Chinese autobiographical documentaries: toward an ethics of filming

Bai Do ORCID: 0009-0007-7735-720X Postgraduate student, Department of History of Western European and Russian Culture, St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Leningrad region, Saint Petersburg, Mendeleevskaya line, 5 baiduorabota@163.com Other publications by this author

After the film "Sherman's March" (1986, USA, dir. Ross McElwee, 155 min.) was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival, autobiographical documentaries with first-person narration have become an important genre of documentary film. With the development of digital technologies and online media platforms, autobiographical documentaries have entered their heyday. New technologies have led not only to the emergence of new forms of non-fiction film images, but also to the formation of new collective identities.

In China, autobiographical documentaries emerged at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, but they were not given enough attention. However, since 2016, also due to the development of digital technologies and network platforms, they have become the main type of creative activity for aspiring Chinese directors and film enthusiasts. And now, a large number of Chinese autobiographical documentaries can be seen at international film festivals, including the Berlin International Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. In 2022, two workshops dedicated to autobiographical documentaries appeared in China to help those who wish to create them.

The works that can be seen on the film market have the following common features: they usually discuss the family trauma of directors, are often built in a crisis narrative structure "raise the problem — solve the problem", and monologues, autobiographies and old family photographs are obvious elements of their form. Due to the advantage of telling a story in the first person, these films are so attractive and convincing and often evoke such strong emotions in the viewer that theoretical research often remains only auxiliary, since rationality in watching and researching these films is often absent. When studying such films, the main attention is often focused either on the literary representation of the director's personal story, or on praising the autobiographical documentary for its formal innovation in relation to traditional documentary practices, as well as for the courage in publicly revealing personal life.

But the available research often overlooks the changing background of filming in these films, their intertextual connections with social themes, as well as classic documentary issues such as performance, subjectivity and rhetoric when it comes to intervening in everyday life through personal video practices.

As if if a director appears in a film as a victim, then the slightest doubt in his statements is more like malicious speculation on the part of the researcher. However, as Laura Rascaroli says in her study of subjective films, the interpretation of such films is not in the interpretation of their texts, but in the director's "act of shooting" ^[1]. This confirms the boldness of this study in raising the question of the subjectivity of the director and the purpose of his filming.

Within the framework of the traditional theory of documentary filmmaking, the filmmaker has always been studied as an element belonging to the symbolic order of the film. Whether it is a performance model, a new documentary, or, previously, a rebellious reflexive model, the subjectivity of the director is often discussed only in the context of aesthetics in terms of the way of representation. It seems that the director can realize his subjectivity at best only through creative processing of reality, but at the same time he never goes beyond the established rules of documentary.

But when aspiring directors claim to "introduce the camera into everyday life" and "turn it into a means to reveal life," then it is necessary to consider the subjectivity of the director in other contexts, pointing to the right to vote implied in the "act of shooting." In addition, it should be recognized that the subjectivity of directors directly affects their understanding of camera methods and functions. Therefore, it is not enough to discuss the subjectivity of the director, distinguishing it by the criterion of truth or falsity, it is necessary to delve into the motives, goals and intentions behind it. Because here we are talking about a moralistic choice based on Kantian ethics ^[2].

A retrospective study of the self can help to more fully reveal the personality and intentions of the director. There are two main counterparts of the "I" in English — "ego" (ego) and "self" (self), respectively ^{[3; p. 363]}. The study of the "I" can be traced back to the end of the XVIII century. Kant distinguished the empirical self as an object or object from the pure ego as an agent. W. James in 1890, in his book "Principles of Psychology", divided the "self" into an object "I" (self as known, me) and a subject "I" (self as knower, I) ^{[4; p. 352]}. He emphasizes the "responsibility of the subjective self for the construction of the object self" ^{[3; p. 364]}. In 1895, Freud introduced the concepts of "id", "ego" and "superego" to describe parts of the personality ^[5]. However, due to the dominance of behaviorist views in psychology from the 1920s to the 1950s, psychologists generally considered the nature of the subjective "I" (I-self) to be indefinable in order to conduct empirical research and instead focused their interest on the study of the measurable object "I" (me-self). The subjective "I" was left to philosophers and religious scholars. It was only in the early 1970s, after the cognitive revolution replaced behaviorism, that the internal psychological processes of the "I" began to be given great importance ^{[4; p. 355]}.

