These achievements have come at a price.
About 20 filmmakers have been banned from making films for two to five years, according to Zhang Xianmin (張獻民), an independent film producer and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Others have received intimidating phone calls, had tapes confiscated or been detained and interrogated.
But according to several filmmakers and film scholars both here and abroad, the government recently appears to have adopted a somewhat hands-off, though highly watchful, posture toward this film vanguard, leaving it to operate in an undefined gray area.
It seems that as long as certain incendiary topics are not broached — among them the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, the Cultural Revolution, the outlawed religious group Falun Gong — then independent filmmakers are allowed to work.
Yet no one is absolutely sure where the boundaries are, or whether the government will start to clamp down more fiercely.
“You don’t know where that limit is,” said Zhang Yaxua (張亞璇), a critic and documentary filmmaker who is organizing an independent film archive for the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. “You have to try to touch it. In the process of trying, you know.”
Huang Wenhai (黃文海), a documentary filmmaker in Beijing, said that the process of filmmaking here “is the process of conquering your fear.”
Despite this pressure and uncertainty, there are now at least four major independent film festivals around the country and at least two theaters, both small, dedicated to showing Chinese independent films.
Meanwhile Chinese audiences largely remain out of reach. With cinemas and television off limits to their unsanctioned films, independent moviemakers are mostly restricted to screenings in front of small audiences in art galleries, bars, universities and homes.
As a result the most accomplished filmmakers have found their largest audiences overseas, especially at international film festivals.
“I feel very frustrated,” Zhao said. “I’m a Chinese filmmaker, and of course my audience should be the Chinese people, especially since my films are about ordinary working Chinese people.” He added, “That would be more valuable than winning an international film festival.”
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