Documenting Asia Pacific

Dynamic political and economic conditions, innovations in production and distribution technologies, increased access to international finances, and the migration of moving images from theaters to galleries to online spaces have made more relevant and critical the practice of documentary filmmaking in Asia. The task of representing new social realities has generated significant movements—both political and aesthetic—in non-fiction filmmaking from Beijing to Manila to Jakarta. Engaged vérité, documentary/fiction hybrids, personal essays, and experimental collage are being used to explore the consequences of globalization and neo-liberalism, fraught family histories, religious conflict, and the role of the state in everyday lives. An inquiry into how Asia’s contemporary cultures and politics are being visually represented reveals localized movements that together are testing and reshaping the idea of documentary itself.