Who am I? This simple question was the catalyst for Kiki Tianqi Yu’s first book. Compelled to reflect on her own subjectivity while working as a researcher for a BBC-commissioned documentary about China’s modernisation, Yu responded by turning to the problem of how contemporary Chinese ﬁlmmakers have documented their own “I” on camera. Self-inscription, or including oneself at the centre of one’s ﬁlm, has been common amongst Western filmmakers and artists since the 1960s. Yu notes in her intr..

Robinson, Luke

OpenEdition

 
China Perspectives 
2019-4 | 2019
(Re)imagining Chinese Spaces in Urban Africa.
YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person
Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Luke Robinson
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/9757
DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.9757
ISSN: 1996-4617
Publisher
Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine
Printed version
Date of publication: 1 December 2019
Number of pages: 54-55
ISSN: 2070-3449
 
Electronic reference
Luke Robinson, “YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an 
Individualizing China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.”, China Perspectives [Online], 2019-4 |
 2019, Online since 01 December 2019, connection on 30 March 2021. URL: http://
journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/9757 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.
9757 
This text was automatically generated on 30 March 2021.
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YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on
Camera: First Person Documentary
Practice in an Individualizing China.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Luke Robinson
1 Who am I? This simple question was the catalyst for Kiki Tianqi Yu’s
first book. Compelled to reflect on her own subjectivity while working
as a researcher for a BBC-commissioned documentary about China’s
modernisation,  Yu  responded  by  turning  to  the  problem  of  how
contemporary Chinese filmmakers have documented their own “I” on
camera. Self-inscription, or including oneself at the centre of one’s film,
has been common amongst Western filmmakers and artists since the
1960s. Yu notes in her introduction that despite a long history of such
literary expression in China, moving image work in this vein only began
to gather pace with the popularisation of analogue and digital video in
the late 1990s.
2 Consequently, while an established body of literature exploring audio-
visual  self-inscription  already  exists,  its  focus  –  Japan  excepted  –  is
largely  Western.  ‘My’  Self  on  Camera:  First  Person  Documentary
Practice in an Individualizing China is one of a number of recent works
that seeks to broaden that focus. It does so by bringing existing theory
into dialogue with contemporary first-person filmmaking in the People’s
Republic of China to ask: what kind of Chinese “I” emerges from these
practices, and how might it be distinct?
3 Yu argues that two key characteristics of this “I” are its relationality
and multiplicity.  In  contemporary  Chinese  self-inscription,  the  self  is
YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice...
China Perspectives, 2019-4 | 2019
1
always relative. Despite the withering of the socialist legacy, individuals
are still bound by traditional obligations into a number of social roles,
most obviously familial and gendered. Though the state has withdrawn
from much public space and provision, this loss shapes the relationships
within these spaces, and the subjectivities that emerge there, as surely
as its presence did. Yu thus uses “first-person documentary practice” in
preference  to  other  potential  terms  (including  autoethnography,
autobiography, and the Chinese si yingxiang 私影像, or “private image”)
precisely because she believes it captures the ambiguous intersections
between personal, collective, public, and private that characterise both
contemporary China and these films. “First-person” also allows Yu to
extend  this  sense  of  relationality  to  filmmaking  itself.  Chinese  self-
inscription may be a genre or an aesthetic, particularly of the amateur,
but it is also an “action” or performative act. The filmmaker does not
simply document him- or herself  on camera; through the filmmaking
process, he or she “further constructs [their] own self as an individual,
in relation to others, society and the state” (p. 16). These directors also
use  filmmaking  communicatively,  to  bridge  difference  in  its  various
forms.  Yu  here  positions  first-person  documentary  filmmaking  as  a
socially engaged and political activity through which those behind the
camera explore a number of different social identities: daughter, son,
citizen,  peasant,  and  filmmaker,  amongst  others.  She  is  thus  as
interested  in  how  the  practice  of  filmmaking  is  implicated  in  the
construction of these “I’s” – including not just the making but also the
circulation and reception of these films – as in the formal qualities of
the documentaries discussed.
4 Structurally,  the book falls  into two parts of  three and five chapters
respectively. The first half considers the formation of the private self
within the domestic sphere.  Chapters One and Two complement one
another. In both, filmmakers use the camera to challenge family norms,
and to try and reconnect with relatives. They simultaneously perform
the role of insider and outsider; as such, the circulation of these films
was controversial, generating debate about whether domestic problems
should be made public through filmmaking and film screening. Yet this
controversy  was  heavily  gendered,  with  the  female  filmmakers
considered in Chapter One – Yang Lina 楊荔納, Wang Fen 王分, and Tang
Danhong 唐丹鴻  –  facing more opprobrium than Hu Xinyu 胡新宇,  the
male director who is the focus of the second chapter. The patriarchal
structure  of  the  family  is  thus  replicated  in  the  field  of  Chinese
documentary  filmmaking  more  broadly.  In  contrast,  Chapter  Three
explores the nostalgia of two younger filmmakers – Shu Haolun 舒浩論
and Yang Pingdao 楊平道 – for the traditional family home, and how the
invocation  of  the  latter  is  central  to  both  directors’  construction  of
selfhood  on  screen.  Here,  the  personal  speaks  to  broader  issues  of
development and modernisation, particularly the impact of urbanisation
on family networks and traditional domestic spaces. Chapters Four to
Eight  address  the  formation  of  the  public  self.  Again,  the  first  two
chapters form a pair, with chapters Four and Five both focusing on the
YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice...
China Perspectives, 2019-4 | 2019
2
films of Xue Jianqiang 薛鍳羗and Wu Haohao 吳昊昊.  Here, Yu argues
that  the  combative  and  aggressive  nature  of  both  filmmakers’  work
reflects the absence of community in urban space. Xue and Wu’s films
can be understood as attempts to bridge that communicative gap, while
also illustrating the traditional social and ethical forces that continue to
shape  this  emerging  sense  of  public  self.  Chapter  Six  considers  Ai
Weiwei’s 艾未未 Disturbing the Peace (Lao ma ti hua 老媽蹄花, 2009), the
formation  of  the  activist  self  in  relation  to  the  state,  and  the
construction of the artist’s image in relation to the collective. Chapter
Seven echoes this discussion in its analysis of the tensions inherent in
Wu Wenguang’s 吳文光 Village Video Project (Cunmin yingxiang jihua 村
民影像計劃,  2006-ongoing),  particularly  the  question  of  rural  self-
representation  within  elite  participatory  projects,  and  the  role  of
different documentary aesthetics in the formation of a peasant sense of
self. Finally, the last chapter considers live streaming (zhibo 直播) and
online  self-presentation,  while  suggesting  further  directions  the
investigation of first-person filmmaking in China might take.
5 ‘My’ Self on Camera is perhaps most compelling in its consideration of
Chinese first-person documentary as a form of social action, and less
detailed  in  its  theorisation  of  the  practice’s  formal  qualities.  The
author’s insistence on the politics of such filmmaking is well taken; the
issue of what is lost in the transition away from long-form observational
documentary to a more personal focus is nonetheless one that, for this
reader,  shadows  the  book.  However,  for  those  of  us  who  teach
documentary, Yu’s work will be invaluable in expanding the focus of the
curriculum. It’s a shame, then, that so few of the films she considers
here are commercially available, inside or outside of China – a separate,
and ongoing, infrastructural problem.
AUTHOR
LUKE ROBINSON
Luke Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, United
Kingdomluke.robinson@sussex.ac.uk
YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice...
China Perspectives, 2019-4 | 2019
3


YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/pdf/9757

YU, Kiki Tianqi. 2019. ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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