He Fengming (Fengming, a Chinese Memoir)

Wang Bing
,
CN, FR, HK
,
2007
,
video
,
colour
,
184'

In the beginning of the 2000’s, Wang Bing began working on The Ditch, a feature-length fiction film set in a Chinese re-education camp. His research for the film led him to a woman named He Fengming. As soon as he started filming her, he realized that her story needed its own separate film. Shot over a period of seven days, Fengming, a Chinese Memoir consists of a woman sitting in her living room, telling us everything she can remember about her life.

When I first met He Fengming in 1995, I had already heard of her and her work. It wasn’t until a few years later that I discovered the hypnotic quality of her story, through the book she published in China, My life in 1957. 1957 was the year when the Anti-Rightist Movement began. In her book, Fengming remembers how she and her husband were sent to the re-education camps, where, like many others, they faced hard labour, starvation and humiliation – and for her husband, death, leaving Fengming alone with their two children. In her later years, Fengming defied pressure from those around her and wrote down her story, in ink and tears.” (WB)

 

Mandarin with English subtitles