天安门

Part 6: Guest Performers, 48 min.
Part 7: On the Way, 50 min.
Part 8: Memories, 60 min.

Followed by a talk with Chen Jue 陈爵, Shi Jian 时间 & Kuang Yang 邝杨

Eight-part documentary by China Central Television (CCTV) filmed in the late 1980s with a planned air date of National Day, October 1, 1989. Canceled after the June 4th Tiananmen crackdown, co-directors Shi Jian and Chen Jue completed the films independently. 
Parts 6, 7, & 8 show intellectuals and artists as witnesses rather than as state-approved authority figures; the country in a state of permanent transition without a stable destination; and the unresolved traumas of the Mao era.  

Shi Jian (时间) is a documentary filmmaker, editor, and producer who worked for decades within state television, while repeatedly testing its limits. After co-directing works such as Tiananmen (1991) and I Have Graduated, he returned to independent filmmaking following his retirement in 2021, most recently completing My Grandfather Liu Wencai (2023).

Chen Jue ( 陈爵) spent his career working at China Central Television (CCTV), where he directed documentaries that explored social change during the reform era. From environmental damage to education, migration, and daily work, his films show how political and economic shifts shape ordinary lives in China, sometimes in ways that proved difficult to broadcast.

Kuang Yang (邝杨) is a Chinese sociologist trained at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the key intellectual force behind the SWYC group’s documentary work in the late 1980s. He wrote the narration and collaborated on the screenplays for Only One Earth, Tiananmen, and Notes from Beijing, bringing social analysis into public television at a brief moment of institutional openness.