"Documentary Images Illuminate the Future" Program Livestream

“Documentary Images Illuminate the Future” was part of the China (Guangzhou) International Documentary Film Festival. XinChuan Studio worked with the National Library of China, Guangzhou Library, and partner institutions to produce two online video livestreams around documentary culture, city memory, and public cultural service.

The two programs were the oral-documentary seminar “Family and Nation Memories in Individual Narratives” on the afternoon of January 16, and the “Twin Cities Chronicle - Early Urban Documentary Images” exchange session on the morning of January 17. Because some guests could not arrive on site during the pandemic, the team had to connect on-site speakers, remote guests, audience interaction, and multi-platform distribution through a stable audio-video chain.

The programs were distributed through Guangming Online, the Guangming Daily app, Huya Live, and other platforms, as well as the Weibo accounts of the National Library of China and Guangzhou Library. Cumulative views exceeded 450,000. Guangming Online reached 226,000 views, the Guangming Daily app passed 100,000 views, and Huya’s peak concurrent popularity reached 44,000 on January 16 and 51,000 on January 17.

The project’s reusable value came from its combined complexity: public culture content, documentary festival programming, hybrid speaker collaboration, and multi-platform delivery. Two days before the official livestreams, the team tested and rehearsed at Guangzhou Library, then adjusted the setup after discovering failed platform pushes and audio-video separation issues.

After the program, the China (Guangzhou) International Documentary Film Festival sent a letter of thanks to the team. Li Yu, the documentary program curator at Guangzhou Library, also recognized the team’s technical support. The public-service livestream became both a professional challenge and a practical record of how the studio contributes media expertise to social service.