He Fengming
Wang Bing / CN, 2007 / 192 min.
A former Chinese journalist speaks of haunting memories that the new China would rather forget. Screened to accompany the exhibition around the EYE Art & Film Prize.
Wang Bing put He Fengming, an elderly Chinese lady, in front of the camera to recount her compelling life story. As a young woman she dedicated her life to help build the People”s Republic. Suspected of harbouring right-wing sympathies, she ended up in a re-education camp, where survival was all that mattered. She was only rehabilitated in 1979.
He Fengming describes a world of paranoia, ruled by thought police and dominated by an opportunistic struggle for power, with a tragic romance at the heart of the story. Amidst the enforced collectivity the love between herself and her husband was "all the more valuable because it belonged to us only". In an impressive monologue she recalls haunting memories which the New China would rather forget.
Filmmaker Wang Bing is the winner of the EYE Art & Film Prize, a prize awarded to an artist whose work explores the interface of art and film.
The film is shown without an intermission.
This is part of
Details
Director
Wang Bing
Production year
2007
Country
CN
Original title
He Fengming
Length
192 min.
Language
Mandarin Chinese
Format
DCP
Part of
Hito Steyerl, Ben Rivers, Wang Bing
The intersection between film and visual art is an important focus of exhibition policy at Eye. To underline this, Eye and the Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund launched an annual prize in 2015 to promote new work by an artist/filmmaker who is making an important contribution to this interdisciplinary field.
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