Rotterdam: Anchors Aweigh
In 2014, the Chinese government first outlined its plans for a “social credit system,” a massive project that utilizes various data-collection tools to rank the good standing of the country’s citizens, set to be fully implemented by 2020. Undertaken with a goal to “strengthen social sincerity and stimulate mutual trust in society,” many experts have flagged the project’s obvious and extreme risks to civil liberties and freedom of expression. While not explicit, this context of steadily pervasive state surveillance and social assessment informs China-born, US-based filmmaker Zhu Shengze’s feature-length documentary Present.Perfect., winner of the Tiger Award at the 2019 Rotterdam Film Festival. Assembled entirely out of footage broadcast on various Chinese live-streaming platforms, Zhu’s film begins with a reference to another Chinese state intervention: the 2017 Cybersecurity Law, which has led to an increased control of network operators and threatened online expression, including the suspension of several live-streaming platforms.
Assembled out of some 800 hours of footage that Zhu recorded live, the project offers an alternative concept of (self-)observation as mediated by digital technologies.
