Filming Power and the Powerless: Zhao Liang’s Crime and Punishment(2007) and Petition(2009)

This article discusses two recent works by emerging documentary auteur Zhao Liang, Crime and Punishment(2007) and Petition(2009). These penetrating observations of state-society relations in contemporary China render visible those who are un(der)represented, critique the deception of mass media images, and show the various complex ways in which power is connected to surveillance and visibility. Thus the filmmaker, his camera, and the spectators are implicated in power relationships as we cast voyeuristic, panoptic, activist, empathetic, or critical gazes upon the representatives of state power and upon the disenfranchised.

Sheldon H. Lu and Jiayan Mi (eds.), Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge