In this book, I have discussed first person films made by women at the turn of a new century, films made about the transition of filmmaker's ‘laojia’ (‘old home’), young generation filmmakers’ first person action documentary and the celebrity Ai Weiwei's camera activism. This chapter focuses on a group of individuals who I have not yet discussed elsewhere – socially less empowered, subaltern villagers – through a case study of the ‘China Villagers Documentary Project’. This project, started as a one-off in 2005, was originally part of an EU–China village governance training programme. Led by Chinese independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang and project co-ordinator Jian Yi, ten villagers across China were selected to each make a ten-minute short documentary on their own village with a portable amateur DV camera. After the first year, the project continued, financed by Wu's studio. Four of the village filmmakers, Wang Wei, Shao Yuzhen, Jia Zhitan and Zhang Huancai, continued their first person filmmaking and made documentaries annually from 2006 to 2009. Their films are titled ‘My Village 2006/2007/2008/2009’.

Since the completion of the first year of the project, the villagers’ films have been toured around festivals, universities and art centres in the USA, Europe and Hong Kong, and have attracted much scholarly attention. Most current studies emphasise how this project empowers the villagers to express themselves, and provides an authentic perspective on grassroots China through the villagers’ own lens that could not be obtained by professional filmmakers (Wang 2005; Huang 2016).