Educational Media Reviews Online

Floating, the first feature-length movie by Chinese documentary filmmaker Huang Weikai, was completed in 2005, but not screened in the United States until much more recently. It chronicles approximately one year in the life of Yang Jiwei, a 20-something from the provinces scratching out a living as a street musician in the bustling metropolis of Guangzhou. Employing a cinema vérité approach, Huang’s camera is present both for intimate scenes like the attempted suicide of an ex-girlfriend and mundane moments like Yang and his friends waiting around for other musicians or police officers to vacate their preferred busking spot (a pedestrian underpass) so that they can perform.

The film’s most striking feature is its reverse-chronological structure. A title card appears a few minutes into the film to announce that the initial action is taking place in January, 2003; additional cards (which correspond to chapters on the DVD) indicate that the subsequent scenes are moving backward in time from December, 2002 to August, 2002, before the film abruptly jumps forward again to March, 2003, when Yang is arrested and sent back to his hometown. This finale, which features the emergence of Huang as a character in the film and remarkably suspenseful handheld camerawork, works on both a formal and emotional level, as does the end title sequence that follows it, which features a recording of Yang singing and a postscript that places the events depicted in the film into a broader political context.

This final aspect of Floating might give Western audiences a bit of trouble: according to the titles which appear right before the credits, a graduate student was beaten to death at a detention center like the one Yang was taken to the same month that he was arrested, causing a national scandal which resulted in the abolition of China’s detention system. It’s obvious why this is relevant: what is less apparent to viewers unfamiliar with Chinese society is how, if at all, it should change the way we interpret what happened to Yang. Does it underscore how unlucky he was to be arrested right before political reforms took place? Should we cynically assume that nothing has really changed? Similarly, would a person familiar with Guangzhou see this film as being about a specific time and place, or is it meant to stand in for cities across China?

In an ideal world, this DVD would come packaged with extras like short films and commentary tracks that answer these questions and others, but to complain that it doesn’t would be to overlook how lucky we are that it exists at all. Judging by the lack of information about Huang available online, he’s relatively unknown even in his own country. The availability of one of his early films in a home video format is just the latest piece of evidence that Icarus Films’s acquisition of the dGenerate Films Collection is one of the best things to happen to American cinephiles this decade. Although Floating likely will puzzle some viewers, there’s plenty here to recommend it as an addition to any documentary or global cinema collection, especially those at institutions which employ experts on Chinese cinema who might be able to provide further insight into what exactly it’s up to.

Awards:

• Black Pottery Prize and Audience Award, Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, China
• New Filmmaker Award, Reel China Documentary Biennial, New York, Shanghai