June 4 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising in China.   We’re tackling the historic occasion in many ways here on TakePart and I wanted to take a little time to explore how the event has been represented on screen in documentary and narrative film and also how it influenced current Chinese cinema, specifically the work of Jia Zhangke.

It seems like a good idea to start by looking at the two main documentaries that shed light on what happened at Tiananmen Square, The Tank Man and The Gate of Heavenly Peace.

The Tank Man is a documentary that PBS’s Frontline made about the famous “tank man” that stood unarmed(see photo above) in front of a group of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace on June 5, one day after the crushing events of June 4th. Western journalists captured the historic event and the man became an enduring symbol for the power of protest and freedom. The film begins 17 years after the event and centers on the search for the” tank man.”

And if you were wanting to TakePart in an easy way tomorrow you can actually watch the entire documentary on Frontline’s website. Watching a film may not seem like much, but remembering and taking time to learn about the past is, I think, quite crucial to how we see the world today. For now, the first few minutes of the film:

Another documentary that looks at the Tiananmen events is called The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Directed by a whole host of people (Geremie Barmé, David Carnochan, Richard Gordon, Gail Hershatter, Carma Hinton) many people feel that this is the definitive documentary account of the 1989 demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.  Given the recent actions of the Chinese government and the general apathy amongst youth, the below clip from the film seems all the more relevant:

Moving away from documentary and into narrative cinema, one of my favorite films from 2008, Summer Palace, deals with what it meant to be a young person during the protests of 1989.  The film, directed by Lou Ye tells the story of Yu Hong(played by the amazing Lei Ho) and her experience at Beijing University in 1989.  The protests of the time are juxtaposed with her intense romantic relationship with a fellow student making it a powerful film about the intensity of love and political ideals and what happens when both are let down.

It is also important to note that Summer Palace was banned in China after it played at the Cannes in 2006 as Lou Ye had not received permission from the Chinese government to bring it to the festival. More than that though, Mr. Lou himself was banned from making movies for five years.  Luckily you can easily get the film here in the US via Netflix, you can even watch it instantly on their site.   For now you should check out the trailer below.

Finally, I want to take a little time to talk about the work of current Chinese director Jia Zhangke.  I blog about Jia and his work fairly often here, in part because he might just be my favorite living director and also because his films do an extraordinary job of capturing the people of China and the change that is affecting them. It seems appropriate here to take note  that Jia Zhangke graduated from high school in June of 1989.  There is a great piece in GOOD magazine where Jia reflects on his youth and how Tiananmen influenced his work:

“Because I was born in 1970, my earliest memories are of the Cultural Revolution—meetings, for example, many meetings, with tens of thousands of people attending. I remember when the fifth volume of Mao’s collected writings was released, and all the people in our tiny town in Shanxi province had to line the streets to welcome its arrival at the bookstore. I remember not having enough to eat, because China was very poor. Then, when I started school, in 1977, the Cultural Revolution ended, and the reform era began.

And because those first years of reform, from 1978 to 1989, coincided with my growing up, my experience of how China changed is profoundly personal. From hunger, I began to have things to eat. After only having a radio in the house, we got a television and a washing machine. Where before art and literature had served purely as propaganda for government policy, we started to have popular culture—now we could hear pop songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This went on until I graduated from high school, in June, 1989, at the precise moment of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. So my adolescence happened while the state was utterly transforming the lives of each and every individual Chinese. In many ways it is still like this today—perhaps not as pronounced, but each political change, each policy shift has an immense influence on individual lives. And so when I began to make movies, this is where my attention turned. “

Here are trailers to two of my favorite Jia Zhangke films, The World and Still Life respectively:

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Unfortunately there aren’t many more films I could find that really look at the events of Tiananmen (if you know of some let me know in the comments) and I am sure this is due to the intense censorship of Chinese cinema.  Which is truly sad because cinema really does hold a unique power to inspire, communicate and share information. As Jia Zhangke himself points out:

“In China, film is the artistic medium that the government cares most about, and the old censorship system is still largely in place. Lenin said that of all the arts, film was the most important to the proletariat, and I think he was right, because at a basic level, it transcends written language. An illiterate man with no way of reading novels or newspapers can appreciate film. Because the Communist Party has always relied on mass media to broadcast its policies, it thus has to pay attention to what films are saying. And so, even today, although there have been great changes and a great loosening, the system maintains control: All movies have to be approved in Beijing, first at the script stage, and then once the film is finished.”

*photo by mandiberg (CC)