For an Audience of Few: Jujube Fruits & Little Mao and Sparrow

A commonly held belief about Chinese documentary cinema is that, prior to the 1990s and the “New Documentary Movement,” the work of their filmmakers consisted largely — if not entirely — of party propaganda, known as zhuantipian (专题片, “special topic program”). This form of cinema was produced for television and guided the audience in a didactic style through easily digestible information, recognizable as the state-sanctioned utopianism deemed appropriate for art and cultural products. Though this belief may frankly offer too...