Study Report of the Development of Chinese Documentary is the first blue paper serialized for Chinese documentary. Its publication started at the critical moment of the transformation of the Chinese documentary market in 2009. It seeks to collect first-hand information in an academic way, in the hope of presenting the developmental course of Chinese documentary through referring to the world documentary. It is largely divided into such parts as channels and columns, works, industry, theory and study, new media documentaries, general situation of world documentary and the international communication of Chinese documentaries. For this reason, it is filled with significance for communication and culture.
As the work of the year of the Documentary Center at Beijing Normal University, Study Report of the Development of Chinese Documentary 2018 analyzes the basic characteristics and development trends of Chinese documentaries, in order to provide reference for international documentaries.
Zhang Tongdao is the Chief Director of the Documentary Center and professor of Art and Communication School at Beijing Normal University, Chairman of the China Higher Education Association Film and Television Education Committee, President of the China Documentary Development Fund, and a visiting scholar at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He used to serve as a judge for China Golden Eagle TV Art Festival, Sichuan TV Festival, Shanghai TV Festival, Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, Qatar Peninsula International Documentary Film Festival and so on. His major academic works include Media Spring and Autumn: Chinese TV Observation, Images of Masters, The Real Scenery, The Multi-symbiotic Recording Time and Space and so on； his main documentary films, which won the prizes of the Qatar Peninsula International Documentary Festival, Sichuan TV Festival, Chinese American Film Festival and other awards, include Little People, the series The Secret of Growth, See China with a Cinematic Eye, Memories in the Garden of Bei Family, Post-00s and so on.
From 2009, Zhang began to preside over the annual publication of Study Report of the Development of Chinese Documentary.
Hu Zhifeng is the Dean and doctoral supervisor of Art and Communication School at Beijing Normal University, the first Cheung Kong Chair Professor of China Education Ministry in the media academic field, the President of the China University Film and Television Society (national first class society), the appraisal group convener of Drama, Film and Television Discipline of the State Council Academic Degree Committee. He enjoys the State Council Special Allowance. Besides, he has been selected as the leading figure of the first Ten Thousand Talents Program, the Four Batches talent of the national publicity and cultural system, the national level candidate of the New Century Thousands of Talents Project, one of the 60 figures who “contribute to the development of China’s radio and television industry over the 60 years since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China,” member of the first expert committee of the national public cultural service construction, the senior visiting scholar of Harvard University.
He has presided over more than 40 scientific research projects of national, provincial and ministerial levels, and has published more than 30 academic monographs and more than 400 academic papers.
Ten domestic documentary films have made ¥263 million at box office, with 170 million earned by Twenty-Two, first hundred million–box office–taking documentary throughout China’s film history. It also refreshed the box office record of domestic documentary film. Earth: One Amazing Day, the second-highest grossing documentary this year, took ¥47.78 million at box office and Return to the Wolves was rated third with almost ¥33 million receipts. For the first time, respective box office of three documentary pictures all exceeded ¥30 million within the same year. Other documentaries grossed less than ¥4 million. Thereby they were divided into three levels: high, medium, and low.
People may read The Sound and the Fury and they may read into the past year when everything was in a strange pace.
We found unexpected changes in the political arena. In the US, Donald Trump, in the first two years of his tenure, acted like a bull in a china shop, regarding to his tax cut, trade war, and amended political rules. On the other side of the North Atlantic, it was the fourth time for Angela Merkel to hold the regime, and the 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron won the presidential election in France. It was not always the case in Asia where China-Japan relations went wrong, and Park Geunhye was put into jail out of her friendship with Choe Sun Sil. The crisis never went far in the Korean Peninsula, and it was particularly endangered after the sixth successful nuclear launch by the DPRK.
We also find spreading terror. The year reminded us of the global terrorism as it broke out in an Al-Arish mosque of Egypt, in coordinated bombs in Iraq, in gunshots in Las Vegas and Wisconsin in the US, and in the riot in Xinjiang, China.
In the past year, sponsored by the “Belt and Road” Initiative, China held a summit forum on global cooperation, but it was faced with a more complicated world than ever. The year will be marked with the two-month Doklam stand-off between China and India, the DPRK nuclear crisis, the THADD employed in the ROK, shutdown relations across the Taiwan Straits, and the US tariff war. China, once again, embraced her new era, as commemorated by greater anti-corruption campaigns, the launch of the second aircraft carrier, the first flight of C919, and particularly, the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
The world documented in the past year was thought-provoking and followed the Faulkner's way.
