Brecht in Hong Kong: Performing the Facts and Documenting the Performance in Evans Chan's The Life and Times of Wu Zhongxian (2003)'

Abstract

John Grierson famously defined documentary as the “creative treatment of actuality.” Grierson, of course, had Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922) in mind when he crafted this definition, and how much emphasis should be placed on the “creative” artistry of the documentary form and how much on the truthfulness, authenticity, and credibility of the “actuality” in front of the camera has been open to debate ever since. Evans Chan's film The Life and Times of Wu Zhongxian seems to have little in common with Nanook of the North. However, it does bring to the forefront several critical questions involving the nature of the “actuality” as performance, biography, agit-prop, and essay. In Chan's film, Mok Chiu Yu creates a theatrical interpretation of the life of radical Hong Kong activist Wu Zhong Xian. Filmmaker Evans Chan stages it, shoots it, and intercuts it with documentary evidence, fictionalized reenactments, and cinematic musings on Wu as well as Mok's performance. Using Brecht's formulation of “reality” within the development of his theory of epic theatre, the alienation-effect, and political drama as a starting point, this analysis of The Life and Times of Wu Zhongxian explores the complex interconnection between politics and the fiction as well as the fact of screen, stage, and street performance.