Cultural Studies Review Vol. 23, No. 1 March 2017 © 2017 by the author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. Citation: Edwards, D. 2017. Demolition, Documentary and the Politics of Minjian on Contemporary Chinese Screens Cultural Studies Review, 23:1, 118-135. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/csr. v23i1.5498 ISSN 1837-8692 | Published by UTS ePRESS | http://csrj. epress.lib.uts.edu.au RESEARCH ARTICLE Demolition, Documentary and the Politics of Minjian on Contemporary Chinese Screens Dan Edwards Independent scholar Corresponding author: Dan Edwards, Independent scholar, Victoria, Australia. dan.cinema@ gmail.com DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/csr.v23i1.5498 Article history: Received 21/07/2016; Revised 20/02/2017; Accepted 27/02/2017; Published 15/05/2017 Abstract China’s transformation in the reform era has been most immediately experienced by many ordinary citizens in spatial terms, as existing urban communities have been dispersed and their environments levelled, to be replaced by ‘spaces of flows’ that prioritise speed, mobility and circulation. A wide range of Chinese films have represented this experience from the perspective of existing urban communities. This article argues that in certain ‘unofficial’ documentaries produced outside China’s state-sanctioned channels of production and distribution, using small, highly mobile digital video cameras, an engagement with grassroots communities has opened up a new space on screen, in which a critical questioning of the developmental ethos driving contemporary China becomes evident. A close analysis of Ou Ning’s Meishi Street (2006), Shu Haolun’s Nostalgia (2006) and Du Haibin’s A Young Patriot (2015) will illustrate how the unofficial spaces of localised, grassroots cultures (minjian) are represented in these works as sites of resistance to the coercive imposition of a globalised modernity on Chinese cities. Keywords Documentary; China; chaiqian (demolition and relocation); minjian; independent cinema DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTEREST The author(s) declared no potential conlicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. FUNDING The research for this article was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship provided by the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne, Australia. 118