One of the scariest things about Netflix and other gigantic streaming platforms is how much reach they have now. Though the company keeps its viewer statistics closely under wraps, Netflix is now funding productions all over the world.
With the vast amount of data it compiles on its users, Netflix makes intrusively informed decisions about where it should allocate its money. Consequently, Netflix is adjudicating and even controlling viewers’ tastes to a substantial degree, and is proving to be something like a culture industry in itself.
Heck. Working occasionally in Taiwanese film and television as a translator or interpreter, I’ve seen Netflix’s looming presence in the industry firsthand. And during these coronavirus times, in which vast segments of the world are under lockdown, these platforms have, in fact, only profited all the more.
It’s hard to construct independent alternatives that concentrate and command such enormous resources. But there’s very much a need for such a thing.
So… here are some independent films to watch!
An Elephant Sitting Still (dir. Hu Bo, 2018)
via Kanopy (free with library card or university login)
Clocking in at nearly four hours, An Elephant Sitting Still is the first, last, and only film from Chinese director Hu Bo, who killed himself before the film’s release at age 29. The film is based on a short story published by the director in 2017.
Reportedly, one of the reasons for Hu’s suicide was that he had faced pressure to cut his film down to a length more manageable for commercial release. However, after watching the film, it’s often the impression of viewers that not a minute should have been cut.
An Elephant Sitting Still focuses on a group of strangers over the course of a single day in Shijiazhuang in Hebei. The plot is highly reliant on coincidence to advance its action—too much so, some would say. Films based on plot twists that bring together a group of unrelated strangers are a dime a dozen—there’s a vaguely reminiscent, but far less impressive example in the 2017 Taiwanese film, A Story of Taipei, an entry in the “so bad it’s good” genre.
The plot of An Elephant Sitting Still is so densely composed of mundane events that it’s a bit hard to describe. But the introspection it evokes in the viewer, and its insights into the way our lives are made up of an endless series of contingencies, make this film an unforgettable one.
Kanopy is a streaming service that offers free films through partnerships with universities and public libraries.
We The Workers (dir. Huang Wenhai, 2017)
via OVID (subscription; free trial offered)
We The Workers follows the gritty everyday lives of labor organizers in China between 2009 and 2015. Shot as a fly-on-the-wall documentary in the style of Chinese sixth-generation cinema, the film stands out from similar documentaries through its use of drone footage of dense urban areas to graft a sense of the mythopoetic onto the otherwise dull and repetitive daily activities of the Chinese activists.
The real work of labor organizing in China, rarely reported on in the news, is in full view here—meetings, dinners, home visits, and the occasional beating or jailing. Only the most sensational aspects of organizing, involving violence or imprisonment, ever make it into the news. But like anywhere else in the world, the real work of organizing is extremely tedious and mundane, with only occasional moments of explosive action such as strikes, protests, or clashes with authorities.
Shot by director Huang Wenhai, who now resides in Hong Kong, We The Workers is bisected by the rise of Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2012. From 2009 to 2012, it seemed as though there was increasing space for civil society in China. However, since Xi came to power, civil society activism, including the work of labor unions, has faced increasing repression. Huang’s film ultimately gives little insight into the motivations of its protagonists, who seem driven to take great personal risks yet reveal little about what drives them to do so; still, the film is a powerful depiction of their courage.
We The Workers is available as part of the dGenerate Film Collection, with a subscription to OVID, the streaming platform run by independent film distributor Icarus Films.
Small Talk (dir. Huang Hui-chen, 2016)
via GagaOOLala (subscription)
Small Talk took the Taiwanese documentary world by storm in 2016, at a time in which efforts to legalize marriage equality in the island nation were in full swing. A year later, the Council of Grand Justices—Taiwan’s supreme court—would rule that it was unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples their right to marriage. As a result, pending legislation that was passed two years later, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize gay marriage.
Small Talk is a highly personal story for director Huang Hui-chen, who filmed her mother A-Nu, an open lesbian and a Taoist priestess with a working-class background, in an effort to understand her. A-Nu was an emotionally distant mother, often going off on her own with her girlfriends, and Huang’s father was abusive. Though there were many moments in which A-Nu protected or defended Huang, she sometimes seemed to value her own independence over providing emotional support to her daughter.
In this respect, Small Talk can be situated within a larger trend in documentary filmmaking in Taiwan. In the years immediately prior to and after the 2014 Sunflower Movement, a wave of documentary films emerged, focusing on social themes ranging from labor to LGBTQ issues. Many of these films proved highly personal, with the director having some intimate connection to the issues at hand.
This style proves almost the opposite of cinéma vérité fly-on-the-wall documentary, centering as it does the personal and the political. Small Talk is a particularly striking example of the genre, given how personal Huang’s storytelling is, and the moments of intimacy she documents with her mother over the course of the film.
Small Talk is available for streaming with a subscription to GagaOOLala, an LGBTQ-focused streaming platform from Taiwan.
A Brighter Summer Day (dir. Edward Yang, 1991)
vivia Kanopy (free with library card or university login)
Okay, maybe I’m just a sucker for four-hour films. Edward Yang’s four-hour depiction of life among young people during the Taiwanese authoritarian period is a film near and dear to me.
The original Chinese title is “The Youth Murder Incident on Guling Street” (牯嶺街少年殺人事件); it focuses on a group of youthful delinquents descended from families who came with the Kuomintang to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, a sub-ethnic group referred to in Taiwan as waishengren. My own waishengren family is, in fact, from Guling Street, and lived there around the time the film takes place, so the film resonates closely with me (though I’m pretty sure nobody murdered anyone).
As Yang frames it, many of the young delinquents of that era inherited and internalized the violence and sense of displacement that their parents felt. Early post-war Taiwanese literature covers much the same territory. My sole issue with this reading of the period (and with Yang’s other films) is that waishengren were still a privileged minority, arguably akin to a settler colonial ruling class, during authoritarian times.
But the film ultimately proves an awe-inspiringly totalizing critique of Kuomintang state violence as it seeps into all levels of society. “Epic” is a word often bandied about to describe the film, but it fits here, suggesting as it does the absolute and inescapable complicity of all those who live under an authoritarian regime. The film’s scale is ambitious as well, with more than one hundred amateur actors, many of them children at the time of the film’s production, who nonetheless give highly compelling performances.
A Brighter Summer Day became a touchstone for depicting life in Taiwan in the 1960s, crystallizing everything from mannerisms to fashion to slang. Every film set in the era since has had to contend with its influence—cf. 2019’s Detention, a horror film based on the hit indie computer game set during the White Terror period. The shadow cast over Taiwanese cinema by A Brighter Summer Day is hard to escape, but it’s only recently become more widely available through streaming platforms.
Kanopy is a streaming service that offers free films through partnerships with universities and public libraries.
The Popula Film Club brings you worthwhile options to stream, chosen with a view to quality, and to withholding as much money as possible from the oligarchs and monopolists of Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and the like.
Please send your recommendations to submissions@popula.com with the subject line, POPULA FILM CLUB.
