CIFF: A Battlefield of Anti-elitism and the Birthplace of Independent Film Criticism

While media and critical discourses on Chinese independent film festivals focus on their conflicts with the authorities, other important dimensions receive less attention. In the second half of the chapter, we examine what Shelly Kraicer calls in his report on the eighth CIFF “internal conflict” between filmmakers, curators and critics/theorists,³⁶ and how this tension helps to tease out CIFF’s effort to create alternative spaces in which different players in the independent film circle can communicate and better understand each other. This also helps the festival itself to become more visible and contributes to its process of self-legitimization and institutionalization. Before turning to that, it is necessary to discuss CIFF’s selfpositioning as a semi-educational institution. As briefly mentioned above, Chinese independent film festivals have been trying to support each other and network to form a strong alliance. For example, Zhu Rikun, founder and former curator of the Songzhuang-based CDFF and BIFF, was also involved in the curation of the third and fourth editions of CIFF; and

Zhang Xianmin, CIFF’s academic leader, is also closely connected to BIFF. It is not uncommon for an independent film to tour at different independent film festivals to increase visibility and aggregate cultural capital, and some similar faces appear at almost every independent film festival. Although failing to attract a wide audience, Chinese independent film festivals have managed to build a community with a sense of camaraderie. The collaboration between different independent film festivals is remarkable, and largely thanks to an adverse political and cultural environment.

However, if mutual support is crucial to the survival of Chinese independent film festivals, it is equally important for them to develop different identities so as to justify their position in the film festival circuit. For instance, Yunfest and CDFF are platforms for the exhibition of documentaries; BJQFF and CWFF are sexuality and gender-themed festivals; and CIFF and BIFF are comprehensive festivals. Apart from showcasing different types of films, independent film festivals also rely on other strategies to build distinctive profiles. Luke Robinson and Jenny Chio notice that the inclusion of the Participatory Visual Education strand, which prioritizes “giving ‘voice’ to otherwise ‘silent’ communities” over the artistic quality of films, has distinguished Yunfest from other independent film festivals, and “has increasingly served as a marker of the festival’s uniqueness and identity.”³⁷ CIFVF firmly positioned itself as a local festival for local audiences and refused to set up awards while also downplaying the importance of filmmakers. By comparison, CIFF aims to foreground its educational function and is committed to nurturing audiences and critics of independent films. To that end, CIFF has always attached great importance to academic forums and has hosted a series of lively discussions on topics such as independent directors, documentary, and experimental film. When explaining the rationale behind the documentary forum at the eighth CIFF, Wang Xiaolu writes,

The study of China independent documentary is currently fragmentary and full of gaps. We hope we can speak out in the forum to make people note the theoretical value of independent documentary. The forum will also display the latest research achievements of these scholars. We anticipate a comprehensive overview and discussion of Chinese documentary so far, and the future research of independent documentary could be promoted in this way.³⁸

CIFF’s academic aims are best manifested in its efforts to document independent films and film festivals. The yearly festival publication includes not only information on the exhibited films, but also accounts from the curators and academic articles from critics and scholars, all in both Chinese and English. An overview of the production and exhibition of independent films in different areas of China appears in a few editions and demonstrates the festival’s ambition to document the development of contemporary independent films. Compared to other independent festivals, CIFF’s endeavor is impressive and unique, and has produced rich material for researching Chinese independent films and film festivals.

Two other regular activities also speak to CIFF’s aspiration to become a semi-educational institution. One is the Youth Film Critic Lecture Program held in 2009 and its continuation, the Independent Film Lecture Program in 2012 and 2014, with the goal of cultivating more independent filmmakers and film critics. The other is the Youth Screening Program, held annually in Nanjing, including screenings of CIFF’s award-winning films and post-screening discussions. This activity has taken place six times since 2009 and has increased visibility of independent films among local audiences. The emphasis on the festival’s educational role can be partly attributed to its proximity to universities as well as to the academic background of two key figures in CIFF, Zhang Xianmin and Cao Kai, both university teachers. According to Cao Kai, “CIFF is an academic platform for intercollege communication”³⁹ and a number of universities in Nanjing form “an essential part of CIFF.”⁴⁰ Not only do local universities provide venues, but university students also make up the majority of CIFF’s audience.