At this stage, different psychologists approached the concept of "I" from different points of view, using different terms. In 1977, H. Marcus introduced the concept of "self-schema" (self-schemata), which differs from self-concept as a passive structure consisting of descriptive information about the individual's own self ^[6]. Self—schemas are cognitive structures based on past experience and are active processing of information about oneself ^{[4; p. 408]}.

In his review of the film "Tracking Down Maggie: An Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher" (1994, Great Britain, dir. Nick Broomfield, 87 min.) British film critic Stella Bruzzi points out an interesting difference between Nick Broomfield — director and Nick Broomfield — actor ^[7]. Therefore, the study of autobiographical documentaries should be aimed at studying the director's ego, which is a real director, represented outside the text, and at studying the director's perception of events. This is what Laura Rascaroli mentioned: the depth of the film largely depends on the director's personal vision ^[1]. Therefore, the subjectivity of the director of an autobiographical documentary differs from the aesthetic subjectivity of the director within the framework of a documentary in a traditional research perspective. Subjectivity in autobiographical documentaries is the cognitive behavioral patterns of the director. The director's perception influences his film thinking, ultimately forming the content, form and values of the film that the audience perceives.

The topic of self-therapy has become popular in autobiographical documentaries in China since 2017. The films "Small Talk" (2016, Taiwan, China, dir. Huang Hui-Chen, 88 min.) and "Get ready before the jump" (2018, USA, dir. Liu Bing, 93 min.), presented at international film festivals, encouraged young directors to follow their example. The directors of films of this genre are usually people who received psychological trauma in their family in childhood. Victims of family relationships become their self-schema. And in the film, they constantly show self-pity. Such films always begin with an irreconcilable confrontation between the mother and the director, and each of them escalates the conflict to the top through complex narrative tensions, and in the finale the conflict ends with reconciliation.

The filmmakers use dialogues and documentary materials, including old family photos and videos taken by other family members, as well as their own memories, to portray themselves and their mothers in front of the audience. They try to present and resolve the family trauma in a dramatic way, thereby completing a self-healing route.

For example, the film "Gather before the Jump" is based on dialogues. Its director Liu Bing uses dialogues with the rest of the participants to create his image and the image of his parents. Liu's dialogue strategy with three supporting characters is usually structured as follows: at first he mentions the family conflict of the interlocutor, and when he does not want to talk about it, he suddenly begins to talk about his family conflicts, trying to provoke the interlocutor into a frank conversation. But his interlocutors in the present tense have already come to terms with the unpleasant experience, or this experience is not as unpleasant as Liu thinks. They do not feel the same feelings that the director has preserved in the present tense. And Liu continues to encourage them to engage in dialogue by telling them about his own experiences. At this point, it is difficult to determine whether the director shows empathy for them and wants to tell their story or, in fact, intends to manipulate the interlocutors to achieve their goals. For example, he uses the words of Keir Johnson and his brother to voice emotions after they have experienced domestic violence — "hate", "anger". These words, characterizing the attitude towards parents, are pronounced by Liu himself only once, and the main characters of the second plan perform the work of repeating and strengthening these words in the film. Moreover, Liu himself uses completely different words — "pain" (pain) and "complaint" (complain). He hides his negative attitude towards his mother, presenting himself as a completely powerless and defenseless victim. And at the same time, he turns the supporting characters into his assistants, borrows their words to hint at their emotions to the audience, and completes the accusation against his mother. And whenever Liu suddenly mentions his experience of domestic violence, it inevitably causes his listeners to be stunned and sympathetic.

