The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 2 – Issue – I

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 2 – Issue – I

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 2 – Issue – I

This paper’s title is inspired by Guttmann’s 2004 book From Ritual To Record. It
examines the remedial and ritual role of cinema in artist film Weimar Villa (Bernd Behr,
2010) and critically acclaimed Chinese film 24 City (Zia Zhang-ke, 2008). The
cinematic documentation of newly sprawling urban spaces and of dismantling an old
military factory in post-socialist China in these two films, well complements the
“xiangchang”—or being on the scene—rhetoric that has governed contemporary
independent Chinese documentaries. The function of these two films, I argue,
progresses from recording of the actual to the performing of the ritual.

Both of the films’ aesthetics and their relationship with modernity provides a
comparative framework to forge an interesting relationship between these two films
and the modernist city films; Weimar Villa alludes to the Weimar culture via the
temporal and spatial displacement of Bauhaus style architecture in China, while some
of the aesthetic strategies employed in 24 City resemble the Soviet modernist cinematic
movement. I discuss how the modernist and post-socialist “city films” echo each other
yet forge diverging relationships to the “promised” modernity, underscoring the
historical and ideological disjuncture between these two eras.

Key words: City films, 24 City, Zia Zhang-ke, Bernd Behr, Chinese documentary,
artist films, modernity, post-socialist Chinese cinema, Weimar Villa, modernist, postsocialist

Seiko Yasumoto