Documentaries aren’t the most visually stimulating cinematic fare, but they are the best way to get a view of a life that isn’t yours, a better grasp of fate, and a better sense for small truths that often slip under the radar. Yu Guangyi offers all of these and more in his series of documentaries recording the lives of people in his home village.

Yu started shooting documentaries in 2004—the former print artist has finished three films to date—all of which explore the everyday lives of people living in the remote forest lands of northeastern China. Timber Gang, shot in 2005, follows a group of loggers over four months, recording their harsh living and work environments. Yu records traditional ceremonies conducted before the gang goes out logging, and explores the lumberjacks’ complex feelings for their horses, who are key to their survival.

The second film in the series, Survival Song, explores the life of a 45-year-old lumberjack, who feeds himself by herding sheep for a hunter after he lost his job due to a logging ban. Without a family, or even a home to live in, his deep feelings of loneliness, emptiness and repressed physical urges cause him to urinate on a hunter’s wife who is outside hanging up laundry. At night, Yu’s lens captures him singing to himself in his rocky shelter, or dancing with abandon to disco music in a work shed where everyone can see.

Under Yu’s gaze, these faces from the lowest level of society come alive. The contrast between helpless anger and unrealistic expectations, or between a calm acceptance of fate and a carelessness about it, is razor sharp. In Chinese with English subtitles. RMB15.

Timber Gang, Saturday, Feb., 25, Survival Song, Sunday, Feb., 26, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 4:30pm, Tel: 6438-6675