Hooligan Sparrow
Hooligan Sparrow is a 2016 documentary film about Ye Haiyan and other Chinese activists written, produced and directed by Nanfu Wang. Ye and other activists, including the human rights lawyers Tang Jitian and Wang Yu, lead protests in Hainan, China, demanding justice for six school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Soon the protesters, the filmmaker, their families and some acquaintances become targets of harassment by policemen and thugs across different locations in China.
It was the debut film by Wang, a Chinese-born American filmmaker, and earned her various accolades, including a Peabody Award and a Truer than Fiction Independent Spirit Award for emerging filmmakers. Hooligan Sparrow was generally praised by critics.
Synopsis
The documentary is about a child rape case in China and the protests against it by activists Ye Haiyan, Shan Lihua, Tang Jitian, Wang Jianfen, Jia Lingmin, Wang Yu, and Huang. A photograph of Ye holding a sign that says "Principal, get a room with me and leave the schoolgirls alone" goes viral on Chinese social media, thus raising awareness about the case. Subsequently, Ye is the victim of severe harassment by policemen and thugs. As Nanfu Wang films the activists, she herself becomes the subject of harassment from state actors responding to her efforts to document the activists' work. The film is composed of footage captured surreptitiously and smuggled out of the country by Wang, with two scenes captured by an activist, a friend of Ye, called Huang. It is Huang's footage that allows the film to include a scene in which some thugs take the camera from Wang outside a court that is hearing a lawsuit filed by Ye against the police. About that lawsuit, Nanfu Wang narrates in voice-over that Ye filed it and the human rights lawyer Wang Yu involved herself in it even though "we all knew the result before we even got there".Production
said that she decided to make the film because,When creating the film, Wang was not aware that this would make her a target for government surveillance, later stating that she "knew very little about the activist world". Wang has noted that her family and friends were followed and interrogated by officers who questioned whether or not they knew her, her whereabouts, and her current actions.
Reception
Hooligan Sparrow earned Wang a Peabody Award, a George Polk Award in the category of Documentary Film, a Cinema Eye Honors award for Best Debut Feature, the award for Best Emerging Documentary Filmmaker from the International Documentary Association, and a Human Rights Watch Film Festival award for Courage in Filmmaking. It was placed on the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2016 Oscars, was nominated for Best First Documentary Feature at the 1st Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, and won the Truer than Fiction Independent Spirit Award at the 32nd ceremony.Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called Hooligan Sparrow an "admirably gutsy documentary" that "employs the familiar storytelling strategy of the charismatic personality whose struggles are meant to be representative of the greater political stakes." Dargis then highlighted that the film "makes those stakes real, visceral and urgent, partly by laying bare just how difficult it can be to make a documentary like this," and added that it "has the pulse of a mainstream thriller but without the pacifying polish and tidiness."
Likewise, Owen Gleiberman wrote in Variety that "at certain points the movie generates the high tension of a thriller, as when an official suddenly looks at Wang and says, 'there's something odd about your glasses. Gleiberman concludes: "watching the movie, you feel grateful to be in the presence of a rippling chain of heroism, one that extends from Ye to Wang to the other protesters in the film, all the way to Ai Weiwei."
Matt Fagerholm recalled in RogerEbert.com that, in the past, he had written about Ai Weiwei that "there was perhaps 'no greater champion of individuality and its inherent power, but "now that I've seen Nanfu Wang's 'Hooligan Sparrow,' I am convinced that I have found his equal. Her name is Ye Haiyan". Like other reviewers, Fagerholm also remarked that "the film plays like a gripping thriller, fueled by an ever-present threat."