Chinese Digital Shadows: Hybrid Forms, Bodily Archives, and Transnational Visions

Taking Hao Jie’s Single Man as a case study, this chapter discusses the effect of globalization on independent DV production—a home-grown phenomenon born out of the availability of DV cameras and computer editing software and the spreading of the internet. Starting as a marginalized practice without access to the domestic market, and expressing a desire to saturate the visual field with obfuscated images and to create a counter-archive (a counter-memory of the Chinese people), it attracted international attention, which in turn allowed it to have access to alternative forms of financing as well as the input of foreign talent. The fluidity of digital modes of production also contributed to an eradication of the boundaries between documentary and fiction. Instead, the real divide lies between “the desire for cinema” and “the desire for documentation.”