Archaeologies of post-socialist temporalities: Documentary experiments and the rhetoric of ruin gazing. Issue 1 (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huang, Erin Y.
• Is Part Of: Journal of Chinese cinemas. Volume 13:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 42
• Page End: 60
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: Post-socialist Chinese documentary -- digital filmmaking -- representation of time -- digital memory -- urban ruin -- Cong Feng -- Huang Weikai -- experimental film; Motion pictures -- China -- Periodicals; Motion pictures -- Taiwan -- Periodicals; Filmkunst; China; Motion pictures; China; Taiwan; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 791.430951
• DOI: 10.1080/17508061.2019.1591746
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-807X

Abstract

Abstract: Focusing on the independent documentary movement that is also a movement of digital filmmaking in China, this essay examines documentary's mediation of post-socialist conceptions of time through digital filmmaking aesthetics, including ruin gazing, forwarding and reversing, and accelerating and decelerating film speed. In a comparative study of experimental documentaries on post-socialist temporalities in Eastern Europe and China—including the work of Chantal Akerman, Cong Feng, and Huang Weikai—the essay unravels documentary's representation of time that illustrates the "post" as a locus of desires and anxieties, backward and forward glances that create heterogeneous relationships—with their own economy of stasis, velocity, and speed—in relation to the homogeneous and teleological time of Capital.