| Documentaries are increasingly becoming an important means of international communication. Documentaries are seen as less serious and less politically sensitive than news, but more credible and culturally important than narrative entertainment films. They are an excellent means of conveying cultural history and showing people’s lives as they are lived. At the same time, documentaries can explore social issues, and provide an important frame of reference for historical responsibility.Documentary film was born in the west, and its invention has involved a century of exploration of creative methods and ideas. Documentary has a firm grounding in theory, but also an ongoing relationship with science and technology— advances in film and audio technology drive the creation of the contemporary documentary. With the strengthening of China’s economy and its advancements in science and technology, the development of literary and artistic work also advanced, and ushered in a boom in Chinese documentary film. Today, documentarists are constantly exploring creative methods and pushing the boundaries of documentary style, to the point that the state of the art in China is keeping pace with foreign films. So why do Chinese documentaries so often receive a cool reception in the international market?The paper will discuss this questions.(1)The writer believes that the difference between Chinese and Western cultures is at the root of the differences between documentary narrative styles; cultural difference(and tolerance), politics, economics, history, customs, aesthetics, philosphy, and literary tropes all play a part.(2) Internationalization of Chinese documentary film is largely yet to be explored, but I believe that recognition by an international audience and acceptance in Western cultural circles is not the sole criterion for merit.(3)China has a thousand-year history; there is no shortage of cultural treasures to be excavated. Chinese documentary directors might look for how different audience respond to different narratives, how audiences accept documentaries according to their cultural outlook, and draw conclusions about how these affect the propagation of the ideas that documentary bears. |
