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Film and Video
A Citizen Survey
In August 2008, after the 100-day anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, rescue teams began to withdraw and the media stopped reporting on the casualties of school employees, teachers, and students. Chengdu environmental worker Tan Zuoren and local volunteers, however, were still searching for the cause of the collapse of school buildings within the ruins. As winter arrived, Tan Zuoren and his colleague Xie Yihui trekked through more than 80 towns and villages in 10 counties and cities, covering a total of 3,000 kilometers. Finally, before the May 12 anniversary, they issued a report of their investigation, which was the first independent inquiry report on the Sichuan earthquake’s impact on schools. At the same time, Beijing artist Ai Weiwei furthered civilian investigation and new volunteers arrived in Sichuan to search for the names of students who died. This documentary is an incomplete record of a civilian investigation and a piece of testimony submitted to the court charging Tan Zuoren with “suspected subversion of the state.”
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Film and Video
By the Sea
The family of Jia Qingyun, a farmer whose ancestors came to Guandong Province, returned to their hometown of Shandong Province with their three children due to the difficulties of life in the Northeast, and settled on the seaside of the town. However, facing the land where their ancestors had lived, they did not have land of their own. Nor did they have a household registration or a house. They can only face the sea and tenaciously start life again. Director Hu Jie records their hardships and their hopes for life.
Film and Video
Care and Love
This film records the story of Liu Xianhong, a woman from rural Xingtai, Hebei, who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion in the hospital and decided to publicly disclose her identity and sue the hospital. After fighting in the courts, she finally received compensation. This documentary demonstrates the surging awareness of civil rights in rural China at the grassroot level through depicting the experiences of several families and the concerted efforts of patients to form “care” groups to collectively defend their civil rights. Due to public awareness, media intervention, and legal aid, the government also introduced new policies to improve the situations of patients and their families.
This film is in Chinese with both English and Chinese subtitles.
Film and Video
Chronicle of Western Liaoning, A
In 1959, in the desolate Lingyuan area in the western part of Liaoning Province, a group of intellectual rightists from the Shenyang University arrived. There, they were to labor and be reformed alongside criminal prisoners in the prison, while digging mines to build railroads. How did the Communist Party reform the intellectuals? What kind of encounters did these rightist intellectuals go through? Hu Jie's camera restores this history.
Film and Video
Cultural Revolution Propaganda Posters
Through a large number of Cultural Revolution paintings, this film shows the official aesthetics at the time of the Cultural Revolution and the bloody violence and authoritarianism behind these paintings. The film features interviews with painters and Red Guards of the era as well as collectors and researchers in China and the UK today.
Film and Video
East Wind State Farm
In 1957, two hundred teachers, students, and cadres from Kunming, Yunnan were among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people labeled as “Rightists” for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. They were sent to the East Wind State Farm, located in Mi-le County in Yunnan, for 21 years of “thought reform” in the countryside. These inmates witnessed the policies of the Great Leap Forward first-hand: they took part in deforestation, agricultural, and industrial projects in the countryside, which precipitated the Great Famine. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, their camp was visited by large groups of youths “sent down” from the cities, who worked on the farm with the “Rightists.” In 1978, these “Rightists” were finally rehabilitated and allowed to leave.
This documentary examines the policies and campaigns of the Maoist era through the eyes of those who were persecuted and exiled. Director Hu Jie pieces together this long and complex story through collecting dozens of extensive interviews with inmates as well as staff who served through decades of the camp’s existence. These people’s vivid memories and personal accounts shed light on the harrowing lifestyle of not only the two hundred “Rightists” of East Wind State Farm, but also the scores of dissidents and youths who experienced the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Film and Video
Enemy of the State
On February 9, 2010, Tan Zuoren was tried in the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court for the crime of inciting subversion against the state. Ai Xiaoming and her team recorded the three days before and after the verdict, the mindsets of Tan Zuoren’s friends and relatives, and how the lawyers carried out their work.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Film and Video
Faraway Mountain
This movie captures the lives of miners in small coal mines in the Qilian Mountain area of Qinghai Province. At 3600 meters above sea level, the air here is thin. Miners in the small coal kilns labor hard in a working environment without any protection, and usually get silicosis after 5-10 years of work, thus losing their ability to work. If they die in an accident, their families receive only meager compensation. This is a true record of the survival of China's grassroots laborers in the early 1990s.
Film and Video
Garden of Paradise
The year 2003 was known as the birth of the Weiquan—the rights defense–movement, which was marked by the Sun Zhigang incident in Guangzhou. At the same time, a campaign began to get justice for Huang Jing, a teacher from Hunan who was sexually assaulted and killed by her boyfriend. The campaign involved the victim’s family, netizens, feminist scholars and activists, and lasted for several years. This documentary records the process of Huang Jing’s case from filing to post-judgement, and analyzes the broader issue of sexual violence against women in China.
