Dead Souls

13 December, 2018 - 20 December, 2018

Cinematek, Brussels

“In 'West of the Tracks' I revealed the plight of workers; in '‘Til Madness do us Part', life in a psychiatric asylum; in 'Bitter Money', I recounted the adventure of young immigrants looking for work on the east coast. 'Dead Souls' covers a specific period in history, a specific event that I wanted to document in a detailed way because it is still only partially known. It goes without saying that when you make a film, you try to touch upon something universal and in a some way, timeless. The testimonies that make up 'Dead Souls' belong to the history of humankind.“ - Wang Bing

By way of extension to the retrospective program that Courtisane and CINEMATEK have dedicated to the work of Wang Bing in April 2018, we are organising two screenings of Wang’s new monumental work Dead Souls, the result of his painstaking effort to document the testimonies of survivors of Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Campaign.

With French subs:
Part 1: 13/12 19:00
Part 2: 20/12 19:00

With English subs:
Part 1: 15/12 17:00
Part 2: 16/12 19:00

Dead Souls

Wang Bing

CH, FR

2018

DCP

colour

495'

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as “ultra-rightists” in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui reeducation camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure and what became their destiny.