Crazy Man

You could regard the film as a simple documentary. The film maker films a man who attracts attention in a square of an evening. A madman. The madman becomes entirely engrossed in a performance he conceived himself and he is also the only one to understand the ritual. The film maker, who is primarily an artist, can also see this is a performance. As a Chinese visual artist, he knows all about that, and he also sees that the madman isn’t just mad but has a special talent in his own way. So it isn’t just a simple documentary, but an artist’s report of a unique performance. And it is actually even a fiction film, because the madman isn’t all that mad or is at least very aware of the spectator and his camera. He acts. He was already doing that, but who shall say whether it would have been as good or lasted as long without the camera?
The performance was spontaneous and the artist saw it and filmed it by accident. Yet the artist was more or less prepared, because observing people and actions has fascinated him for a long time. A certain voyeurism is hence not strange to him. For Zhang Ding, the encounter with the crazy artist in the square was not isolated. In other work he also focuses on the forgotten and those on the fringe. So it is a kind of political art. (GjZ)