Title: Dream-walking in digital wasteland: Observations on the uses of black and white in Chinese independent documentary
Abstract: AbstractIn the past two decades, an alternative film practice in China has actively engaged with digital media, yielding a robust body of DV works, fiction and non-fiction alike. In this article, I trace an evolving trend which uses a black and white ‘digital palette’, visible particularly in independent documentary, and I analyse its aesthetic and socio-political implications. Focusing on Huang Wenhai's Meng you/Dream Walking (2005) and Huang Weikai's Xianshi shi guoqu de weilai/Disorder (2009) and their different portrayals of the state of ‘dream walking’ on both individual and massive scales, I probe how they use black and white to move and push the sliding-door between realism, naturalism and surrealism as a means of redefining documentary realism and film-making in the digital era. These unique works boldly explore the new media to seek fitting texture and form for a turbulent postsocialist society bereft in chaos and confusion.KEYWORDS: independent documentaryDVmonochromerealism/surrealismpostsocialism
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 9
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