Arthouse heavyweight

A documentary on boxing in China has won global acclaim. Photo provided to China Daily

A knockout year for cinema

Small screen, big ideas

This approach provides plenty of conflicts that don't feature the smack of a glove or a mouthpiece flying from a boxer's jaw in a halo of spittle. Does it make sense, for example, for a young man to leave his impoverished parents to work the family tobacco farm while he chases a small chance to "be a boxing king"?

Such questions sit firmly in the lap of Qi, a quiet and selfless man who lives under a stadium staircase in Sichuan province and ponders these issues with his proteges. The resulting scenes run from the emotional, when coach and students embrace like brothers, to the humorous, when a lovestruck fighter is egged on by a buddy as he debates how many times he should let a girl pass by at a mall before he asks for her phone number.

Yung notes that a good documentary is not journalism and not "objective" in that sense. "It's a real story, but the focus and the editing are very subjective," he says.

"Our job is to find a compelling narrative thread in real life."

Murray Greig, China Daily's veteran boxing writer, applauds China Heavyweight as "the documentary equivalent of Fat City, John Huston's 1972 film with Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges", which Grieg calls the best cinematic portrayal of the gritty world of being a pro fighter. Yung knows that film well-he's studied cinema's entire boxing canon, including When We Were Kings, the classic documentary about the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight fight in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Although the formula for a boxing film demands a build up to "the big fight" at the end, Yung and his team didn't take that path at the outset. But when Qi reached a point in his life where his age meant he might have one last chance to train for a professional title fight, he went for it-taking Yung and the film gang along for the ride.

The resulting drama makes the veteran fighter resolve the same questions of individual versus collective success for himself that he has helped his young fighters to face.