Scaffolders

In 1957, two hundred teachers, students, and cadres were labeled as "Rightists" for voicing criticism of the Communist Party and sent to the East Wind State Farm in southwest China. As part of China's disastrous Great Leap Forward, these inmates were forced to take part in ill-conceived deforestation, agricultural and industrial projects that led to wide-scale famine. Later they endured the Cultural Revolution when their camp was visited by large groups of "sent-down" youth from the cities. After 21 years of "remolding," the "Rightists" were finally "rehabilitated" in 1978 and allowed to leave in 1978. THE EAST WIND STATE FARM re-examines the tragic events of Chinese modern history during the height of Maoist rule. Director Hu Jie collects dozens of extensive interviews with both inmates and staff who served through three decades of the camp's existence.

This landmark documentary reveals the tragic life of a gifted young woman who was executed for speaking out during the height of Chairman Mao’s rule.

Spark was an underground publication that emerged in Gansu province in 1960, and was centered on the ongoing famine and the Great Leap Forward. Ultimately, 43 people, including the Rightist teachers and students who were connected with the publication, the peasants and the rural cadres who sympathized with them, were arrested and given long prison terms. Among them, three key figures were executed during the Cultural Revolution.

The launch and development of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution not only has a series of CCP Central Committee documents that have promoted wave after wave of movements, but also has various propaganda methods. A large number of different types of literary and artistic products have been produced in a collective form and with the input of the State. As a weapon of revolutionary struggle, works of art are important representatives of this period. Art was a tool for the Cultural Revolution; it fully embodies its aesthetic characteristics, actively cooperating with the development of various movements and the popularization of ideas. It has cultivated the values ​​and visual experience of a generation of Chinese people — the paintings of the Cultural Revolution have been regarded as treasures by Chinese collectors. This film shows the characteristics of the Cultural Revolution paintings through a large number of paintings, as well as the bloody violence and despotism behind them.

Filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revoution. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists. Bian Zhongyun, the vice principal of a prestigious school in Beijing, was beaten to death by her own students, becoming one of the first victims of the revolutionary violence that would engulf the entire nation.

Tayuan is the location of the first museum of the Cultural Revolution in China. However, this important Cultural Revolution museum was established with private funds. The reason for its construction here is that there is a tomb of the victims of the Cultural Revolution. This film documents the little-known massacre and the construction of the Cultural Revolution Museum in Shantou, Guangdong during the Cultural Revolution. However, a few years later, this museum was banned by the government.

This film tells the story of the translator Wang Tiesheng. Before 1949, Wang graduated from Tongji University in Shanghai. He was a student with good morals, intelligence and health. He then served as an assistant professor in the Economics Department of Renmin University. However, he was labelled a “Rightist” in 1957 and was sent to a farm in Tianjin to undertake forced labour. There, he underwent extreme humiliating “reform” and suffered starvation. Later, on a bumpy road as he was being sent to be buried, he miraculously discovered that he was actually alive.

With the opening up of the economy, grassroots democracy has come. But since the land is owned by the state, the local government actually has absolute control. The so-called democratically elected village chief quickly learns that his role is to cooperate with the government in using land to develop the economy. Power-to-money transactions are open secrets. Due to the uneven economic development in the villages, each has a different story, but the use of land for profit is a constant theme. The filming location is a rural village in the outside Beijing. Less of focus is how villages elect than the mutation after. Faced with huge land assets and overseeing relationships between land, power, economics, social systems, how does a hard-working, upright peasant conduct himself? This film documents the pain: the experience of soul sublimation and degeneration. We see 'birth defects' in this "democracy" — one without checks and balances, grafted onto autocracy.

Because of difficulties where they live in the north east of China, a husband and wife go back to their hometown in Shandong Province and settle in their hometown by the sea with three children. With no land of their own, they have to face the sea, and start their life again.

This is a documentary about coal miners. In the Qilian mountains of Qinghai Province, where the altitude is over 3,600 meters and the air thin, there are numerous small coal mines in which work around 200 miners aged 17 to 50. Every day, they must crawl through pits 60 to 70 metres deep just to carry out 30 loads of coal. Each load weighs 50 kilograms. The miners earn 500 yuan a month, without insurance. Miners normally suffer from pneumoconiosis after working four or five years in the mine and cannot work thereafter. They usually spend their wages on building houses, marriage, and tuition fees for their children. If they die in an accident, their family receives a 5,000 yuan pension. This film is a record of these working conditions, and of human labour. (Shot June 1995.)

Wang Peiying, a widow with seven children, was a worker at the Ministry of Railways. The famine precipitated by the Great Leap Forward, which killed perhaps 30 million people by the early 1960s, had horrified her, and as political turmoil began again only a few years later, she publicly called on China’s leader, Mao Zedong, to take responsibility for his mistakes and resign. Ms. Wang was sent to a psychiatric hospital and drugged. Released and paraded around the capital, she refused to recant. Instead, she repeated her accusations. Her jaw was broken to stop her from talking. After a mass trial at the Workers’ Stadium on Jan. 27, 1970, she was executed.

This film tells the story of a war in Tibet in 1912 through information and descendants of the Western Expeditionary Army.

This is a poem that asks about human nature, the world, friendship, love and faith.

This is a short documentary about a daughter who has been searching for the truth about her father’s death during the Cultural Revolution, but whom has found nothing.

One of Hu Jie's 'Farmers Working in the City' films. The city is developing rapidly, with tall buildings and highways. Behind this bustling city, there is such a group of people. They come from the countryside. Maybe they are not dressed well, or they have only finished elementary school, but they work hard with their own work. The piece of prosperity pays its youth and sweat. (Shot between 1997 and 1998)

In order to find such a fittingly inspiring matchmaker, the director visited nearly 10 matchmakers and finally selected the matchmaker in the film. The director then followed the matchmaker and witnessed the vicissitudes of life. In addition to the land, there is no form of art that can describe the heaviness of life and emotion. (Shot August 1995)