Research On The Development History Of Henan Television Documentary: 1969 To 2010

A documentary is an image or a business card of a country or a district. It is once said that a country without a documentary is just like a family without a photo album, suggesting the importance of documentaries for social development. During 2010 to 2013, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television had issued documents for several times, in which accelerating the development of the documentary industry was required. In addition, increasing broadcast platform and broadcast volume for documentaries in local television stations was required. Since then, creation of documentaries has been elevated to the new national cultural strategic height.For Henan Province, such a culturally grand province, the development of document also affects the spread and rising of Central Plain culture. From the rebroadcast of the actual event record, the Ninth National People's Congress of Chinese Communist Party, in 1969 when the Henan Television Station(HNTV) being established, to the foundation of HNTV Documentary Office in 2010 and even to the Loyal Soul Mount Tianshan, a creation of the Office, winning the award of 2013-2010 Year Chinese Radio, Film and Television Work, HNTV documentaries had gone through a history of 45 years, during which there were quite a few excellent works, being rarely collated and recorded by us.After confirming the concept of Henan TV documentary, the author conducts a research by integrating historical background, aesthetic factor, creation techniques and other aspects of different ages from 1969 to 2010. By in-depth interviews with creators, analyzing their representative works, searching for literatures and other research methods, the history of Henan TV documentary is collated, revealing the relation between documentaries and political appeals during the forming stage when the Station being established, the age of popularity-oriented documentary creation during the transformation stage of the reform and opening-up, the stage with diversified documentary topics and structures and with successive rising of documentary industries in 18 cities of Henan Province after the 1990 s, the flourishing period of documentary socialized development when serialization and scale-orientation of creation and the appearance of Internet impacting TV documentaries after the 21 st century.Viewed from the 40 years of HNTV documentary industry, understandings of creators on documentaries are developed from on-the-spot reports to documentaries on special topics and to abundant documentary styles nowadays, while narration also transits from early “Grierson Style”(i.e. the political commentary style) to “diversified records of actual events” nowadays. Meanwhile, it is found by the author that documentary creators during different stages followed different aesthetic principles and created documentaries in different styles, such as imprints of times in the work of LU Pei-jun, the spirit of independence and the expression of humanity in ZHU Yong-tao's work, narration acting as the primary and the criticism in WANG Bao-yin's work, capture of details and in-depth excavation in WANG Jian-hua's work and so on.The paper fills up the gap concerning studies on the development history of Henan documentary, laying a foundation for future development of Henan documentaries. Unfortunately, due to migration of the Station, loss of some materials, improper storage of some early shot documentary films, and demission or retirement of some old creators, first-hand data is insufficient for collating of some sections. However, it can be foreseen that, Henan TV documentaries, after experiencing developments, trials and integrations, will certainly find a correct development orientation and realize their values in a better mode.