This paper examines how contemporary Chinese documentary cinema participates in the discourse of rural revitalization through affective realism and narrative micro-politics. Taking Shepherds on the Divide as a case study, the research analyzes how personal hardship, ecological transformation, and emotional endurance are woven into a cinematic narrative that mediates between state policy and lived rural experience. Rather than functioning as ideological illustration, the documentary constructs a form of emotional realism in which national development is articulated through individual vulnerability and resilience. Drawing upon scholarship on Chinese documentary realism, rural imaginaries, and affective ethics, this study argues that Shepherds on the Divide exemplifies a post-poverty documentary mode that shifts realism from oppositional witnessing toward relational and participatory storytelling. Through understated narration, observational camerawork, and pastoral visual poetics, the film transforms policy discourse into a shared moral experience. The analysis demonstrates that contemporary rural documentaries function as sites of cinematic citizenship, where empathy becomes a mode of political engagement and visual storytelling mediates between individual destiny and collective imagination. By reframing rural revitalization as an affective process rather than a didactic message, Shepherds on the Divide contributes to a new ethical paradigm in Chinese documentary practice.
References
[1] Moon, W. L. (2018) Documentary and its realism. Studies in Documentary Film, 12(1), 43-55.
[2] Mello, C. (2023) Looking at China from Abroad: intermediality as a tool for documentary. International Communication of Chinese Culture, 10(1), 15-30.
[3] Lei, Q., Lee, T. M., Emang, C. J. (2023) Presentation of Chinese rural society in documentary films on Rural Revitalization: an analysis. Journal of Research in Social Science and Humanities, 2(10), 43-54.
[4] Zhen, N., Rogers, S., Wilmsen, B. (2023) Rural imaginaries in China’s Three Gorges region. Journal of Rural Studies, 103, 103131.
[5] Wang, A., Whyke, T. W., Song, Z., Zhu, Z., Lopez-Mugica, J. (2024) Can the farmers speak? The paradox of the subaltern narrative in Return to Dust. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 18(2-3), 265-281.
[6] Wu, T. (2024) The visual construction of the people’s country and the Chinese nation: political aesthetics in the Ethno-documentaries of New China. International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology, 8(1), 18.
[7] Sun, W. (2013) The cultural politics of recognition: rural migrants and documentary films in China. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 7(1), 3-20.
[8] Bhaskar, R. (2020) Critical realism and the ontology of persons. Journal of Critical Realism, 19(2), 113-120.
[9] Susen, S. (2023) Towards an ontology of contemporary reality? Theory, Culture & Society, 40(7-8), 33-55.
[10] Pernin, J. (2014) Performance, documentary, and the transmission of memories of the great leap famine in the folk memory project. China Perspectives, 2014(2014/4), 17-26.
[11] Brylla, C., Kramer, M. (2018) Introduction: Intersecting cognitive theory and documentary film. Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film, 1-17.
Share and Cite
Shen, G. (2025) Affective Realism and Rural Regeneration: Documentary Storytelling and Cinematic Citizenship in Shepherds on the Divide. Journal of Social Development and History, 1(2), 61-66.