Dialogue is a key link in autobiographical documentaries, where the audience is shown conflicts in the relationship between the mother and the director. Episodes with dialogues have a high emotional appeal. However, there is a difference between an interview and a conversation in terms of discursive power. "Conversation as an art form follows the rules of natural occurrence, and topics are maintained or changed through collaboration between interlocutors"^[8]. Most modern autobiographical films look at first glance like a study of the past through the communication of the hero with his mother, but, strictly speaking, such conversations are organized in the form of interviews and look little like scenes from life where dialogues accidentally fall into the frame. That is, the director pulls the hero out of the flow of his daily life and places him in front of the camera specifically for conversation. Therefore, most of the dialogues in current films are not natural, and the content of the conversation is not directed by both interlocutors — this is a performance planned in advance by the director. Viewers may notice that the director, recalling a traumatic event, encounters a wall of misunderstanding: his mother either does not remember what happened at all, or voices her perception of the event. Such a reaction further reinforces the dichotomy between the image of an offended director who has been suppressed in the family for a long time and the image of incompetent parents who ignore the feelings of their children. This is evidenced by the film "The Millennial Beetle" (2022, China, dir. Yang Yuye, 55 min.), shown at the Mothers Film Festival in 2022.

In fact, the directors of such films invite mothers not to a joint conversation, but to the conclusion of the VIO (questions and answers, Q&A). The mother's answer is correct, according to the directors, only if it corresponds to their scheme of sacrifice. It is then that the mother satisfies the scheme of the ideal mother. Thus, despite the fact that the conflict between mother and son is a real fact of life, it is presented in the film, in fact, it turns out to be the result of a director's strategy. The dissatisfaction of the audience arises due to the fact that the mother does not respond to the hero or does not react correctly to satisfy the director's scheme. This is due to the fact that from the very beginning of the film, the viewer enters the situation from the point of view of the director and forms unity with him.

The directors of autobiographical films claim that they use filming as a way of life in order to open up new perspectives in relationships with mothers, but throughout most of the film they repeatedly describe the pain from the past. In their "compulsion to repeat" they show immersion in pain and the "pleasure principle" hiding behind it ^[9]. Thus, the past turns out to be not only an archive of the director's memory, but also the material and time form of the film. The director uses this material flexibly, as well as the "displacement" in the dream work: he can extract any fragment that he remembers. Therefore, when a director interviews his mother, he gives himself the right to decide what to talk about. The mother is invited in this case only to answer the questions set by the director of the storyline. He knows perfectly well what the mother will answer, and the mother is cooperating with the director without any intention in completing the production of "apology" in the "treatment regimen". After a long-term tension of the conflict between mother and son, the problem is resolved suddenly and definitively immediately after the mother apologizes to her son. In most films with "Small Talk" and "Get Ready to Jump" as a reference, when the conflict of the narrative reaches the top, the director builds a dialogue scene. He confronts his mother, recounting all the grievances of the past. The mother apologizes to him, and the years of psychological pain that the director experienced are instantly forgotten — the film ends with a happy ending.

D. LaCapra argues that the objectivity of the representation of trauma is closely related to the psychological distance between the description of traumatic events and the event itself. Neither too close a distance from the event (which only recreates the psychological dynamics at the moment of injury), nor too far (when the traumatist prefers the rules of literary writing) can reproduce a traumatic event ^[10]. The objectivity of the representation of trauma is also related to the choice of language on the part of the director, in particular whether he chooses rhetorical or literal language. The choice of language of different styles reflects the director's unique idea of trauma and the reproduction of trauma ^[11].

