Chinese Reviews Reviews

Documentary Review: Chinese Portrait (2018) by Wang Xiaoshuai

Somewhere between the movie and the video installation, “” is the result of travelling China with his camera since 2009, and shooting various people and settings throughout the country.

Chinese Portrait” is available through Asian Shadows

The title of the film could not be more fitting, as the production comprises of a series of portraits that highlight the vastness and the different aspects of the country. In that fashion, the portraits (who occasionally differ in shape) include places like Xichuan, Shenzen and Xinjiang, with the latter being one of the most central, as Xiaoshuai presents a number of images from the lives of Chinese Muslims who inhabit the area. Furthermore, settings like trains, factories (working or demolished), farming villages, fields of green, construction sites, hospitals, hutongs, streets in various urban centers, and the beach, combine in order to portray a quite thorough presentation of China, both as a constantly developing country and as one that is eager to leave the past behind.

Furthermore, the film is also about the Chinese people, and in that fashion, it includes workers, miners, farmers, sheepherders, students, sick people, individuals just passing by, families simply going on with their everyday life and many more.

Through the excellent framing, Xiaoshuai manages to portray all of the aforementioned quite artfully, particularly in the scenes where he has made a number of people “pose” for him, either in groups or individually, which resulted in some truly memorable “compositions”, particularly in the ones where the “protagonists” are looking straight the camera.

Valérie Loiseleux's editing is quite good, as the succession of portraits retains an element of surprise each frame change, while the time allocated to each portrait is the nominal for one to watch every detail without getting tired.

Evidently, the lack of narrative and dialogue make “Chinese Portrait” a difficult film both to describe and to watch. However, if one were to perceive it as a visit to a gallery, one will soon realize that connecting the images is like putting together the pieces of puzzle that shows the whole of China,  in its past, present and future forms, and that is where the production's value truly lies.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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