在拿起摄像机之前，陈家坪的第一语言是诗歌。从重庆搬到北京后，他一直在寻找一种载体，以表达这时代强加于人的压力。对他来说，诗歌必须扎根于生活。2014年，他参与成立了北京青年诗会。这是一个充满活力的圈子，聚集了学生、作家和年轻思想家。他们经常在靠近北京海淀区大学园区的“706青年空间”聚会，朗诵诗歌，并展开思想辩论。
那几年，陈家坪（原名陈勇）已经开始被电影吸引。受到皮耶·保罗·帕索里尼 （Pier Paolo Pasolini）直接凝视社会生活的启发，他于2003年拿起摄像机，开始拍摄北京的流动人口聚居区。他后来表示，摄像机感觉就像“另外一支笔”，一种让他能够记录那些很少进入公众视野的现实的工具。他没有接受过正规的电影制作训练，自己在北京也是一个外来者。他跟拍那些住在狭小房间，工作不稳定，在没有本地户口的情况下努力供孩子上学的家庭。他的早期作品——《外来人口》（2004）、《快乐的哆嗦》（2012） 和《大兴失火》（2018），捕捉了北京这座大都市不均衡发展的背后——日常运转由农民工支撑，却对他们吝惜最基础的社会服务。
陈家坪选择的这条道路，最终将他引向了许志永——一位法律学者、公民权利倡导者，民间机构“公盟”的联合创始人。许志永2003年开始担任海淀区人民代表大会代表，并于2006年再次当选。当时，他正致力于帮助进城打工者的家庭解决户口问题和孩子受教育问题。大约在2010年，陈家坪认识了许志永，并开始拍摄许的日常工作：为家长提供建议、起草上访信，和各方人士或机构碰头。有一次，许志永还去重访了他自己过去被关押的监狱——在监狱外，对着镜头，他讲述了自己的遭遇，也表达了他继续斗争的决心——为争取一个更公平的社会，提升普通公民的公民意识，他不会停歇。陈家坪拍摄的这些镜头，罕见地呈现了一位行动者的日常：聚集、开会、讨论行动的计划，以及最务实的基层组织工作。镜头里，没有演讲，只有一个个案件的处理，长时间的交谈，以及在简朴家中的安静会面。
陈家坪这些拍摄素材，最终成就了纪录片《政治家》（2019）——它详细记录了许志永为对抗中国教育体系中的系统性不平等而所做的努力。影片也跟拍了那些无法让孩子在北京学校入学或报名参加高考的家长。陈家坪的镜头记录了许志永的决心和承诺——这也是基于对现实的观察和思考：
“在北京，有几百万人没有北京户口，他们的孩子无法在北京正常地读书，尤其是参加高考。我觉得这给社会带来了很多的问题。平等是一个非常重要的问题，是一个重要的权利，所以我们在想怎么样去推动这个平等的受教育权问题，以及社会保障的问题。”
在一个场景中，一位母亲描述她的儿子在老家的学校如何挣扎，孤身一人且缺乏家庭支持。她在北京工作，对因孩子无法再身边上学而忧心忡忡。许志永敦促家长们集体思考，而非仅仅是个人行动：“我们要建立一个几万人的团队，这个团队只要建成了，这个制度很快就开始受不了，就开始跟家长代表谈了。”
在陈家坪的镜头下，许志永出现在他2014年因“聚众扰乱公共场所秩序”而服刑四年的监狱外。他面带微笑，温和而满怀希望。他说，他相信自己的所作所为是一名中国公民应该做的事情，也平和地反思了自己所经历的监禁以及被孤立的处境。在另外的一些镜头里，许志永在简陋的公寓里，听打工者讲述自己的经历——他们因为户口限制，以及无休止的工作，不得不与自己的孩子分离多年。
作为北京大学的法学博士、一名区级的前人大代表，许志永曾经自如地游走于法律思辩和日常对话之间，告诉人们，制度政策如何塑造日常生活，以及公民意识为何至关重要。
但是，就在陈家坪拍摄这些故事的同时，中国更广泛的公民活动环境已在发生变化。大约从2013年习近平上任后，中国的公民社会进入了一个控制收紧的时期。“公民社会”、“普世价值”和“宪政”等概念变得越发敏感。多年来一直谨慎从事的公益律师、独立媒体和基层非政府组织，正开始面临严厉的审查和关闭。与法律改革相关的组织——包括许志永的“公盟”——被迫关闭。2015年7月9日发生的“709大抓捕”，让这种压力陡然加剧，当时有接近300名律师和法律工作者被拘留、讯问或喝茶。
独立的文化空间也面临同样的命运。会议、研讨会和电影节被叫停。长期作为纪录片导演平台的北京独立电影节被关闭。2016年颁布的《境外非政府组织境内活动管理法》将海外资助的组织置于警方监管之下，切断了许多合作关系。记录敏感事件的公民记者——包括新冠疫情爆发初期——被拘留或失踪。曾经可以公开进行的对话转移到私密的微信群组中，即便如此也变得危险。
对于像陈家坪这样的电影人来说，这种收紧是明确无误的。独立纪录片一直以有限的资源运作，但现在空间本身正在收缩。导演兼评论家朱日坤将陈家坪描述为“一个在边缘的中国独立纪录片上更边缘的纪录作者”，这句话不仅抓住了这项工作的脆弱性，也体现出他所拍摄的人群，本身就是最容易被伤害和打压的。
在纪录片《政治家》于2019年完成后，陈家坪就被警方约谈。该片在台湾金马奖获得提名后，他再次被拘留并被迫撤片（那一年，由于大陆官方的抵制，中国电影——包括纪录片——在台湾的电影节上大多缺席提名）。情况在2020年初升级，在许志永于同年2月再次捕后，陈家坪也因同样的罪名——“煽动颠覆国家政权”而被拘留。他被关押了109天。警方突袭了他的家，没收了他的设备，并查抄了《政治家》的母带素材。许志永后来被判处十四年徒刑，这是他第二次被重判。
