The New York Times reviews “Ghost Town,” a documentary by Zhao Dayong that looks at the life of a small village near the Chinese-Myanmar border.

As the Times highlights, one notable aspect about Zhao’s film is that it was created illegally:

The Chinese government has decreed that all films must be approved by government censors before being distributed and screened, including in overseas film festivals.

Mr. Zhao, 39, said getting the approval of the censors was never a consideration. “It’s like asking to be raped,” he said this month in an interview here. “The government certainly has its own agenda. They want us to stop. But at the same time we know we’re doing something meaningful.”

This is a political example of what we have seen over the past decade in the commercial world: the rise of relatively inexpensive digital devices has decentralized the means of all communication, be it political, cultural or otherwise. One isn’t tethered to a formal entity that has the capital to afford equipment and the channels to distribute a final product. Production values will differ, of course, so too access to and ease of distribution. But we are in an age where anyone with the talent and perseverance can create significant works on relatively inexpensive digital devices and desktop editing suites.

The cameras, recording devices and equipment we have access to today are “good enough,” as Robert Capps explains in “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.” While Capps writes specifically about consumer acceptance of gadgets and formats that are “good enough,” as we see from Zhao’s work, it applies to overall production as well.

“Ghost Town” premieres today at the New York Film Festival.