Searching for Brodsky

The documentary Searching for Brodsky by Xie Jiakun, made with Liao Jinfeng, a scholar at the National Taiwan University of Arts (where Xie is a lecturer), is the first to show extensive clips from Brodsky’s well-preserved feature-length documentary – the earliest surviving footage of everyday Chinese life – and dig a little deeper into Brodsky’s past. Typical of early film pioneers, he was basically a showman and businessman, but one with a genuine passion for his subject and for recording life without exoticism or condescension. (One intertitle even sarcastically noted: “The Chinese are fond of tender young bamboo shoots, while the Americans, as usual, prefer the kind of fruits and vegetables that grow in cans.”) He subsequently moved to Japan, where he made the documentary Beautiful Japan, which even included material on minorities.