Development Of China's Independent Documentary Film

There is a controversy over the concept of “Independent” in the term of“Independent Film” in the world. Then how to differentiate between “Independent”and “dependent” in Chinese “Independent Documentary”? It is hard to preciselydefine the concept of “Independent” in Chinese Independent Documentary, whichwas born in the special politics and economy of China as well as the complex society.By studying the emergence and development of Independent Documentary, wesummarize the definition of Independent Documentary as an unofficial productwhich is shown in official channel. The development of technology left us more vividimage records than before, and the popularity of DV had the most significant impacton the development of Independent Documentary. The“DV Godfather” WenguangWu said “the emergence of DV changed documentary a lot. Documentary is nolonger the power and tool of some people of us.”The emergence of DV madedocumentary on longer represent the mainstream media, promoted thedevelopment of “new documentary movement” and leaded to the prosperity ofChinese Independent Documentary.The author describes Chinese Independent Documentary from four aspects,emergence, development, today and future respectively. The author analyzes thedefinition of Chinese Independent Documentary, the prosperity of it, the problems ofit today and its future. The author describes the development process of ChineseIndependent Documentary and analyzes the reason of its prosperity. The authordescribes the problem in the development process of Chinese IndependentDocumentary and analyzes its development strategy. The author finds a proper wayto develop Chinese Independent Documentary by comparing and learning foreignIndependent Documentary. But it is not a right way to develop Chinese IndependentDocumentary by always following the step of foreign Independent Documentary.With the development of technology, popularity of DV as well as more transmittingchannel, everyone could make film now. There is no easy way to create IndependentDocumentary. We must improve our abilities of creation and technology, and place great importance on the transmission method of new media and domestic markets.That’s how Chinese Independent Documentary could bloom.