THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 29, 2020 N C5For more than 20 years, the filmmaker Hu
Jie has been trawling the deep waters of
Chinese history to create a series of harrow-
ing documentaries about the early years of
Communist Party rule.
Though Hu is largely unknown outside
Chinese intellectual and foreign academic
circles, two films, to be released on June 30,
should increase the visibility of his work
and help make it accessible to outsiders.
“Spark” — a film that has undergone many
iterations, alternations and expansions —
reconstructs the fate of a group of young
people who started an underground journal
60 years ago. And “The Observer,” a docu-
mentary about Hu by the Italian director
Rita Andreetti, is at once a sympathetic por-
trait of the filmmaker and an introduction to
his films.
Both are being distributed by Icarus
Films as part of dGenerate Films’ collection
of independent Chinese movies, curated by
the American film producer Karin Chien.
Their release — along with three other im-
portant Hu works that Icarus has released
— makes it possible for audiences to see the
sweep of his body of work.
“My goal is to excavate hidden history
and show reality as it really was,” Hu, 62,
said in a telephone interview from his home
in Nanjing. “I feel it’s my duty to history to
tell these stories.”
Though Hu has made more than 30 mov-
ies, he is not well known even in China,
partly because of censorship — his films
have never been distributed in China — and
partly because his work is hard to catego-
rize.
Hu’s films are personal takes on several
critical turning points in modern Chinese
history, especially the persecution of inde-
pendent thinkers in the 1950s, the famine
that followed, and the Cultural Revolution a
decade later. He hunts down survivors,
finds rare written material, and creates a
composite history in which he is also
present as a narrator and judge, clearly tak-
ing sides with the victims of Maoist China.
Almost all of his films come across as rad-
ically low-tech. For years he used a battered
Sony Handycam, and he almost never uses
lights or multiple cameras — largely be-
cause he works alone, but also to give the
feeling of authenticity and discovery, as if
the viewer were on a journey with Hu to dis-
cover a forbidden past.
By contrast, independent Chinese film di-
rectors like Jia Zhangke and Wang Bing
make films that are more easily understood
by foreign art-house audiences, and are reg-
ularly shown at film festivals.
Hu, an autodidact, has an overtly crusad-
ing spirit. A native of Nanjing, he was ini-tially an artist in a military propaganda unit
but he quit to pursue a career as an inde-
pendent artist. In Beijing, he mixed in artis-
tic circles — he made a film about the influ-
ential Yuan Ming Yuan artists’ colony — but
returned to Nanjing to work, relatively cut
off from the mainstream.
He honed his craft in the 1990s with a se-
ries of documentaries about China’s under-
class, like illegal coal miners and trash col-
lectors.
But he became famous among China’s in-
telligentsia for his 2004 film, “Searching for
Lin Zhao’s Soul,” one of the films being re-
leased by Icarus. It recounts the story of a
political prisoner who was executed in 1968
for refusing to renounce her political con-
victions. Hu traces Lin’s story through her
classmates and friends, and especially
through letters that she wrote with her own
blood for lack of ink.
That led to “Spark,” about the magazine
for which Lin Zhao wrote an epic poem de-
scribing the struggle for freedom from tyr-
anny. First released in 2013, “Spark,” like all
of Hu’s films, has been added to and re-
edited, most recently to include testimony
by a witness to the famine who wanted to
wait until retiring to speak out.
“Though I Am Gone,” another of the Ica-
rus releases, tells the story of Bian
Zhongyun, a teacher beaten to death in 1966
by her students during the Cultural Revolu-tion. The film is shockingly brutal, as the
teacher’s widow explains how he pho-
tographed his wife’s corpse so the crime
would never be forgotten.
Hu’s films shed light on events that have
been only partly understood before, with
Hu unearthing witnesses and documents
that tell in excruciating detail how the
events unfolded. Hu is also present, giving
his point of view and passing judgments in a
way that doesn’t fit the pattern of most Chi-
nese documentary films, which tend to be
cooler and more detached.
“He uses some of what might be called
the official style, with voice-over narratives
and a sense of moral justice,” said Zhen
Zhang, a professor of film studies at New
York University. But he also allows people
to speak at length, allowing the story to un-
fold naturally. “It became an organic assem-
blage of different methods,” she said.
Zhu Rikun, a filmmaker and festival cura-
tor who splits his time between New York
and China, said that despite Hu’s stripped-
down style, his movies have an appeal:
“He’s not a theoretician. He’s not a profes-
sional. He doesn’t necessarily know all the
ways to use the equipment. But when you
look at how he films, it has a beauty.”
Hu is more modest. He said his goal was
simply to preserve history that has long
been written out of China’s official narra-
tive.
“I’m not really that kind of professional
picture maker, so I don’t really try to figure
out how to handle questions like technique,”
he said. “My style is quite simple.”
But he said he hoped his films would res-
onate today. “Spark,” he said, shows how
even in the darkest era of the Mao period —
the great famine of 1958 to 1961, which killed
at least 30 million people — some were will-
ing to stand up and be counted.
“This story has great significance today,”
Hu said. “This country is a country with a
unified governing structure, so if no one
dares speak truth, a mistake will continue
for a long time.”
Andreetti said Hu’s commitment to the
truth is what drew her to him. She met him
in 2013 shortly after moving to Nanjing with
her husband, who had been sent there by
his company.
“It was overwhelming to me, the power of
his words and his movies,” she said by
phone from Italy, where she is staying dur-
ing the coronavirus crisis. “I couldn’t be-
lieve that he is basically unknown in China.”