The films in this series are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
电影及视频
In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul
Hu Jie narrates the life of Lin Zhao, a Christian dissident who was condemned as a Rightist in the late 1950s and executed during the Cultural Revolution. Prior to becoming a mentcritic of the government, Lin Zhao was an ardent believer of communism. She demonstrated talent in writing and speaking as a star student in Peking University. However, after criticizing the government in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, she was cast as anti-revolutionary. Despite the government’s attempts to silence her, Lin Zhao continued to speak and write publicly, including contributing two epic poems to Spark, an underground student-run journal. In 1960, she was arrested, and despite being released briefly in 1962, spent the rest of her life behind bars, under extremely poor living conditions. Nevertheless, she continued to write in prison, sometimes with her blood. In 1968, at the age of 36, she was executed by a firing squad.
In this documentary, Hu Jie showcases many of Lin Zhao’s surviving writings and poetry. These pieces often contain criticisms of the communist regime, as well as commentary on policy issues pertaining to labor and land reform. In making this film, Hu Jie traveled around China to interview friends and associates of Lin Zhao, who knew her as a student, activist, or prisoner. This documentary includes excerpts from interviews with them, which inform us about Lin Zhao’s personality and motivations.
This documentary has contributed to a widespread revival of interest in Lin Zhao, who had almost become a forgotten figure until the film’s appearance.
Film and Video
Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists
This film is a five-part documentary by the filmmaker and feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming on the persecution of inmates at the Jiabiangou labor camp in Jiuquan, Gansu province, where more than 2,000 people died. The documentary includes interviews with the few remaining survivors and documents efforts to commemorate the dead. The director interviewed survivors of Jiabiangou and the children of the victims and listened to their stories about the past; she also found former correctional officers and their descendants to understand the causes of labor camps and the Great Famine from different angles.
Shot by Ai and a team of volunteers, the film presents the conflict between the preservation and destruction of memory.
Film and Video
Let the Sunshine Reach the Earth
Wang Lihong is a Beijing netizen, civilian journalist, and public service volunteer. Wang was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for supporting three netizens in Fujian. On August 12, 2011, the case was heard for the first time in the Wenyuhe Court of the People's Court of Chaoyang District, Beijing. This film includes interviews with Wang Lihong's relatives, friends, defense lawyers and netizens, and records the historical scene of onlookers in the courts.
Ai Xiaoming’s film “Postcard,” also released in 2011, elaborates Wang Lihong’s activism in broader strokes, while “Let the Sunshine Reach the Earth” focuses on the process of her trial.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Book
Lin Zhao Anthology
The Lin Zhao Anthology contains nearly one hundred of Lin Zhao's works, including essays, poems, commentaries, and news reports written since her middle school years, as well as all of Lin Zhao's manuscripts and letters that were written in prison and later returned to her family. The collection was edited and compiled by Lin Zhao's friends Tan Chanxue (see separate entry) and Ni Jingxiong, and printed into a book on their own. Most of Lin Zhao’s manuscripts written in her blood in prison were typed on computer by Tan Chanxue. This anthology is the most important historical material used by Prof. Lian Xi of Duke University for his research and writing of the book "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China."
Article
Lin Zhao: A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily
This is one of the most significant essays written by Lin Zhao, the pen name of the Christian intellectual Peng Lingzhao, who was born on January 23, 1932 in Suzhou.
In 1947, she attended a Methodist girls school and was baptized. Soon after, however, she joined the underground Communist Party and began writing critiques of the Kuomintang-led government under the pen name Lin Zhao. Before the Communist takeover in 1949, Lin Zhao ran away from home to attend a journalism school run by the party. During this time she joined party campaigns to eradicate the landholding gentry that ran local society.
Lin Zhao was admitted to the Chinese Department of Peking University in 1954. It was there that she broke with Communism and gradually rediscovered her Christian faith. She was classified as a rightist in 1957 for speaking up for other students. During this time, she met Zhang Chunyuan, one of the founders of the magazine "Spark," which the China Unofficial Archives also holds. She contributed two epic poems to the magazine. The magazine was shut down in 1960 and people affiliated with it were detained, including Lin.
She was released on medical parole in early 1962 due to tuberculosis, but was arrested and imprisoned again in December of the same year. She was detained in Shanghai No. 1 Detention Center and Tilanqiao Prison. When she was denied a pen and paper, she sometimes used a sharpened straw or chopstick to prick her finger and write in blood.
While in prison, she wrote a large number of texts, including the 140,000-word essay to <i>People’s Daily</i> that we feature here. This essay is the fullest expression of Lin’s political beliefs. She wrote it in 1965, dating it July 14 because it was the date of the storming of the Bastille in the French Revolution. It took Lin five months to finish the letter, which ran to 137 pages. She wrote the essay in ink, but stamped it repeatedly with a seal bearing the character “zhao” that she inked in her own blood.
