Before The Flood II - Gong Tan
China
•
1h 2m
Directed by YAN Yu • Documentary • 2008 • 60 minutes
Yan Yu follows his groundbreaking documentary BEFORE THE FLOOD with this profile of the residents of Gongtan, a 1700-year-old village soon to be demolished by a hydroelectric dam project.
Gongtan, a historic village located on a tributary of the Yangtze, is about to be flooded by a dam project, forcing its residents to relocate. National imperatives displace local lives as authorities make decisions with little regard for village life. Ran Qingsong, a barber, and Ran Si, a cell-phone proprietor, rally the residents of Gongtan to stand against their impending displacement. But the will of the townspeople to save their land and homes soon wavers in the face of external pressure and internal suspicion.
Three years after BEFORE THE FLOOD generated global criticism towards the Three Gorges Dam Project, Yan Yu achieves intimate access again, this time to the Gongtan villagers as they protest official meetings and face off with construction workers eager to tear down their homes for a day's pay.
Up Next in China
-
Beijing Besieged by Waste
Directed by Wang Jiuliang • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes
Photographer Wang Jiu-liang travels to more than 500 landfills, fearlessly documenting Beijing's unholy cycle of consumption through poignant observational visits with the scavengers who live and work in the dumps.
While China's econom...
-
Bitter Money
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 152 minutes
The people in Wang Bing's BITTER MONEY lie in filthy, cramped apartments, stare at their phones for far too long, spend time on their balconies overlooking drab streets in which all the buildings look the same, and work long hours for litt...
-
Dead Souls - Part I
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2018 • 166 minutes
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 ...