Independent Cinema in China: State, Market and Film Culture

审查，边缘化和很大程度上难以接近，独立电影在中华人民共和国被广泛认为是近期中国电影的重要成就。它作为一种动态的力量，挑战官方话语中建构的艺术、真理、现实和伦理的概念，探索被主流媒体忽视或扭曲的另类空间、场所、声音和图像。然而，自2012年以来，中国全国范围内的独立电影节和组织被关闭，这些作品及其周围的物质文化可能会消失，这是一个真正的危险。本项目旨在保存中国过去三十年制作的独立电影，并对这一独特但研究不足的电影文化进行全面研究。这个为期四年的国际项目由来自英国和中国的电影学者（纽卡斯尔大学的Sabrina Qiong Yu，伦敦国王学院的Chris Berry，苏塞克斯大学的Luke Robinson，北京电影学院的张献民）领导，他们都是中国独立电影的积极研究者和坚定倡导者，他们与中国独立电影圈有着良好的个人和专业关系，并得到一名研究助理的支持。我们将与众多独立电影人、策展人以及一系列行业合作伙伴密切合作，并由一个由全球10位杰出的中国独立电影制作人、策展人和学者组成的多国顾问委员会提供支持。我们想了解中国独立电影是如何被制作、传播和接受的，以及它与国家和市场的关系如何塑造了这种电影。为此，我们将对200位独立电影人进行问卷调查，并对25位具有代表性的导演进行半结构化访谈。我们也会调查独立电影的观众，并采访其他利益相关者，如电影节的策展人，以及致力于制作和发行独立电影的电影公司/基金的首席执行官。我们将通过专著，学术会议和随后的选集，学术期刊文章和会议小组/论文向学术受众传达研究结果。我们将在欧洲建立第一个中国独立电影资料馆，保存罕见的中国独立电影收藏和正在消失的电影制作和展览文化。它不仅将为子孙后代保护文化遗产，而且还将“另类”地、忠实地记录社会主义和后社会主义中国的社会变迁和历史创伤，这在其他地方是无法获得的。我们将提倡使用独立电影，特别是纪录片，作为高等教育中现代中国研究和教学的第一手资料。将建立首个中国独立电影在线数据库、YouTube频道和其他数字平台，以提高对中国独立电影的认识，激发人们对资料馆的兴趣。该项目也将惠及非学术团体，如电影人、电影行业和公众。为实现这一目标，我们将与业界领先的合作伙伴谢菲尔德纪录片节和CNEX在中国合作，在北京举办谢菲尔德纪录片节-CNEX纪录片峰会，并在英国谢菲尔德纪录片节举行中英联合制作小组讨论。我们将与英国四个不同城市的当地艺术影院、中国视觉节（伦敦）、中国电影论坛（曼彻斯特）和诺丁汉大学电影工业研究所共同策划英国电影之旅。为了纪念电影资料馆的启动，将在纽卡斯尔的泰恩赛德电影院举办电影周，在纽卡斯尔大学举办研讨会，并在盖茨黑德的波罗的海当代艺术中心举办关于中国独立电影三十年历史的多媒体展览。

Censored, marginalized and largely inaccessible, independent cinema in the People's Republic of China is widely recognised as an important achievement of recent Chinese cinema. It functions as a dynamic force to challenge the concepts of art, truth, reality and ethics constructed in official discourses and to explore alternative spaces, places, voices, and images that have been ignored or distorted in mainstream media. However, following a nationwide shut-down of independent film festivals and organizations in the PRC since 2012, there is a real danger that these works and the material culture surrounding them may disappear. This project aims to preserve independent films made in the PRC in the past three decades and to conduct comprehensive research into this unique but under-researched film culture. This four-year international project is led by film scholars from UK and China (Sabrina Qiong Yu, Newcastle University; Chris Berry, King's College London; Luke Robinson, Sussex University; Xianmin Zhang, Beijing Film Academy), all active researchers and steadfast advocates of Chinese independent cinema who have excellent personal and professional connections with Chinese independent film circles, and supported by a Research Assistant. We will work closely with a large number of independent filmmakers and curators as well as a range of industry partners, supported by a multi-national Advisory Board comprised of 10 prominent filmmakers, curators and academics of Chinese independent cinema around the world. We want to understand how Chinese independent cinema has been produced, circulated and received, as well as how its relationship to the state and the market has shaped this cinema. To that end, we will conduct a questionnaire-based survey of 200 independent filmmakers and semi-structured interviews with 25 selected representative directors. We will also survey audiences for independent films and interview other stakeholders such as the curators of film festivals and the CEOs of film companies/funds which are committed to the production and distribution of independent films. We will communicate the findings to academic audiences via a monograph, an academic conference and a subsequent anthology, academic journal articles and conference panels/papers.We will launch the first Chinese independent film archive in Europe in which a rare collection of Chinese independent films and a disappearing film production and exhibition culture are preserved. It will not only safeguard cultural heritage for future generations, but also keep an 'alternative', faithful record of social changes and historical trauma in socialist and post-socialist China that is unobtainable elsewhere. We will advocate the use of independent films, documentaries in particular, as first-hand sources for research on and teaching of modern China within higher education. The first Chinese independent film online database, a YouTube channel and other digital platforms will be set up to enhance awareness of Chinese independent films and stimulate interest in the archive. The project will also benefit non-academic communities such as filmmakers, film industries and the general public. To enable this, we will collaborate with leading industry partners Sheffield Doc/Fest and CNEX in China to hold a Sheffield Doc/Fest-CNEX Documentary Summit in Beijing and panel discussions on UK-China co-production at Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK. We will curate a UK film tour together with local art-house cinemas in four different UK cities as well as China Visual Festival (London), Chinese Film Forum (Manchester), and the Institute for Screen Industries Research at Nottingham University. To mark the launch of the film archive, there will be a film week at Newcastle's Tyneside Cinema, a symposium at Newcastle University, and a multi-media exhibition on the history of Chinese independent cinema over three decades at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.