如今，《政治家》依然无法在中国境内公开放映，但它通过私人网络、U盘和海外链接在悄然流传。在中国，观看这部影片本身就是有风险的，但这部电影仍在寻找自己的观众。据现居美国的人权律师滕彪所说，“许志永的案件卷宗中有大量材料与这部纪录片有关”，这表明此类影像记录在许志永所面临的诉讼中起到了重要作用。对独立纪录片的社群来说，这表明了一个基本现实：在中国，记录社会问题如何被迅速纳入政治案件。
陈家坪从诗人到电影人的转变并非决裂，而是一种延续。无论是写诗还是拍摄农民工、流离失所的家庭，或是拍摄一位法律倡导者的日常工作，他都在试图理解人们如何面对那些限制他们的社会建构。同时，随着中国公共表达空间的收窄，拍摄日常生活也成为一种越来越不确定的行为。
正如法学学者托马斯·E·凯洛格 （Thomas E. Kellogg）教授在2024年接受《卫报》采访时所说，许志永是“如今在世的中国最重要的行动者”，一个站在中国公民成长和被压制的漩涡中心的人物。
然而，纪录片《政治家》仍在流传。陈家坪以他与时代同步的语言进行的探索——先是通过文字，后是通过镜头——仍在持续。在他周围，其他人也在继续尝试记录普通人的历史；而具体到许志永案中，这部电影则提供了一份稀有而宝贵的许志永肖像——一位中国的法律学者，正是严肃的思考促使他投身于政治行动主义——而他却因这一抱负而身陷囹圄。
A Poster for Politician
Chen Jiaping and Xu Zhiyong: When a Poet and an Activist Converge in a Relentless Era
By Isabelle Mo
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Before he ever lifted a camera, Chen Jiaping found his first language in poetry. After moving from Chongqing to Beijing, he searched for a form of expression capable of speaking to the pressures of the time. Poetry, for him, had to remain rooted in life. In 2014, he helped establish the Beijing Youth Poetry Society, a vibrant circle of students, writers, and young thinkers who often gathered at 706 Youth Space—near the university district—to read poems and debate ideas.
During those years, Chen—born Chen Yong—was already being drawn toward film. Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s direct gaze at social life, he picked up a camera in 2003 and began filming the migrant neighborhoods of Beijing. The camera, he later said in a private letter I had access to, felt like “another kind of pen,” a tool that allowed him to record realities that rarely entered the public record. With no formal filmmaking training and living in Beijing as a migrant himself, he followed families living in cramped rooms, working unstable jobs, and struggling to keep their children in school without local hukou. His early works—The Migrant Population (2004), Happy Shivers(2012), and The Daxing Fire (2018)—captured the uneven growth of a city sustained by migrant labor yet withholding basic services from the very workers who kept it running.
