The Resilient Formation of the “Minjian”: The Transformation and Paradox of Publicness in China’s Post-Independent Film Festivals

This study confronts a tension within Chinese independent cinematic culture: as film festivals enter a “post-independent” era, where their survival increasingly depends on navigating administrative forces and commercial capital, does this signal the end of their role as an alternative public sphere driven by the “minjian” (a form of grassroots publicness) ?

Demarcated by the 2010s, early festival practices in the independent era sought to construct a critical space outside the official system by curating films of distinct social engagement and political expression, coupled with post-screening discussions. However, within the more ambiguous political-cultural ecosystem in the post-independent era, the concept of “independence” is called into question. Thus, the social function of publicness has undergone a profound metamorphosis, embedded in the continuous reconfiguration of “minjian” discourse and strategy.

Through fieldwork on two initiatives born in the early pandemic period and persisting to the present—the New Country Plain Film Festival in Xinxiang and the Nearby Film Festival in Guangzhou, this paper argues that a shift of publicness in China’s post-independent film festivals is underway, a process marked by internal fissure and paradox.

First, exemplified by the Nearby Film Festival, is a turn towards underground organization and diminished openness, resulting in an insular cinephile elite circle. This insularity, for all its retained sharpness of political expression, embodies a contraction and purification of the “minjian”. This formation provides emotional security and homogenized consensus, where the pluralistic public ideal effectively gives way to the internal maintenance of political and aesthetic communities.

Second, represented by the New Country Plain Film Festival, is the local-level emergence of a “coarse public pedagogy.” This practice consciously sheds the veneer of elitism, weaving itself into the fabric of indigenous daily life. Operating in a de-professionalized, de-ritualized manner, it fosters micro-public awareness and interpersonal ties, thereby cultivating a viewership that accommodates a wider spectrum of social groups. It seeks to reconstruct a grassroots sociability rooted in everyday experience among cinephiles, while avoiding direct political expression.

This study reveals two divergent and paradoxical paths of festival publicness in the post-independent era: one turns inward, centering social discussion within closed circles; the other turns outward, yet deliberately avoiding politically sensitive topics. It argues that the publicness of contemporary Chinese film festivals is no longer forged through a “contestatory formation” aimed at a declarative, confrontational “minjian” ideal space, but through a strategic, process-oriented practice of “resilient formation.” Its vitality has shifted from “managing antagonism” to “managing complexity.” Under multiple constraints, this resilient practice continuously reinterprets the“minjian” spirit and creatively forms moments and interstices capable of social bonding and critical engagement. Even in its paradoxical forms, such practice sustains a fragile optimism about the potential of film festivals as an alternative public sphere.

This study not only seeks to clarify the formative process of independent cinematic culture within China’s postsocialist context but also provides a critical, ground-level case for understanding the transformation of cultural public spheres under the dual pressures of authoritarianism and neoliberalism globally.