In a recent anthology on the topic of film festivals and activism, Dina Iordanova emphasizes the close connection between pedagogy and activism, and notes that “a special feature of activist festivals is their frequent involvement with educational institutions, which also function as implied stakeholders in the project to mobilize public opinion and nurture committed cultural citizens.”⁴¹ Can CIFF be seen as an activist film festival, given its self-positioning as an independent film educator and its close collaboration with universities? Let us first have a closer look at what constitutes an activist festival. While most film festivals are driven by profit or fame, Iordanova argues that activist film festivals are “engaged in an effort to correct the record on a certain issue by highlighting lesser known aspects for the benefit of improved public understanding.”⁴² She also points out that activist festivals have a specific set of stakeholders: the government and the film industry play very limited roles, and it is usually non-government organizations (NGOs) and charitable trusts which provide financial support for activist film festivals. According to Iordanova’s definition, some themed Chinese independent film festivals such as

BJQFF might be called activist film festivals. One of the organizers of BJQFF, Cui Zi’en, who is also a long-time queer activist, declared that the festival “was started as a platform to question and challenge mainstream culture.”⁴³ Elisabeth L. Engebretsen observes a queer social activism in the fifth BJQFF’s strategies toward expanding inclusion, diversity, and participation, and argues it helps “push queer voices up from the underground, generate self-respect and pride, and present knowledge of non-normative sexuality to the general population.”⁴⁴ In the past few years, media exposure of the authorities’ clampdown on independent film festivals has somehow endowed these festivals with the quality of social activism. Internationally well-known Chinese political activist Ai Weiwei’s involvement in BIFF through the screening and awarding at the tenth edition of Peaceful Yueqing (2012) produced by Ai Weiwei Studio certainly reinforces this impression.

Nonetheless, we should be cautious in attaching the label of activism to Chinese independent film festivals. “Activist” in the Chinese context is a politically sensitive term, almost equivalent to dissident in the eyes of the authorities. To survive in a coercive political environment, it would be unwise for Chinese independent film festivals to claim activist status. In fact, while BIFF and BJQFF probably have a more visible activist agenda, other independent film festivals such as Yunfest and CIFF are relatively low-key in promoting their goals, and are more cooperative with the state out of a desire “to maintain open channels of communication.”⁴⁵ Furthermore, there are not many NGOs and charitable organizations in China and they do not function in the same ways as those in the West. This means independent film festivals, which are not approved by the government, cannot rely on such organizations for continued financial support as activist festivals elsewhere in the world do. Instead of categorizing CIFF as an activist festival, we consider its effort to mobilize critical opinion and nurture audiences for independent films as part of its strategy of self-legitimization and self-institutionalization. However, this emphasis on public enlightenment often puts it in a controversial position. As Paul Willemen argues, “the more a festival pursues an ‘educative’ policy, the more it will be attacked by journalists and the less it will be supported by institutions.”⁴⁶ But attacks on CIFF do not just come from the state or media, but also from inside of the independent film circle, as demonstrated by the Nanjing Manifesto incident.

At a documentary forum entitled Politics, Ethics, and Methods at the eighth CIFF, a group of film academics were invited to discuss ethics in documentary filmmaking. This provoked controversy, especially among filmmakers. A few filmmakers and festival participants drafted a 24-item document titled “Shamans ? Animals” as a formal response to the discussion at the documentary forum and posted it around the festival venues next day. This document has been called the “Nanjing Manifesto” and in it, independent filmmakers repudiate academic hegemony over independent filmmaking. A follow-up open discussion was organized by CIFF at the end of the festival, and the hot debate continued in mostly online forums. Later, CIFF published a collection of transcripts from festival discussions and articles from both sides of the debate. Before analyzing the implications and meanings of this debate, we quote a few items from the manifesto to give some idea about what it looks like:

Critics cannot dictate history. Critics should learn from authors (filmmakers) and not pretend to be their mentors. Artists teach themselves in the course of shooting their films; they establish their own ethical principles.—Cong Feng

Talk too much about theory, and you sound pretentious. Overemphasize theory and you sound authoritarian.—Hu Xinyu

Please use the word “intellectual” correctly and carefully. And please don’t use that word at this kind of independent film festival. It is not a term of praise, but rather a pretext to occupy a position high above the ordinary people. Is it really so hard to be modest and put yourself in someone else’s position?—Wang Shu⁴⁷

Initial impressions of these furious expressions show independent filmmakers’ explicit discontent with critics steering the discourse around filmmaking. They highlight their own identities as authors, and reject film critics and academics in a firm and radical way. A careful reading of the Nanjing Manifesto leads us to detect an anti-elitism and anti-authority tendency among independent filmmakers toward the intellectuals represented by film curators and the academic guests they invited. On the one hand, CIFF is undoubtedly elitist. As discussed earlier, the constitution of CIFF sets an elitist tone for the festival, given the academic background of two main organizers and many jury members, its close relationship with higher education institutions, and its emphasis on academic forums and publications. Furthermore, CIFF’s commitment to enlightening the public and fostering film criticism indicates prioritizing audience over filmmakers,⁴⁸ which sets it apart from the Songzhuang-based festivals. The latter, as Robinson and Chio notice, are “far less open to audience members from outside the Chinese independent film scene.”⁴⁹ It is therefore not difficult to understand the filmmakers’ overt dissatisfaction. A few commentators attributed the construction of the authority of critics over filmmakers to the organization of the film festival—because the invited speakers at the forum were all film critics and academics, while filmmakers were not given equal opportunities to speak for themselves.⁵⁰ In response to this criticism, Zhang Xianmin refers to two kinds of authority, one constructed through artists’ refusal to share and their rejection of criticism, the other constructed through institutions such as film festivals, as a result of lack of transparency in the programming process, curators’ double identity as both film critic and festival curator, and the obscurity of some critical discourse.⁵¹