The letter has not (yet) been translated into English so a few salient points are worth mentioning.
As Lin’s biographer, the Duke University professor Lian Xi wrote in his biography of Lin (<i>Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China</i>, Basic Books, 2018):
“Lin Zhao challenged the theory of a continuous ‘class struggle,’ which the Communists saw as intrinsic to human history and from which there was no escape. Since the 1920s, the CCP had looked upon this theory as an immutable truth and had used it to justify the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat after 1949….”
Lin Zhao scoffed at this. ‘I do not ever believe that, in such a vast living space that God has prepared for us, there is any need for humanity to engage in a life-and-death struggle!’ The CCP dictatorship was but a modern form of ‘tyranny and slavery,’ she wrote in her letter to the party’s propagandists.
“'As long as there are people who are still enslaved, not only are the enslaved not free, those who enslave others are likewise not free!,' she wrote. Those seeking to end Communist rule in China must likewise not ‘debase the goal of our struggle into a desire to become a different kind of slave owner.' ‘The lofty overall goal of our battle dictates that we cannot simply set our eyes on political power—the goal must not and cannot be a simple transfer of political power!’"
“The end was ‘political democratization… to make sure that there will never be another emperor in China!"
Professor Lian continues: “Lin Zhao wrestled with the moral question of whether violence was a justified means to that end. Her Christian faith had hardened her for the fight. At the same time, it also tempered her opposition. She acknowledged the occasional ‘sparks of humanity’ even in those who were at the ‘most savage center’ of Chinese communism. As strenuously as she argued against her imprisonment, against Mao’s dictatorship, and for a free society, she was unable to sanction violence in that struggle. ‘As a Christian, one devoted to freedom and fighting under the Cross, I believe that killing Communists is not the best way to oppose or eliminate communism.’ She admitted that, had she not ‘embraced a bit of Christ’s spirit,’ she would have had every reason to pledge ‘bloody revenge against the Chinese Communist Party.’”
The same year that the letter was finished, Lin Zhao was sentenced to 20 years for counterrevolutionary crimes. On April 29, 1968, the sentence was changed to death and she was executed on the same day. She was 36 years old.
Film and Video
Matchmaker, The
The tradition of matchmaking is still prevalent in northern rural areas today. This film records the story of Yang Xiuting, a matchmaker living in Guan County, Shandong Province. It describes how, due to economic reforms, rural people went to cities to find work. Subsequently, young people began to choose their own spouses. Thus, the ancient profession of matchmaker not only faces challenges, but also encounters new problems.
Film and Video
Mountain Songs from the Plains
Luo Xiaojia, a young Yunnan Yi girl was trafficked to the plains of Shandong at the age of 17 and forced to marry a young farmer in the area. The film documents her family life in the unfamiliar Shandong countryside and her longing for home. In her tenth year in Shandong, she finally fights for the opportunity to return home. After a 4,000-kilometer journey, she returns to her hometown of Yunnan and sees her mother, whom she misses day and night. However, she struggles with conflicting emotions, and returns to Shandong with a mountain song that her mother sings for her. This movie reflects the sad fate of trafficked women in China and the social psychology that follows these tragedies.
Film and Video
My Mother Wang Peiying
On January 27, 1970, Wang Peiying, a cleaner at a kindergarten in Beijing, was sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes at a 100,000-person public trial held at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing. She was then taken to the execution ground along with a dozen other political prisoners to be executed by firing squad. Wang Peiying was strangled to death in the torture wagon because she preferred to die rather than give in and shout slogans. Forty years later, her daughter, Kexin, began to search for her mother's story. Through her mother's coworkers, friends in distress, and the task force, she gradually discovers her mother's experience as an active counterrevolutionary. In order to protect her conscience, Wang Peiying chose to stand up for her dignity and freedom to tell the truth, and willingly endured brutal torture. The documentary reflects the brutality of the Cultural Revolution and the destruction of humanity.
Film and Video
New Citizens’ Trial
In late January 2014, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, Xu Zhiyong, Zhao Changqing, Ding Jiaxi and other advocates of the New Citizens’ Movement were charged with "gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place." The case was heard for the first time in courts at different levels in Beijing. This film intersperses on-site records with interviews with defense lawyer Zhang Qingfang, scholar Guo Yuhua, entrepreneur Wang Ying, and others to present citizens' understanding of the New Citizens' Movement.
This series of films are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Article
Oral Interviews with Global Feminists
As one of China's foremost feminist activists and thinkers, Ai was interviewed by the Global Feminisms Project at the University of Michigan. In this interview, Ai talks about her upbringing as well as about the current state of feminism in China and its outlook.
Film and Video
Our Children
This documentary records the stories of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The narrators mainly consist of the parents of students who fell victim to the earthquake, and the film is interspersed with comments from media workers, independent scholars, internet authors, geologists, and environmental protection and legal workers. They expressed their views on the Sichuan earthquake from different perspectives.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.