This short piece is a Jamming remake of Antonioni's Cina. My goal
is to create a testimony for some of the ethnography theory. Here are some questions in my head when I watch Antonioni's Cina , Dose anthropologists’
truly observation from social scientist’s POV can represent their filming
subjects’
existence? Does camera lies? What is the distance between filmmaker and the
subject they observe? What the author bring to the experience of making ethnographic
film? What audiences bring in to the experience of watching ethnographic film?
Who do we gaze at? Are we, “the other”, being gaze at?
Antonioni's Cina
was occasioned by a commission from the Chinese government to make a
documentary portrait of post-Cultural Revolution China. As a documentary
poetics, Antonioni declaring his desire to capture the original image to
represent China graphically and to write the culture of China honestly in the
film's introduction and voice-over narration. Antonioni observed Chinese
society under look from Chinese government and without much knowledge about the
subject. Does people in his film also performed under government’s
order too? Does his film fairly
represent that period of history?
I am an insider also a outsider. I am a Chinese, but I am also a
stranger for the Chinese society in 1972, which was during the Cultural
Revolution era. This thought makes me think about my relationship with the
other Chinese community, downtown New York Chinatown, where mostly fujianness,
and guangdongness poor or elderly Chinese immigrants live there. As a Chinese filmmaker,
I frequently is expected by audience to tell story from insider’s
POV about Chinese community. Actually the experience of shooting in Chinatown
totally put me on the position of naive outsider. So I start share the same
thought with Antonioni.
I try to show that culture's appearance may not translatable to
us. First part of this video is a reedit of the original movie with Chinese
subtitle. Since the original film was immediately denounced by the Chinese
government as "anti-Communist" and not screened in China until 2004.
It must be such a big event for Chinese people in the move, but almost none of
them able to see themselves. It's such ironic for most anthropology
documentary, which made for not to be seen by the filming subjects. Which also
left them powerless as ' lab rats’. The Chinese subtitle was made
students, for language translation practice. People watch that films on YouTube
are mostly like me, only know the language but barely know the history.
The second part has repeated the same voice over by a young
female voice on my Chinatown’s observation footages. My newly
recorded same voice over speak by a female voice create language barrier for
audience to understand. But the image about food and market, tells a well-known
fact about Chinese, we are obsessed with food no matter where and when we are.
In Chinatown, people are gazed by camera and gazed at camera. Without shine
looking and pretended friendly as in 1972. They have direct equal relation ship
with camera, but the interpretation narration doesn’t have meaning for neither
Chinese nor American audiences. So American audience can experience with their
own eyes and own understanding as a outsider.
In the third part, audience finally able to read the meaning of
voice over, but they are separated from any images. How to understand text
depends on audiences memory from provinces video and their other memory bring
in to the watching experience. The written text and sound force audience to
create their own image from memory outside the present.
The high-pitch introduction song, is the out casted propaganda
song about Mao and his glamour time. It plays over and over, is also an ironic
element for this piece. There is an idiom says” when the lies repeat thousand of
time, it will become truth. ” Which will not happen in this case.
