How can cinema and computer-generated images connect with the practice of online investigation, and what does it change in the form as well as in the emotion conveyed? Starting from the in-depth case studies of two short film projects dealing with the invisible human labour involved in training automated systems, this talk will explore the way filmmakers can make use of investigative practices in order to critically engage with the technological infrastructure that makes up the contemporary world.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, lightweight 16mm cameras paved the way for the Free Cinema movement. Key figures include Chris Marker (France, with LETTER FROM SIBERIA and SANS SOLEIL); Jonas Mekas (United States, with REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA and DIARIES NOTES AND SKETCHES); and Chantal Akerman (Belgium, with NO HOME MOVIE). From the late 1990s to around 2000, digital video (DV) created the preconditions for a form of filmmaking in which an individual could work independently with the camera. Representative filmmakers and works from this period include DU Haibin' s ALONG THE RAILWAY, WANG Fen' s MORE THAN ONE IS UNHAPPY, and HU Xinyu' s MAN. Since 2005, Caochangdi Workstation has brought together a number of free cinema practitioners who, through the "use of real-life materials", have pursued nonfiction filmmaking and continued to explore the possibilities of image-making. Tracing twenty years of creative practice at Caochangdi Workstation, this lecture will draw on works by filmmakers and artists including SHAO Yuzhen, ZHANG Mengqi, HU Tao, WU Wenguang, Luo Luo, LIU Xiaoqian, LI Xinyue, and Haiguang. It will explore the idea of "the image as a form of writing" and the possibilities opened up by diverse forms of practice, including essay film, auteur cinema, cinematic essay, personal cinema, diary film, novelistic film, poetic film, installation-based moving images, and desktop cinema.

In a contemporary world saturated with information and speech, language has become impoverished precisely through excess. The demands of political correctness and the echo chambers in which we find ourselves increasingly render expression repetitive and hollow, leaving people retreating into a silence in which they no longer feel able or willing to speak. In traditional Chinese philosophy, the notion of "zhiyu ( 止语 )", or the deliberate cessation of speech, calls for a quieting of verbal noise and a return to a more acute inward awareness. In some experimental documentaries, filmmakers and their subjects have begun to embrace silence, deliberately stripping away voiceover and dialogue to return the expressive space of cinema to the image itself and to the viewer' s own experience of it. This silence is not the disappearance of language, but an awakening of other dimensions of perception. Before language takes hold, how might we surrender our body and mind to cinema? In terms of both technique and creative approach, how can filmmakers use sound design and visual rhythm to construct cinematic structures and sensory experiences that do not rely on words or spoken testimony? How can the faintest background hums and the subtlest ambient sounds evoke the breathing of a space and the ripples of an inner life?

This seminar brings together filmmakers who have chosen to dispense with dialogue or voiceover in their work, to explore the creative principles and methods of filmmaking without spoken words. We will also consider how setting words aside might return us to a pre-linguistic mode of perception, rooted in the body and instinct, and how, by moving beyond verbal expression, filmmakers can forge a more immediate and profound intuitive connection with their subjects and audiences.

Archives are an essential resource for documentary filmmaking, as well as a vital medium through which moving images preserve history, pass on memory, and shape narratives. Their material form, historical resonances, and distinctive aesthetic qualities lend moving images a measure of credibility. Yet archives are far from inert repositories of the past. Through footage selection, visual arrangement, recontextualization, and format experimentation, filmmakers continually excavate the layered meanings embedded in original materials, expand their narrative potential, and open up new

possibilities of expression.

The forms archives take are continually evolving alongside digital technologies. Billions of personal posts on social media, vast volumes of code generated by artificial intelligence, and radar data produced by autonomous vehicles have all become indices of the contemporary world. In the realms of moving-image art and research, a new generation of artists and filmmakers is learning to work with these emerging archives, finding new ways to move and create alongside them. At the same time, the generative capacities of contemporary image-making have prompted renewed debate about authenticity and credibility, and their relationship to historical truth. Against this backdrop, how can documentary filmmakers uncover new narrative possibilities in existing footage? How might creators forge connections between archives and lived experience in the present through formal experimentation and the reconfiguration of source materials? As these materials are continually reshaped by technological change, how should we define their value and limits? These are the questions we will explore with our speakers at this seminar, as we consider the manifold possibilities of the archive in contemporary documentary filmmaking.

The digital age has opened up a wide range of new technologies for filmmaking, including many for documentary production. On the one hand, we have grown accustomed to widely adopted techniques, practices, and tools such as nonlinear editing, password-protected links for sharing work, and hard-drive storage. On the other, newer technologies continue to emerge, many of which become part of our everyday reality before we have even resolved our initial misgivings about them. Technology may well be the only truly immersive experience of our time.

AI-generated documentary imagery is advancing rapidly in a variety of forms, from historical biographies and shopping websites to experimental films, animated nonfiction picture books for minors, crime-scene reconstruction, and knowledge visualization. There has been extensive discussion of this subject. The organizers and curators of the West Lake International Documentary Festival, however, believe it is time to explore the place of these developments in higher education, along with the questions, dilemmas, and issues of legitimacy they raise, as well as their practical applications, textbooks, and internship opportunities. For this discussion, we have invited five speakers.

Li Yifan draws on the tradition of animated documentary, creating AI-assisted documentary shorts based on recorded speech and real-world settings. He is now developing this work into a feature-length film. Yang Yishu has recently completed a textbook on AIGC. Meng Zhong is currently tasked with establishing the China Film Association' s AI Working Committee. Song Jie will discuss the meaning of documentary in the digital age within the context of AIGC. Fu Hongxing will approach the topic from three perspectives: creator, researcher, and educator. The five speakers come from different backgrounds and will bring distinct perspectives to the discussion. We look forward to hearing their insights.

AIGC teems with monsters, fantasies, apocalyptic visions, and superhuman powers. It seems to take us back to cinema' s carnival era a century ago, from A TRIP TO THE MOON to THE CAVE OF THE SILKEN WEB.

Yet we are also seeing or making nonfiction AIGC. Some emulate Chinese television programs such as LECTURE ROOM and ANIMAL WORLD; others fill in gaps in family memories or at pivotal moments in national history, bringing them to life through animation. Still others venture into the inner world that cannot be filmed in reality, or attempt to reconstruct

dreams.

The very nature of AI is bound to invite skepticism from documentary filmmakers. We believe, however, that it deserves discussion just as animated documentary did in its time. The "super-individual" extends the reach of an individual' s image-making. In the late 1990s, JIA Zhangke called this "amateur filmmaking"; I have called it the "democratization of moving images." In this continually evolving current, AI reaffirms an age-old conception of the artist: someone who uses tools to work alone, daubing away at something that may well fail. Perhaps the only measure that matters is whether they love what they have made. At a time when AIGC is being widely adopted, this forum seeks to explore together both the possibilities and the limits of creating and producing AI-generated documentaries.