Documenting Chinese homecomings: Reflexive aesthetics and cinematic memories in Four Springs (2017) and The Reunions (2020)

This article examines two contemporary Chinese films that document the film-makers’ homecoming journey during the Chinese New Year: Sige chuntian (Four Springs) (Lu 2017) and Jixiang ruyi (The Reunions) (Da 2020). It argues that both films have the characteristic of being reflexive documentaries exploring and expanding the boundaries of documentary films. According to Meunier’s three types of filmic identifications – the documentary attitude, the home-movie attitude and the fiction attitude – the two films challenge documentary norms and combine the documentary attitude with the other two types of attitude. Four Springs combines documentary and home movie by closely capturing the four journeys of homecoming confined in the private sphere of the filmmaker’s home, whilst The Reunions combines documentary and fiction, and even actuality and performance, through actor Liu Lu’s portrayal of the director Da Peng’s cousin in the presence of his real family. By challenging these documentary forms, these two films reflect the directors’ uses of documentary to memorialize their personal experiences with their families, more than merely reflecting the cultural phenomenon of the Chinese New Year homecoming.