Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

Dance with Farm Workers

Jiang Hu: Life on the Road

A documentary of the Yuanda Song and Dance Tent Show, a wandering troupe from the countryside of Henan Province that is on the road all four seasons of the year.

1966, My Time in the Red Guards

More preoccupied with "history" than Wu's other works, My Time in the Red Guards is a record of his fascination with the missed moment, Mao's Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Red Guards ironically represented the official avant-garde, a movement carried forward by youth determined to become heroes of the Revolution. Wu interviews people who had joined the Red Guards as high schoolers, most now successful professionals, some Party members. The miscalculations and cruelties of this extreme cultural campaign are spread out before us, detailed by personal recollection and further illustrated by old agit-prop newsreels. Misgivings and fond remembrance vie for position as the interviewees seem to confuse the nostalgia of youthful action with the excesses of historical fact.

Fuck Cinema

This documentary shows how different young people try to realize their dreams to become famous through the film industry.

At Home in the World

A year after he made Bumming in Beijing, Wu Wenguang visited his main figures in Austria, France, Italy and the USA. The desire to escape everything, which was the most compelling feeling while they were still living in Beijing, has meanwhile faded and they are now confronted with the dynamics of emigration. Wu asks what it means to feels deserted by one's own country and how it is when one reacts by deserting it in turn.

Action 2024

“Action 2024” is a snapshot of independent filmmaker Wu Wenguang's experiences during the year 2024, which he spent in a village called Shijiawan growing rice, corn, and vegetables, and raising chickens, ducks, and geese. What sets this work apart from Wu's previous films is that it was not conceived as a project first, leading to a film; instead, it emerged organically from the filmmaker's life working in the village—farming and raising poultry—during which time he had attached to his body a miniature camera. This process prioritized living and farming first, followed by documentation, and ultimately resulted in an 18-hour film which follows the chronological order of occurrences and documentation, and is structured into five chapters: “June,” “July,” “August,” “September,” and “October.” Screened online over 5 consecutive Fridays from January 31 to February 28, 2025.

Sweat

Never broadcasted feature film by Chinese documentary filmmaker Kang Jianning.

Investigating My Father

My father was a landowner’s son and an ex-Kuomintang Air Force pilot, who remained in mainland China after 1949. For survival, he tried to transform himself from a man of the ‘old society’ to a man of the ‘new society’. As his son, I started investigating his ‘history before 1949’, which he had kept away from me. This film documents the process of my investigation over twenty years.

The Monument

Edited together from materials taken from Caochangdi performances and activities between 2012-2013 and Wu Wenguang's own body camera record, this film can be regarded as a kind of "story follow-up" version of "Because of Hunger". In short, it is a kind of "remembrance".

China Villager Documentary Project: China Village Self-Governance Film Project

Filmmakers Wu Wenguang and Jian Yi trained 10 villagers from across China to make films documenting electoral processes in their home villages. Pursuing the ideal that anyone can become a documentary filmmaker, this project sparked a new model of Chinese participatory documentary, with community members depicting their own lives. The resulting works—surprisingly humorous, and filled with their own local flavor—vividly reveal the realities of village life and democracy in action.

之间

Wu Wenguang revisits the artist Gao Bo more than 20 years after their earlier encounters which were documented in "Bumming in Beijing" (1990) and "At Home in the World" (1995).

Children's Village

Zou Xueping continues to interview old people in her village, this time with the help of local children. They start collecting names and money to erect a memorial for the victims of the famine.

Because of Hunger: Diary 1 by Wu

The film is about the first two years in the Memory Project. All images was from my angle with my camera.

Autobiography: Struggles

This film is the second segment of my “Autobiography Series.” From the moment when my mother disclosed a long kept secret, my birth was accompanied by many struggles for my mother. Those “struggles” include: during pregnancy, “should this child be kept,” to the painful struggles in the delivery process. Struggles have also accompanied since I was born, becoming part of my life.

The Chinese

Originally produced in 1988 and 1989, but blocked from being released after June 4th. A large-scale Chinese documentary series that spanned 100s of interviews in nearly 20 provinces, cities, and autonomous regions. It was completed in early 1989, and each of its parts run roughly 50 minutes. The titles of each part: Family, Fertility, Farmers, Youth, Minority, Women, Artists, Kung Fu, and Mission. The series, according to production notes written by screenwriter Zhu Xiaoyang, "reflects the life and fate of contemporary Chinese people, their behaviors, concepts, and customs; explores the influence of traditional culture and foreign cultures on modern Chinese people; and describes the joy and hard work, hardship, and perseverance, as well as exploration and yearning, of the Chinese people." Youth, Kung Fu, Artists, and Minority are the only surviving parts of this series.

Autobiography: Evidence

The third part in Wu Wenguang's Autobiography film series.