The Nanjing Manifesto event seems to confirm Peranson’s argument that film festivals can be seen as political actors, because they are subject to pressure from interest groups and are “in constant struggle for power.”⁵² However, this struggle or tension is not necessarily a bad thing and was in fact encouraged by the organizing team, which saw it as a good opportunity to open up the discussion on independent films beyond the festival. After all, CIFF had declared one of its missions as “encouraging communication and interaction between independent filmmakers, audience, and researchers.”⁵³ At the summit of the hot debate on independent filmmaking ignited by the eighth CIFF, Cao Kai posted a thread on his Weibo in which he was optimistic about the conflict manifested in this debate, claiming that independent film fundamentalists would become even more unyielding and contentious in the future, but that real independent film criticism would be established in the process.⁵⁴ Regardless of whether the supporters of the Nanjing Manifesto should be seen as fundamentalists, it seems Cao’s prediction is coming true.

In 2012, in order to continue the debate initiated by the Nanjing Manifesto, Yunfest organized a weeklong forum and invited around 20 independent documentary filmmakers and film critics, including Zhang Xianmin, to attend. The event took place in Yueyang in Hunan province and hence was called the Hunan Meeting (Xianghui). During this meeting, the filmmakers proposed a magazine to record their own experiences and thoughts and enhance dialogue between independent filmmakers, and, subsequently, Film Author was launched.⁵⁵ The editorial committee is composed of 14 independent filmmakers and most of them are also authors of the Nanjing Manifesto. It can therefore be seen as a follow-up action and part of the anti-elitism and anti-authority trend. In its first issue, apart from one by Zhang Xianmin, all articles were written by filmmakers. The magazine includes more articles from critics and scholars in its later editions, but it is primarily a magazine by and for independent filmmakers. Although some articles in Film Author continue the ethos of the Nanjing Manifesto, the independent filmmakers, also as the magazine editors, obviously try to take a more balanced approach. While filmmakers’ experiences undoubtedly take center stage, the magazine does pay attention to film criticism and film festivals. It frequently publishes articles from the curators of CIFF, Zhang Xianmin and Cao Kai in particular, and film scholars, including Lu Xinyu, at whom the Nanjing Manifesto was aimed. Film Author is an e-journal with free access and has a different editor for each edition. There is not a fixed structure and different editors can decide their own topics and style. All these features speak to a grassroots ethos and an attempt to create an alternative space where filmmakers can emphasize their own identity, and facilitate dialogue between critics and filmmakers.

As of June 2016, Film Author had released 11 book-length issues and become an effective platform where independent filmmakers voice their opinions and communicate their working ethics and thoughts about films. It also starts to function as an independent film archive and a discursive space for Chinese independent films, given they have almost no presence in mainstream media and orthodox academic discourse. The appearance of Film Author seems quite timely when authorities are heavily interfering with independent film festivals across the country, and the exhibition and dissemination of independent films has become increasingly difficult. While Film Author was triggered and continuously supported by CIFF, two key members of CIFF, Cao Kai and Zhang Xianmin, have also started WeChat groups. Cao’s group is mostly made up of independent filmmakers and Zhang’s of independent film festival organizers, but both groups include filmmakers, curators, and critics.⁵⁶ Members share information on independent films or independent film festivals and express opinions on related issues. It seems CIFF has indeed helped to create a few alternative spaces in which independent films can be freely discussed and circulated, and different stakeholders of the independent circle can communicate more effectively.

We argue that despite being criticized for its elitist position and authority, CIFF has contributed to the cultivation and maturity of a healthy critical environment for Chinese independent films and in fact for Chinese film in general. In an anthology published in 2010, film scholar Zhu Dake lamented the lack of independent film criticism in China. He pointed out while film is seen as a political tool in China, film criticism has been always in the position of “the tool of the tool.”⁵⁷ Zhu argued that without independent film criticism there will not be true independent films in China. Ironically, it is an unauthorized independent film festival that has made the real effort to foster independent film criticism. Furthermore, we note independent filmmakers’ struggle for discursive power did lead to some adjustments in the organization of festivals, if not particularly at CIFF. For example, in the following year, BIFF started to invite both researchers and filmmakers as speakers at its forums in order to give voice to authors. Curator Dong Bingfeng writes that the conflict exemplified in the Nanjing Manifesto has prompted independent film festivals to reflect on their own position and policies as well as creating a new way of working and a more effective system.⁵⁸ So, if CIFF was a battlefield, both sides have won.