His latest work
Shattered (老唐头), will screen at the
Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art this Saturday. The 104-minute film revolves around Old Tang, the father of prostitute Tang Caifeng who featured in Xu’s 2009 epic work
Fortune Teller (算命), and casts an eye over his family’s fragmented past and present in the barren lands of northeast China.
Old Tang (left) and his daughter Tang Caifeng (right) mind their own businesses in Shattered
Xu’s choice of edgy subjects should be no surprise considering his own past. As a member of Beijing Broadcasting Institute’s (now the Communication University of China) notoriously troublesome 1983 class, known for starting fights and chasing girls. Xu avoided the usual CCTV career step and wound up making promotional videos for the Ministry of Health, where he quickly got into trouble for his attitude. ‘I worked there for less than a year,’ he says. ‘I took days off to do freelance jobs – one day, the bosses told me to change my attitude or “deal with the consequences”. I told them there was nothing to deal with and I quit.’
It was a brave step to take, especially at a time when most Chinese people were still living on their danwei’s (state-owned work unit) ‘iron rice bowl’ (an idiom for guaranteed job security). Out of the system, Xu spent the ’90s shooting soap operas and commercials and padding his savings account. He then made a sideways shift into documentary making in 2000. Before Shattered, both Fortune Teller and his 2008 debut Wheat Harvest (麦收) generated critical acclaim as well as controversy for supposedly invading his subjects’ privacy.
Such twists continue in Shattered, though this time Xu digs into the past, which offers him more opportunity to add his own interpretation to his subjects’ history.
Old Tang shows his early photographs and tells his life story - from the contents of Japanese soldiers’ lunch boxes during their occupation of China in World War II, to how he made two blind mice turn tiny mill stones. Tang Caifeng talks in similar chatty and energetic fashion but more about current troubles. She’s trying to bail her friend out from prison, while her siblings also return home and spend days and nights quarrelling about their own troubled lives.
Xu Tong (left) ensures 'reality’ directing Old Tang (right)
It’s an extraordinary admission to get on camera, and testament to Xu’s ability to build up trust in his subjects. While shooting in the Tang family home – which he likens to a museum of recent Chinese history, complete with artefacts from the Japanese occupation during World War II and portraits of Lenin and Mao Zedong – Xu treated them as friends, not subjects. ‘Ultimate objectivity has become a fairy tale in documentary making,’ Xu says. ‘Authenticity can be found in human relations rather than observations. That’s why I make friends with the people I shoot and I intrude into their lives all the time. Is it moral? That’s another question. You shouldn’t judge others by your own moral standards.’ That one quote is probably for the critics' benefit.
Taking this approach had a profound effect not just on the subject of the films but also on Xu himself. After finishing Fortune Teller, he found himself irresistibly drawn to his subjects’ way of life, even moving out to live among them in the Yanjiao suburb on the border of Hebei province. ‘Just like what I did to them with the camera, their realities have made an impact on mine too. Beijing gives me too much sense of artists’ community that could be so far away from real life, I’m myself a nomad who travels around with skills to make a living, just like a street performer.’