “land rotation”, that is, the relationship and changes between rural land ownership and management rights, a huge and complex current rural issue. As I understand it, this is a typical case of the “topic first” or “seizing your topic” documentary filmmaking method. I have an idea (or find an issue) and it fits (or is close to) my own understanding of and judgment about society, so I start to work on it (fieldwork, interview,  data collection and then shooting, etc.).

 

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 12: Gao Ang and Her Jiaoxing Village: Looking Back

Today is 11 January 2021. This is the eighth article of the new year. Writing three articles in eleven days is in line with my intentions and my expectations of myself. I live with a group of people who have things to write and want to interact with one another through writing. 360 articles a year isn’t enough. I believe that thought is a knife which needs to be sharpened. Otherwise, it becomes dull and rusty without being aware that it cannot cut anything. My experience is, the best way to keep sharp is by writing. 

Wu Wenguang’s Film Notes 11: Landing

This article is about our ‘weekend screenings’, which start with Xiaobo’s Farewell My 19 this Friday [ed. note: 9 January 2021]. It’s worth noting (recording) our new activities for 2021. 

Image becomes writing, freedom is a verb – Writing for the opening of the “Image Writing” workshop

Notes 5: Premiere

There is an editing software called Premiere. Many people probably know it and use it. I am a long-time user of Premiere, starting with version 1.0 in 1988. That was probably the earliest version of Premiere. I now recall how I felt when I first used it. You could describe it as a kind of “ecstasy”, like I had finally come across a spring of water in the desert.

Image becomes writing, freedom is a verb – Writing for the opening of the “Image Writing” workshop

Notes 4: Constitution

When image writing is carried out in the workshop, what does constitute the content?

My opinion has always been that creativity cannot be taught. However, you can learn and exchange ideas to create.

Workshops are a good way. Therefore, I have always called my teaching on image creation at universities, film festivals or art institutions “workshops” rather than “courses.”

Image becomes writing, freedom is a verb – Writing for the opening of the “Image Writing” workshop

Notes 3: Pathway

In the “warm-up talk” for the Image Writing workshop, I talked about “direction” and “intention” and realised that this is a topic that cannot be overlooked. The practice and discussion of “image writing” carried out at a specific time and place is indicative. It’s rooted in a specific context. […] In other words, it’s not a general concept, it’s not generalisable, nor is it a universal truth. It is an action embodied by the Folk Memory Project. This is “pathway”.

Image becomes writing, freedom is a verb – Writing for the opening of the “Image Writing” workshop

Notes 2: Direction

Following the previous notes which focus on “intention”, I will talk about “direction”, that is, what kind of “unintended” works may grow out of “image writing”.

Image becomes writing, freedom is a verb ——Writing for the opening of the “Image Writing” workshop

The “Image Production” workshop is one of the creative trainings conducted by the Folk Memory Project group of Caochangdi Workstation. A new round of workshops will start in January 2021, with the theme “Image Writing”.

Shao Images and Shao’s Expressionism

“Shao Images” was established because “Shao Yuzhen’s way of filming determines the composition of the film”. Her so-called “editing” means simply putting original footage through editing software.

A Self-portrait of A Dancer And the Story of Three Generations of Women

At the beginning of the film Self-Portrait with Three Women, a dancer holding a flashlight walks into the rehearsal hall. In the next scene, the camera captures the dancer’s face through her legs. She is saying: ‘This is my first dance work and a work related to myself. The name of the work is Self Portrait.’

Sha Qing’s Lone Existence: Thinking Activates Memory

I have never watched Sha Qing’s previous films. Lone Existence is the first one I watched. It belongs to the kind of bold work which does not conform to “characters”, “events” and “conflicts” in conventional documentaries. “Story” is completely unbounded and in a style of self-talking.

Shao Yunzhen,
A Rural Woman Who Uses DV as A Weapon

Caochangdi Workstation launched China Village Documentary Project in 2005. Ten villager filmmakers from nine provinces were selected from the applications and each completed a film about their villages on their own. By 2010, Shao Yuzhen, Jia Zhitan, Zhang Huancai, and Wang Wei have been shooting, and each of them has completed three feature films.

Treating and Me

Around 2000, I returned to Kunming, bought a house outside the city, and took my mother to live there. The old house in the city has been vacant from then on. In the summer of 2007, my 88-year-old mother passed away. After taking care of my mother’s funeral, I returned to my hometown at No. 6 Shangyi Street. I went back to the old house to look for the proof of grave ownership of my father who died 18 years ago and to arrange joint tomb for my parents.