Community and ruraldocumentary in both PR China and Taiwan can be roughly divided into three types: first, documentary made by villagers showing everyday livelihoods, traditional culture, and life histories. Typically, these documentary follow a more natural progression of narrative and dialogue, without staged scenes. The second type of documentary are documentaries with a clear point of view or topic, which are made by villiagers or outsiders, and these film tend to project critical perspective in the attempt to highlight social issues. The third type of documentary are more traditional visual ethnographies, or anthropological ＂ways of seeing,＂ and these usually emphasize a neutral point of view is purely presentation. Such films often focus on introducing and describing a theme or topic, but do not provide greater cultural context such as changes over time. The second and third types are typically made by outsiders, and the emphasis is placed on neutral, objective observations. In the first type of rural media, villagers are the photographers and the photographed, and thus the documentary seems more subjective. However, this paper will argue that even in villager-produced documentary, subjectivity and reflexivity are not ＂given＂ because documentary footage is taken as empirical (positivistic) knowledge. As a result, documentary by villagers hold a subversive potential, which can be unpacked through analysis and the gradual critical awareness of villagers towards media representation.