"We were caught in a big wave and didn't know what to do." — Wu Wenguang

"I worked together with a group of artists to film a documentary about this new art movement. We called it The Great Earthquake." — Wen Pulin

Presented here is a canon of Mainland Chinese feature films all made during a specific period which I consider to be most representative of 'Sixth Generation' Chinese cinema. The 'release period' begins in earnest in 1990 (the year that Zhang Yuan's Mama and Wu Wenguang's Bumming in Beijing both premiered — two films that, while not the first independently produced in China, as some have claimed, have become accepted coordinates of this movement for a variety of reasons). However, my period of study traces back just a bit further than the '90s, to 1988, when three important works all first went into production: Wu's film (August 1988), experimental theater director Wen Pulin's early independent documentary, The Great Earthquake (on the burgeoning New Art movement in Beijing), and CCTV's (eventually blocked from releasing) 8-part Tiananmen series, directed by Shi Jian and Chen Jue*. A hard-stop comes in 2002, the year when the Chinese government's policies regulating and defining independent film substantially changed, and at the same time, the growing popularity of DV cameras began to create conditions serving to generate a distinctly different 'generation' of Chinese cinema. (*[Update 6/1/26] A fourth work, the 8-part Notes from Beijing series, directed by Wang Zijun, should be added to this group, since it also began production in 1988 and can be considered a 'a sister series' of Tiananmen, focussing on many similar subjects.)

The "Sixth Generation," in a broad sense, can be used (though this is certainly controversial in some academic spaces) as a catch-all label for a wide range of filmmakers — a way to organize a distinct 'era' in the production of mainland Chinese cinema, determined mainly by a filmmaker's age and experience. With some exceptions, I tend to identify a 'Sixth Generation' director as one whom was born between 1956 and 1973 — especially if they also began their directing careers in the '90s. The "Sixth Generation Movement," as I'm conceiving of it, is a more strictly defined 'bloc' to be identified within this much larger group. The works of the filmmakers that comprise this 'movement' all share some aspects or identifiers, whether that mean personal relationships, aesthetic choices, or like-minded subject matters. Here's some specific criteria:

I.) Feature films (40 minutes-plus) made between 1988 and 1999 by what I’m calling the ‘core group’ of Sixth Generation filmmakers (both documentary and narrative filmmakers): Wu Wenguang, Wen Pulin, Zhang Yuan, Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, Chen Zhen, Wang Xiaoshuai, He Jianjun, Lou Ye, Guan Hu, and the members of the Structure Wave Youth Cinema Experimental Group (Shi Jian, Chen Jue, Wang Zijun, and Kwong Yang)

II.) Some feature films made as late as 2002 by that ‘core group’ — provided that those films retain similar aesthetic or thematic traits as those of their ‘90 – ‘99 works

III.) Some feature films made between 1990 and 2002 by other Sixth Generation directors — not those of the ‘core group’ — whose films have similar aesthetic or thematic traits as those made by the ‘core group' during the main '90 – '99 period.

There is a method behind this madness: Many have argued that there never was a coherent 'movement' (at least enough of one to use that word — which, it should be said, has politically charged implications in China that have also limited anyone's willingness to use it) to come out of 'Sixth Generation' cinema, and while this is true if one is looking for a single through-line for a movement, doing that disregards an arguably more interesting network of connections that beg to be explored. In order to do that, though, one has to first do-away with the impulse of separating 'Sixth Generation' narrative filmmakers and the largely contemporaneous 'New Documentary Movement.' There is no real movement to come out of 'Sixth Generation' cinema without meshing these two together — and there's certainly more than enough reason to do so. The best reason? It's probably Zhang Yuan: The quintessential figure of 'Sixth Generation' cinema, most scholars seem to agree, Zhang not only directed 1990's Mother, which kickstarted any and all of the new decade's independent narrative feature film productions in the mainland, but also collaborated with leading 'New Documentary' director Duan Jinchuan on 1994's The Square, a Wiseman-esque observation of quotidian Tiananmen life in the early '90s.

