The Crux

I took this volume in hand with great interest, and not only because I wanted to learn what these writers had to say about Asian documentary. Actually, I was equally curious about the very existence of this special issue. That is because collective efforts like this go beyond the mere descriptive; they also create their objects. Of course, nonfiction films have been made in Asia—by Asians—for well over a century. That does not mean, however, that anyone conceived of something called “Asian documentary.” Indeed, it is only recently that one might think to collect all this scattered and ad hoc creative energy under the single rubric like “Asian documentary.” The vague contours of a regional documentary have taken shape over the last couple of decades, perhaps beginning with the first “Asia Symposium” of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 1989. But back then the pressing question was, “Why are there no Asian filmmakers in the competition section?” and the agenda of the meeting was almost exclusively the sharing of barriers to nonfiction filmmaking back home—not really the films that had been made, were being made or were being dreamt. Today there are documentary festivals scattered all over the region, and most of them highlight Asian documentary. Thus, since 1989 those contours have been filled in, fleshed out, colored, and we have reached a point when someone can imagine a special issue on “Asian documentary,” putting the final touches on that process. In this sense, both Concentric and the new book Asian Documentary Today (edited by Jane H. C. Yu and Asian Network of Documentary) mark an important milestone in Asian film history.