Is There Such a Thing in the Chinese and Western Documentary Film?

This article explores the ongoing debate surrounding documentary film's relationship with reality, focusing on the concepts of implicit realism and subjectivism. It examines the origins of documentary realism, contrasting Western direct cinema with Chinese Jishi-ism. The article argues that while documentary film inherently strives for realism, theorists have approached it from various epistemological and ontological angles. The debate over the subjectivity and objectivity of documentaries, whether documentaries are an objective presentation of truth or the subjective expression of personality. Such an assumption, which we now believe to be philosophically untenable. In fact, the reception of the films was in general less conditioned by these filmmakers’ rhetoric than by these powerful, if unstated, culturally implicit claims of objectivity. It highlights the shift from socialist realism to phenomenological realism in Chinese documentaries and the influence of postmodern-pragmatist perspectives that question the objectivity of documentaries. The article concludes that the question of convergence between representation and reality remains central to documentary film.