This path eventually led him to Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar, civil rights advocate, and co-founder of China’s Open Constitution Initiative. Xu served as a delegate to the Haidian District People’s Congress beginning in 2003 and was re-elected in 2006. At the time, he was helping migrant families navigate hukou rules and access to education. Chen met him around 2010 and began filming his daily work: advising parents, drafting petitions, meeting community groups, and, at times, revisiting the sites of his own past detentions—speaking about the conditions he endured and his determination to keep fighting for a fairer society and for civic awareness among ordinary citizens. The footage offered a rare look at an activist’s routine: gatherings, meetings, the planning of protests, grassroots organizing at its most pragmatic. Not speeches, but casework, long conversations, and quiet meetings in modest homes.
Chen Jiaping
This material became Politician (2019), a detailed portrait of Xu’s efforts to confront systemic inequality in China’s education system. The film follows parents unable to enroll their children in Beijing schools or register them for the college entrance exam. Chen records Xu explaining the basic reality—the pledge that shaped his work:
“There are several million people in Beijing without local household registration, yet their children cannot attend regular schools or sit for the college entrance exam here. This creates many problems. When children are forced to return to their hometowns, there may be no one there to look after them. Equality in education is important, so we began thinking about how to promote equal access—and equal social protection more broadly.”
In one scene, a mother describes how her son struggles in their hometown school, alone and without family support. She works long hours in the capital but worries that her absence undermines his education. Xu urges parents to think collectively rather than individually: “We need to organize. Only when tens of thousands of people act together will the system have to respond.”
Chen also films Xu outside the detention facility where he served four years beginning in 2014 for “gathering crowds to disrupt public order.” Xu appears smiling, warm, and hopeful about the work he believes he must do as a Chinese citizen, even as he quietly reflects on the confinement and isolation he experienced. Other scenes show him visiting small apartments where workers describe years of separation from their children because of hukou restrictions and work schedules.
Xu Zhiyong—a Peking University PhD and former district-level congress delegate—moves fluidly between legal reasoning and everyday conversation, showing how institutional policies shape daily life and why civic consciousness remains essential.
While Chen filmed these stories, China’s broader climate for civic activity was shifting. Beginning around 2013, after Xi Jinping assumed leadership, civil society entered a period of tightening control. Concepts such as “civil society,” “universal values,” and “constitutionalism” became politically sensitive. Public interest lawyers, independent journalists, and grassroots NGOs that had operated cautiously for years began facing audits, investigations, and closures. Organizations connected to legal reform—including Xu Zhiyong’s own Open Constitution Initiative—were forced to shut down. Pressure intensified in 2015 with the “709 crackdown,” in which more than 200 lawyers and legal workers were detained or interrogated.
Independent cultural spaces faced the same fate. Conferences, workshops, and film festivals were shut down. The Beijing Independent Film Festival, long a platform for documentary filmmakers, was shut down. The 2016 Foreign NGO Management Law placed overseas-funded organizations under police oversight, cutting off many partnerships. Citizen journalists who documented sensitive events—including during the early months of COVID-19—were detained or disappeared. Conversations that once took place openly shifted to private WeChat groups, and even those grew risky.
For filmmakers like Chen, the tightening was unmistakable. Independent documentaries had always worked with limited resources, but now the space itself was contracting. Director and critic Zhu Rikun described Chen as “a filmmaker on the margins of an already marginal field,” a phrase that captured both the precariousness of the work and the vulnerability of the people he filmed.
By the time Politician was completed in 2019, Chen had already been questioned by police. After the film was nominated for the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, he was detained again and forced to withdraw it. (That year, Chinese films—including documentaries—were largely absent from nominations in the island’s film festival due to a mainland boycott.) The situation escalated in early 2020. After Xu Zhiyong was arrested that February following a small gathering of lawyers and activists, Chen was detained on the same charge—“inciting subversion of state power.” He was held for 109 days. Police raided his home, seized his equipment, and confiscated the master footage of Politician. Xu later received a fourteen-year sentence, his second major term.