Creating a Space for Dialogue
YUNFEST Organizing Committee
translated by Dena Duijkers
In domestic documentary filmmaking’s quest to find direction, YUNFEST is one of the many experiments at establishing a face-to-face forum for filmmakers, producers and the general public. Screenings are still being organized in cafés. An increasing number of TV stations are airing documentary content programs, such as CCTV’s Jianzheng (Witness) and Yunnan TV’s Jingdian Renwen Dili (Cultural Geography Classics), and even some, like Shanghai TV, have opened documentary film studios. Government-sponsored commercially oriented festivals are also cropping up, the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival being a good example. However, with the old hurdle of production costs overcome, the difficulty documentary filmmakers must face now lies in reaching an audience. Most documentaries, especially those that are more unconventional and do not conform with programming standards, can only be viewed in private or on occasion be screened at film festivals abroad.
There are advantages, however, to this seemingly unfavorable situation. While mainstream media programming continues to be dominated by propaganda and advertising, a space is opening up for more academically oriented and interactive festivals. Leaving the big talk and wheeling and dealing aside, festival organizers are opening the theater doors for people from all walks of life—from the blue-collar worker to the cadre—to see the fruits of their painstaking efforts and experience for themselves what documentary films are. In some cases, viewers are realizing there is a form of cinema that is closer to their lives than blockbusters. Overall, such exposure to documentary film has raised the level of public awareness and even encouraged some to use it to speak out. That in itself is an achievement.
A festival alone cannot accomplish the task of bringing audience and film together. YUNFEST must rely upon the many filmmakers and their work to attract viewers and sustain itself. The 93 entry films of the 2003 edition of YUNFEST along with the 98 films submitted this year show the growing influence of this kind of event. More importantly, they show that more and more people are using documentary film as a means of expression.
An additional strength of the growing documentary film movement is that it is more open than broadcast media to dialogue and cooperation. Chinese cultural institutions are growing in number and in impact. Last year, the Yunnan Provincial Museum’s exhibition of historical photographs of Kunming from the 1940s had an attendance in the tens of thousands. The Yunnan Provincial Library receives over 1,000 visitors a day since moving into its new building. YUNFEST has collaborated with the Yunnan Provincial Museum in the past; this year it is working with the Provincial Library. This is an example of the increasing bridge building between institutions which, combined with the popularity of documentary filmmaking, serves to expand the cultural sphere in public life and enhance the interactive quality of documentary film.
From the beginning YUNFEST has had but one wish—to serve as a three-tiered platform for exchange at the provincial, national and international levels. Therefore the Participatory Visual Education section showcases local filmmakers, the Youth Forum section plays host to students from all around the country, and the Flashback section looks back at documentary classics from Japan. We sincerely hope that voices from around the world will ring out in the space we have opened up under Yunnan’s clear blue sky.
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