
Directing
Jiang Yue
Jiang Yue (蒋樾, b. 1962) is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and one of the central figures of China’s New Documentary Movement. Born in Beijing, he graduated in 1988 from the Chinese Traditional Opera Academy (中国戏曲学院) with a degree in dramatic literature and screenwriting before joining the Beijing Film Studio, where he worked under director Huang Jianzhong and participated in productions including The Policeman of the Year of the Dragon (龙年警官) and The Spring Festival (过年). Beginning in the early 1990s, Jiang turned to independent documentary filmmaking, traveling to Tibet to direct or co-direct four documentary films: Lama Tibetan Opera Troupe (喇嘛藏戏团, 1991), Lhasa Snow Residents (拉萨雪居民, 1992), and Catholicism in Tibet (天主在西藏, 1992), and Celestial Burial (達木天葬台, co-directed with Wen Pulin, 1992). After returning to Beijing, he became associated with the influential television documentary program Oriental Horizon (东方时空) and its documentary sub-program Living Space (生活空间), helping pioneer a new observational documentary style in China through works such as Three Eastern Heroes (东方三侠), Opera Performers (票友), Going to Work (上班), and Miners (矿工). Jiang is particularly known for documentaries that examine the tensions between individual lives and broader historical and social transformations. His major works include The Other Bank (彼岸, 1995), A River Stilled (静止的河, 1998), Happy Life (幸福生活, 2000), War of Love (爱情战争, co-directed with Duan Jinchuan, 2002), and The Storm (暴风骤雨), a documentary investigation of land reform and historical memory in northeastern China. Critics and fellow filmmakers have frequently cited Jiang, alongside Wu Wenguang and Duan Jinchuan, as one of the most important pioneers of independent documentary practice in post-Mao China. In 1998, Jiang co-founded the Memento Films (年年三畅影像工作室) with Kang Jianning and Duan Jinchuan, producing documentary projects for broadcasters including the BBC, ARTE, and China Central Television. Throughout his career, Jiang has emphasized documentary film as a means of preserving lived experience and historical memory, particularly the voices of ordinary people whose stories might otherwise disappear from the historical record.
Acting credits
Behind the camera
NROne of four documentary films made by Jiang Yue in Tibet during his trips in 1991 and 1992. "In between Southeastern Tibet, Sichuan Province, and Yunnan Province lies Tibet's only surviving Catholic Church and its congregation of over 400 people."
Catholicism in Tibet
1993
NRShort documentary film for Oriental Time • Living Space directed by Jiang Yue. This was a "demo" that Jiang made for Living Space's new producer, Chen Mang, after the departure of the original producer, Lu Wangping. From the example set by this film, Living Space thereafter developed the slogan: "Telling the stories of ordinary people.”
Going to Work
1993
NRThis documentary follows the whole process of a celestial burial ceremony in Tibet. It shows Tibetan religious customs, arts, and many vanishing life styles.
Celestial Burial
1993
Short documentary film for Oriental Time • Living Space by Jiang Yue.
Miners
1993
10.0Part of the 'Interesting Times' series with Kang Jianning's Xiao's Long March and Duan Jinchuan's My Secret to Success.
Interesting Times: This Happy Life
2002
Short documentary film for Oriental Horizon • Living Space by Jiang Yue, about Beijing Opera performers.
Opera Performers
1993
NRThis documentary is named after the well known novel (and later propaganda film) of the same title, which offered a telling of an historic event in 1946 in Northeastern China, when the CCP initiated Land Reform as a means of attracting peasants to join-up with the PLA and help seize state power. Decades later, residents who are still alive and can recall those days offer their personal memories of the class struggle that erupted in Yuanbao Village. Meanwhile, in today's Yuanbao, the local cultural bureau is setting up the Museum of Land Reform as a memorial and a space for education.
The Storm
2005
NRThe first short documentary Jiang Yue made for the Oriental Time • Living Space program, about old men swimming in Houhai, Beijing.
Three Old Men from the East
1993
NRJiang Yue and cinematographer Bi Jianfeng set out to capture a Lama Tibetan Opera group. They did not have much knowledge about filming documentaries at the time. Jiang Yue wanted to artificially construct the scene, but this idea was quickly dispelled by the director of the Tibetan Opera group, Yixi Jiacuo, who insisted that there must be audiences in order for the players to perform on camera. By the end of the show, the audience was touched, as was Jiang, who said that he realized that there was a different energy to his film because of the audience's presence.
Theater Troupe of Lhama Priests
1991
This is an earlier version of the film A River Stilled (静止的河). It's a documentary film about a young couple who live on opposite sides of the river at a time when their houses are about to be demolished as part of building the dam for the Three Gorges Dam project.
The Story of the Three Gorges
1995
NRIndependent documentary by Jiang Yue.
The Residents of Lhasa's Potala Square
1992
4.0Young students from across the country are invited to Beijing to perform a play written by future Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian. The film documents their feverishly intense rehearsals, the phenomenal public reception of their performances, and their desperate attempts to sustain their euphoria and pursue artistic careers in Beijing.
The Other Bank
1995
NRThis film shows the story of a young couple who meet and marry while working on the Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze River — with a backdrop of the daily life of the ten thousand(!) other workers. This film covers the time span until the work of checking the dam is completed in November, 1997. The young couple are standing at a difficult cross-road. While he has lost his job; she is about to give birth to their child. No one knows what will befall the young couple, but the film succeeds in making us feel invested in their hopes for the best, in their future happiness.
A River Stilled
1998
NRA film by Chinese documentary filmmaker Jinchuan Duan.
The War of Love
2002