The directors constantly turn to the past, which is a confirmation of the clinical feature of the repeated invasion of trauma into memory and the result of their acceptance of the analytical thought preached by Freud in order to explain the present through the interpretation of the past. Some directors, even talking to the audience years later about their previous work, maintain a consistent understanding of their mothers and their traumas. Is it any wonder that the traumatic self ^[12] has become a certain part of their personality and that the distance from the past self generated by time has not caused any changes in the perception of directors of their mothers and their current selves. So did the filming of these works satisfy the director's desire to know the world in its entirety, or did they fulfill some kind of fantasy resolution of his desire? The filming act of the new directors lies between deducing their own trauma in the imaginary world and observing the symbolic order of the narrative work. What is true understanding? This is an opportunity for documentaries to deepen knowledge in the field of philosophy. In fact, self-description carried out by the camera can give new self-knowledge, create an objective perspective when expressing subjective feelings, as well as create new textual forms.

Why did a person decide to demonstrate his injury in public by shooting, rather than keeping it in a diary, secret from everyone? This choice is closely related to the popularity of the media at this particular moment. But unlike the entries in the diary, the "writing" by the camera is simultaneous and present, not subsequent. And since the text is created with the participation of other people on the set next to the director, its perspective is more complete (this happens when the director is not so fixated on the premises of his ego). The duration of the production process is longer, and the events to be filmed can be viewed multiple times within a comprehensive perspective. Thus, the intervention of filming in life provides the director with an opportunity for reflection. The basis of this reflection lies in the director's awareness of the fact that the camera allows him to "distance himself", in the awareness of the "present tense" when recording the camera and the appearance of interobjectivity in relation to his subjects.

For example, a short documentary film by an amateur director "Dialogue" (2022, China, dir. Shen Yan, 16 min.) was shown at the FamilyLens workshop organized by director Gu Xue in June 2022. Despite the fact that the film was shot not from the point of view of the child victim, but from the point of view of the mother, Shen nevertheless achieved emotional and positional transcendence over her own subjectivity. In one episode of the film, Shen and her daughter are watching footage from the previous day of filming, and suddenly the daughter gets annoyed and says, "Mom, you don't love me." Instead of turning the current shoot into a platform for self-justification, Shen, after a while, begins to ask her daughter why she thinks so. The daughter points at the computer screen and says: "You don't like me here." The atmosphere in the film becomes tense and jumps out of the theme that Shen intended to convey: sitting at home in isolation due to the epidemic and spending time with her daughter, she does not understand why it is so difficult for her daughter to do her homework. The film is interrupted for a moment, and the powerful argument that the director used to prove that doing homework with his daughter is very difficult is called into question. Although Shen felt hurt that her daughter misunderstood her and accused her of disliking her, she subsequently carefully watched the video that she pointed to and remembered why her daughter decided so. Shen turns this unexpected event, unrelated to the original thread of the narrative, into a new topic for reflection and captures the search process on camera, which gives the film an authentic and truly self-reflective form. Shen began to look for her own problems, without proving anything and without dressing up in the image of an ideal mother, and "self-reflection" arises in the process of filming and editing, where the camera is a tool for discovering something new, and not a weapon to protect the director's ego. The process of reflection is embedded in the film, which naturally enriches the structure of the narrative, and the interaction between the screens (computer monitor and camera) creates saturation of the time and space of the film.

It is worth noting that there are other directors who are trying to break out of the limitations of their own ego. However, films with such specifics are a rather rare phenomenon among modern self—therapeutic documentaries. Comparing films with these specifics with the rest of the majority allows us to understand more deeply that the cognitive structure of the director affects the vision and shooting, and then directly forms the text of the film. Therefore, only when the director recognizes the dynamics of time, instead of plunging into a firm belief in victimhood, when he dares to weaken control over the right to speech, he allows himself to become the object of interaction of other characters, and also allows the viewer to see his multifaceted and complex nature and opens up the topic, rather than closing himself within his own perspective. Only in this way can the "act of filming" turn into a tool for intervening in relationships and lead to genuine self-healing, and only in this way can a film become a path to real harmony between people, rather than a platform for creating more antagonistic ideologies.