REPUBLIC: GALWAY SCREENING, INTRODUCTON BY Jimmy Tianxiang Wang
Directed by Jinjiang, the documentary Republic won the Mecenat Award for Best Documentary at last year’s Busan International Film Festival. The title “Republic” refers to a small, isolated room, just a few square meters in size, located in a hutong alley in the heart of Beijing. In this confined space, a group of young hippies dedicate themselves to music, spiritual exploration, and philosophical reflection, living in a secluded life resembling a micro-level utopian social experiment. Although the film largely takes place within this single space, it is rich in content, brimming with passion and energy, and reflects the director’s keen insight as both an observer and participant.
In my view, much of the film’s charm and passion stem from its protagonist, Eryang. Always immersed in grand contemplations, Eryang seeks answers to humanity’s ultimate dilemmas through hallucinogens, literature, and by drawing on both Western and Eastern political and philosophical classics. With remarkable creativity, he infuses his utopian ideals into his ‘Republic’ transforming his small concrete room into a vast arena of unfettered carnival and spiritual exploration, set apart from the surrounding institutional society governed by logic and reason. In this chaotic yet liberating space, rock music, the Beat Generation, Hendrix posters, Buddhist teachings, and even the party‘s political doctrines intertwine as Eryang weaves them into a glaring tapestry of idealistic expression. In this seemingly absurd mélange of cultural and political symbols, the essence of Marxist philosopher and cultural critic Fredric Jameson’s theory of the ‘political unconscious’ emerges, which posits that the collectivist instinct that humanity has long possessed since its origin does not fade with the evolution of history and the rise of private ownership (289-90). Instead, it persists in the form of a utopian impulse, a subtle subtext, repressed in every familiar form of culture and ideology, and distorted in every instance of artistic expression (Jameson 287-88, 289). However, in “Republic”, where various cultural and political symbols collide and sublimate and all meanings collapse in the boundless atmosphere of revelry, Eryang and his friends open a door of perception to a world where we can indulge in the pure release of the utopian impulse, embracing “great unity of the people of the world” with wild abandon.
Although focusing on the young hippies’ alternative lifestyle, Republic is by no means an exhibition of anthropological curiosities. According to the director, his camera and this space had always been undergoing a subtle chemical reaction throughout the two years of filming (Jin). Following the camera’s perspective, we are sometimes invited to join the psychedelic parties, forming alliances with young hippies and empathising with Eryang’s idealism. At other times, we are granted the space and the right to meditate, pulling back from the revelry induced by drugs to soberly observe everything that unfolds at a certain distance. Ultimately, the various fragments of imagery captured over the two years in this cramped space were consciously organised by the director into a text that provides keen social insights. The documentary can be contextualised within a contemporary Chinese society, characterised by material resources accumulating in excess and social overload. Having grown up in an era of economic boom and information explosion, Eryang and his peers were afforded ample space to pursue spiritual creativity and the transcendence of the material world. However, their pursuit of an alternative lifestyle has distanced them from the increasingly institutionalised and efficiency-obsessed mainstream society. As a result, their idealism, unlike that of their hippie predecessors across the ocean 60 years ago, fails to spark a societal wave. Instead, their anarchist social experiments and spiritual explorations are confined to an isolated monad space. Compared to the sprawling metropolis of Beijing, home to 20 million people, “Republic” is nothing more than a fragile node, poised to dissolve at any moment into the vast machinery of state capitalism. In fact, Eryang has been relying on online loans to keep this place running, and over the years, he has become heavily indebted. Behind the dazzling, intoxicating appearance of the psychedelic, spiritual, and carnival world thus lies a growing sense of weariness among the youth, along with their feeble resistance to capitalism expressed only through escapism.
In an era like this, must the cost of realising the ideal of ‘O ever youthful, O ever weeping’ inevitably be a state of exile on the fringes of society? This documentary has found clues to the answer.
Work Cited:
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious : Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Jin, Jiang. “In Conversation with Director Jin Jiang and Jimmy Tianxiang Wang”. East Asia Film Festival Ireland Discoveries, 18 Sep. 2024, https://www.eaffi.ie/conversation/republic. Accessed 23rd, October 2024
Jimmy Tianxiang Wang is a PhD Researcher at Huston School of Film and Digital Media, University of Galway. His research focuses on urban spaces in contemporary Chinese film.