Chien praised Andreetti for getting Hu,
who is hard to pin down for an interview, to
talk. Closely monitored by public security,
he often leaves town at the drop of a hat to
meet people. He’s also hard to reach be-
cause he shuns email and social media.
“He’s one of the most difficult filmmakers
to communicate with,” Chien said. “You ba-
sically had to be in Nanjing to make” a docu-
mentary about him.
Though Hu’s critical works are now being
made available to foreign audiences, pres-
sure from the Chinese government makes it
hard to arrange public showings there,
Chien said.
This scrutiny began around 2015 when
she and others put together a touring film
festival called “Cinema on the Edge.” Hailed
as “beyond the censors’ reach,” the film se-
ries ended up coming under intense pres-
sure from the Chinese government. Film-
makers in China were warned to drop out
and when the festival went ahead, but with
less publicity, foreign outlets, especially
universities, were told that screening the
films could endanger their chance to work
with China.
“It’s about access and money,” Chien said.
Despite the limitations, which also in-
clude a ban on using foreign money and
closing all possibilities to show films in pub-
lic, Professor Zhang said, directors like Hu
continue to work.
“The more collective forms of China’s in-
dependent film movement are being eradi-
cated — the screenings, the independent
film festivals,” she said. “But people are still
making films; they’re still coming out.”‘To Show Reality as It Really Was’
Harrowing films about Maoist
China by Hu Jie are being
released in the United States.
Left, the filmmaker Hu Jie in
“The Observer,” a
documentary by Rita
Andreetti. Below, clockwise
from right, stills from Hu’s
films “Searching for Lin
Zhao’s Soul,” “Spark” and
“Though I Am Gone.”PHOTOGRAPHS BY ICARUS FILMSBy IAN JOHNSON‘If no one dares
speak the truth, a
mistake will continue
for a long time.’
HU JIE
CHINESE FILMMAKERThe Broadway League, a trade association
that is the closest thing to a governing body
presiding over America’s biggest stages,
has decided to undertake a sweeping audit
of diversity in the industry in response to
the unrest over racial injustice that is
sweeping the nation.
The League, whose members include
Broadway theater owners and producers,
as well as presenters of touring shows
around the country, will hire a company to
survey all aspects of the industry — on-
stage, backstage and in the many offices
that power the productions, according to
Charlotte St. Martin, the League president
and chief executive.
She said the League could not mandate
participation by other companies and orga-
nizations but that its leadership would
strongly encourage all affected entities, in-
cluding labor unions and nonprofits, to co-
operate with the researchers.
“I think we have done a good job onstage,
and we’ve done a good job with the Tony
Awards, but in a lot of our backstage areas
we haven’t done as good a job, and if people
are frustrated, they have the right to be,” St.
Martin said. “We have to change, and we
will change.”
The audit is one of several measures the
League’s board has decided to take in re-
sponse to the uproar over racism that has
roiled the country since George Floyd was
killed in police custody last month in Minne-
apolis. Many theater artists have taken to
social media to detail instances in which
they felt mistreated because of race, and
several have formed new organizations to
press for change.
St. Martin said the League had also de-
cided to change its bylaws to make it easier
for industry leaders of color to join its board.
In addition, she said, the League will hire an
executive to oversee its equity, diversity
and inclusion efforts; undertake an assess-
ment of its 19 existing diversity initiatives;
make unconscious bias and anti-racism
training mandatory for its staff and leader-
ship; and offer the training to its members.
The League currently has a board of
about 50, two of whom are black. Both of
them welcomed the changes.
“I’m very proud that there are actions be-
ing taken, and it isn’t just talk,” said Colleen
Jennings-Roggensack, the longtime execu-
tive director of Arizona State University
Gammage, a large performing arts center
whose programming includes touring
Broadway shows.
“It’s been a long time coming,” she added.
“As wonderful as the field is, I often am theonly one in the room.”
Stephen Byrd, a Broadway producer who
also serves on the League board, described
similar experiences. “When I walk into a
general manager’s office, I don’t see anyone
like me; when I walk into an audition, I don’t
see anyone at the table that looks like me,”
he said. “We do need new voices.”
The League is a relatively small trade as-sociation — it had 37 employees before the
pandemic, and now has 20 — but it is influ-
ential because it is the body through which
theater owners and producers negotiate la-
bor contracts, interact with government of-
ficials and, together with the American The-
ater Wing, oversee the Tony Awards.
Its existing diversity programs are fo-
cused in two areas — work force develop-
ment, aimed at encouraging and assisting
people of color interested in careers in the
industry, and audience development, aimed
at persuading people of color to become
more frequent theater patrons.
But St. Martin said the current discussion
about injustice has convinced the League’s
leadership that it needs to do more.
“There’s no question that what we all just
experienced has educated us all,” she said.
“We have accepted the responsibility to in-
sure that we change the industry through
our members.”
Drew Shade, the founder and creative di-
rector of Broadway Black, a digital platform
highlighting black theater artists working
in the industry, welcomed the move, but
with a note of caution.
“It sounds like a really great beginning —
a first step,” he said. “But the Broadway
League has all the power, and it will be inter-
esting to hear how they plan to distribute
control and power within the industry. May-
be there’s a conversation to be had about
what else they can do.”Broadway League Pledges to Address Diversity Shortfall
A sweeping survey is one
response to the uproar over
systemic racism.
By MICHAEL PAULSONThe Broadway League
board member Colleen
Jennings-Roggensack,
left, with the association’s
president, Charlotte St.
Martin.JOSEPH MARZULLO/WENN RIGHTS LTD, VIA ALAMY