Fengming, a Chinese Memoir
Wang Bing • 3h 4m
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2017 • 184 minutes
Often cited as one of the great documentary achievements, Wang Bing’s dazzling tour-de-force — a gripping monologue recounting five decades in the life of a once-ardent socialist in the new China — is a testament to the power of oral history and the strength of one extraordinary woman.
"A heartbreaking, scathing documentary... The film has a moral authority similar to that of Shoah, to which it ingeniously alludes." —The New Yorker
"Gripping. A sweeping saga. Fengming stands alongside first-person precedents like Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason and Errol Morris’s The Fog of War in its ability to wrest powerful effects from the deceptively simple setup of a lone raconteur." —Artforum
"In his masterful, West of the Tracks, Wang Bing used a rural freight railway as a conduit into China's uneasy transition from a planned to a market economy. In this equally remarkable follow-up, he finds in a single room, and in He Fengming's harrowed eyes, another uncanny metaphor for individual lives undone by the dreams of nations." —Village Voice
Up Next in Wang Bing
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Ta'ang
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 147 minutes
Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta’ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta’ang minority as they flee to China to escape an...
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Three Sisters
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2012 • 153 minutes
One of his generation's most important documentary filmmakers, director Wang Bing is at the height of his powers in THREE SISTERS. The film introduces viewers to 10-year-old YingYing, 6-year-old Zhenzhen and 4-year-old Fenfen, who live alo...
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'Til Madness Do Us Part
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2013 • 238 minutes
Within the gates of an isolated mental institution in in southwest China's Yunnan province, patients are confined to one single floor of a building. Once locked in, with little contact from the outside world, anything goes.
The facility's...
