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M+, Hong Kong, © Wang Bing
Wang Bing 王兵
Fengming, a Chinese Memoir 和鳳鳴
2007
Fengming, a Chinese Memoir presents an extended interview with He Fengming, an older Chinese woman, shot in her apartment. Over more than three and a half hours, she recounts the events of her life—experiences shaped to a great extent by national politics. Personal archives are an important source for Wang’s practice. Here, the scope and depth of He’s narrative construct a parallel, bottom-up history of twentieth-century China.
Wang Bing frames He steadily and head-on. She sits in a large tan armchair, surrounded by ordinary domestic objects. Changing light registers the passage from day into night, and into the following day. As she explains, her life as a young woman was marked by ardent enthusiasm for the communist revolution. She left her university studies to work for a newspaper, where she met her husband, another writer. Ultimately, essays he wrote criticising the government led to their imprisonment in separate labour camps. Her struggles were intense, and her husband did not survive. The film closes with He taking a phone call from someone who lived through a similar ordeal.
Wang Bing frames He steadily and head-on. She sits in a large tan armchair, surrounded by ordinary domestic objects. Changing light registers the passage from day into night, and into the following day. As she explains, her life as a young woman was marked by ardent enthusiasm for the communist revolution. She left her university studies to work for a newspaper, where she met her husband, another writer. Ultimately, essays he wrote criticising the government led to their imprisonment in separate labour camps. Her struggles were intense, and her husband did not survive. The film closes with He taking a phone call from someone who lived through a similar ordeal.
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