In fact, Zhang made several straight documentaries in the '90s — but he also made films like 1993's Beijing Bastards and 1996's Sons, both of which straddle the line of reality and fiction (Chinese rock star Cui Jian plays a version of himself in the former, while a real life family is filmed sometimes acting out a fictional screenplay in the latter). Zhang catalyzed the connection between Chinese independent fiction and documentary cinema, a relationship that was later further cemented by films like Wang Xiaoshuai's Frozen (in which professional actor Jia Hongsheng re-enacts a performance artist's works with only a loose narrative constructed around him), by filmmakers like He Jianjun (whose documentary Self-Portrait was shown alongside Wu Wenguang's Bumming Beijing in 1991, but who spent the rest of the 1990s and early 2000s directing highly-stylized dramas like Postman and Scenery), and finally, by aesthetic similarities, since so many 'Sixth Generation' narrative filmmakers shot their films in a documentary style.

Once that bond is accepted — and, thankfully, I have at least the great Chinese scholar Dai Jinhua in agreement with me on this point — a generation's dense social network starts to reveal itself: Zhang Yuan, Lou Ye, and Wang Xiaoshuai all graduated class of '89 from Beijing Film Academy, and all were barred from filmmaking for a year (forced into assignments at local TV, which they each rejected, to different degrees, to turn independent). Lou acted in Wang's 1994 debut film, The Days, and Wang returned the favor for Lou's 1995 Weekend Lover. Guan Hu also graduated from Beijing Film Academy ('91) and He Jianjun was in a BFA non-degree program ('88 - '90). Guan directed his independent debut film, Dirt, in 1994, and He made his Postman in 1995.

Wu Wenguang, Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and the individual members of the SWYC all started their professional careers working for TV stations — in a sense, forming a unit that functioned parallel to Lou, Wang, and Zhang's — before a sojourn (both wittingly and not) into producing independent documentary films (with Jiang Yue's now mostly-lost Tibetan documentaries from 1991 representing some of the earliest independent feature films ever made in the PRC). The SWYC was formed in a CCTV dormitory in 1991 by Shi Jian, Chen Jue, and Kwong Yang (with Wang Zijun being inducted shortly after). All four had been working on the 8-part CCTV-backed series Tiananmen, off and on, for just under four years — until, after June 4th, 1989, the series' production was halted. At the same time, Wu Wenguang also saw work stop on the TV series he was directing, then called The Chinese — and, as a result, he chose to cut together from that footage his own debut feature film, as an independent filmmaker, and premiere it at the prestigious Yamagata Documentary Film Festival in Japan. That work became Bumming in Beijing. The SWYC attempted a similar 'independent' release for Tiananmen at the 1992 Hong Kong Film Festival, but the effort was intercepted by censors, the film vaulted, and its two credited directors (Shi and Chen) were consequently handed slight demotions.

The fate of the SWYC filmmakers (they're now all high-ranking figures in China's state television, or have retired from those positions) is not dissimilar from that of two predominantly narrative directors, Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai, who were slapped with filmmaking bans in the mid-'90s, only to develop into more accepted mainstream industry figures in the Chinese cinema of today. It's also important to note that there are several, important historical dates on record for this 'movement,' during which different factions of the various directors I've mentioned met for formal exhibitions, seminars, and in the case of the SWYC, there was even an occasion for an official authoring of the 'New Documentary manifesto,' which member Chen Jue has said that he modeled on the philosophies of Jean-Luc Godard and Dziga Vertov. Another obviously important inflection point is June 4th: The "earthquake" that Wen Pulin's never-quite-finished documentary predicted finally came, and the effect that had on Wen and other artists in his Beijing social circle was a dispersive one. Wen and his brother (who co-directs many of his films with him) ultimately ended up in Tibet, where they joined Duan Jinchuan (who was already there shooting state-sanctioned documentaries for local TV), and, along with Jiang Yue and artist Bi Jianfeng (also escaping Beijing), formed a new artist enclave that produced many, often politically biting, independent documentaries on the region. There's so much more to say about these films, this period, and the discrete connections between the individual works on this list, but I'll save it for the book..

"That’s why I feel I am a total failure. It’s as if I was a farmer who knows how to farm and also owns a vast land. But the land is all desert and infertile. There is no soil, so sowing will bring no harvest." — Jiang Yue