Floating as the Keyword: Chinese Independent Documentary Films in Post-Socialist China

Independent documentary films have made floating population– such as the migrants and people who flow from place to place– a prominent screen scene against China’s social and cultural landscapes since the 1990s. This study investigates how a “floating generation” of Chinese filmmakers has been formed and represented as an imagined community in China’s post-socialist context through Chinese independent documentaries. An attempt to excavate and examine the problems behind the instable but also flexible status of Chinese independent filmmaking within the state censorship, my study focuses on the implications of the keyword “floating” as they unfold along the development of Chinese independent documentary films. In a case study of Jia Zhangke’s three documentaries, In Public, Dong and Useless, my study analyzes the relationship between independent documentaries and China’s campaign of “constructing a harmonious society”.MAS