The Ditch
Encyclopedia
The Ditch, also known as Goodbye Jiabiangou is a 2010 fiction film produced and directed by Wang Bing
, an independent Chinese filmmaker better known for his work on documentaries. The film, on the subject of Chinese forced-labour camps during early 1960 Maoist China era, was chosen to be the film sorpresa in the 2010 Venice Film Festival
.
The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp
called Jiabiangou
in the Gobi Desert
in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong
on the grounds that they were "rightist elements"
. The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who cope with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
internment camp in the 1950s and 1960s, is one of the first films to deal directly with subject, which remains a political taboo. The director also interviewed camp survivors of Jiabiangou
and of the Mingshui camp. The film describes the hunger and back-breaking work of the inmates, most of whom did not survive the internment(Out of 3000 plus inmates, 2500 died in the camp). Fearing official prohibition, the film was shot on location in secret and without official authorisation; it was co-produced in Hong Kong, France and Belgium by Wang, K Lihong, Hui Mao, Philippe Avril, Francisco Villa-Lobos, Sebastien Delloye, Dianba Elbaum.
from 1956-57, during which Chinese intellectuals were advised to contribute their opinions on national policy issues. During the campaign, thousands of citizens were branded "right-wing deviants" for their criticism of the Communist Party, were sentenced to forced labour. One such "deviant" in the film is a self-proclaimed party member since 1938! One professor says he has been imprisoned over semantics: saying he was detained for saying the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” was “too narrow” and suggesting it be replaced by “dictatorship of the people”.
The basically plotless storyline is set over a three-month period in 1960, at the Mingshui annex of Jiabiangou
Re-education Camp. Most of the film was shot in a simple underground dugout – referred to as "Dormitory 8" – lined with bedding where the men live; in the daytime, they work on a giant desert project that covers 10,000 acres. They live on gruel, work until exhausted; many then die from the combined effects of extreme physical exhaustion, hostile climate and the great famine sweeping China. A new group of men arrives, are assigned to sleep in a miserable underground dugout and begin the long, slow process of dying. The work is intense, but dealing with hunger is the prisoners' and the film's main focus: shortage means that even rats are eaten; consumption of human corpses is not unheard of. Desperation drives one man to eat another's vomit. To make room for fresh arrivals. bodies of those who die are dragged out daily, wrapped in their bedclothes, and buried in shallow graves.
Wang Bing (director)
Wang Bing is a Chinese director, often referred to as one of the foremost figures in documentary film-making. Wang is the founder of his own production company, Wang Bing Studios, which produces most of his films...
, an independent Chinese filmmaker better known for his work on documentaries. The film, on the subject of Chinese forced-labour camps during early 1960 Maoist China era, was chosen to be the film sorpresa in the 2010 Venice Film Festival
67th Venice International Film Festival
The 67th annual Venice Film Festival held in Venice, Italy, took place from September 1 to September 11, 2010. American film director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino was head of the Jury. John Woo was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement prior to the start of the Festival...
.
The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp
Laogai
Laogai , the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào , which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China . It is estimated that in the last fifty years more than...
called Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou Labor Camp is a former farm labor camp located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province. The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961...
in the Gobi Desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
on the grounds that they were "rightist elements"
Anti-Rightist Movement
The Anti-Rightist Movement of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of a series of campaigns to purge alleged "rightists" within the Communist Party of China and abroad...
. The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who cope with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
Production
The film, based on Goodbye, Jiabiangou, a book by Yang Xianhui about the life and toil of inmates sent to the JiabiangouJiabiangou
Jiabiangou Labor Camp is a former farm labor camp located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province. The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961...
internment camp in the 1950s and 1960s, is one of the first films to deal directly with subject, which remains a political taboo. The director also interviewed camp survivors of Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou Labor Camp is a former farm labor camp located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province. The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961...
and of the Mingshui camp. The film describes the hunger and back-breaking work of the inmates, most of whom did not survive the internment(Out of 3000 plus inmates, 2500 died in the camp). Fearing official prohibition, the film was shot on location in secret and without official authorisation; it was co-produced in Hong Kong, France and Belgium by Wang, K Lihong, Hui Mao, Philippe Avril, Francisco Villa-Lobos, Sebastien Delloye, Dianba Elbaum.
Plot
The background to the setting is Mao Zedong's disastrous Hundred Flowers CampaignHundred Flowers Campaign
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, refers mainly to a brief six weeks in the People's Republic of China in the early summer of 1957 during which the Communist Party of China encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues, launched...
from 1956-57, during which Chinese intellectuals were advised to contribute their opinions on national policy issues. During the campaign, thousands of citizens were branded "right-wing deviants" for their criticism of the Communist Party, were sentenced to forced labour. One such "deviant" in the film is a self-proclaimed party member since 1938! One professor says he has been imprisoned over semantics: saying he was detained for saying the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” was “too narrow” and suggesting it be replaced by “dictatorship of the people”.
The basically plotless storyline is set over a three-month period in 1960, at the Mingshui annex of Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou
Jiabiangou Labor Camp is a former farm labor camp located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province. The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961...
Re-education Camp. Most of the film was shot in a simple underground dugout – referred to as "Dormitory 8" – lined with bedding where the men live; in the daytime, they work on a giant desert project that covers 10,000 acres. They live on gruel, work until exhausted; many then die from the combined effects of extreme physical exhaustion, hostile climate and the great famine sweeping China. A new group of men arrives, are assigned to sleep in a miserable underground dugout and begin the long, slow process of dying. The work is intense, but dealing with hunger is the prisoners' and the film's main focus: shortage means that even rats are eaten; consumption of human corpses is not unheard of. Desperation drives one man to eat another's vomit. To make room for fresh arrivals. bodies of those who die are dragged out daily, wrapped in their bedclothes, and buried in shallow graves.
Critical response
- "Lee Marshall of Screen InternationalScreen InternationalScreen International is a multimedia film magazine covering the international film business. It is published by EMAP, a British b2b media company.The magazine is primarily aimed at those involved in the global movie business...
described the strategy of the drama was to be minimalist, whilst at the same time be "close to melodrama". He said that by "start[ing] off with a terrible situation and make it worse... it [was] a stark, powerful but also unremittingly bleak work that plumbs the misery of what man can do to man in the name of an ideology." - Deborah Young of AP, writing in The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterFormerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, said "The filmmaking is most powerful as a document of the nightmarish conditions in the camp, where the starving men are led to the extremes of cannibalism. However, she criticised the film's much weaker dramatic structure, as it is "hard to distinguish individual prisoners, whose terrible stories tend to blend together. Only with the arrival of the wife do a few faces and personalities come into focus." - Justin Chang of VarietyVariety (magazine)Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
said: "the sense of verisimilitude here is so strong that those walking in unawares may at first think they're watching another piece of [Wang's] highly observant reportage -- never mind that no filmmaker would ever have been granted access, just as no humane documentarian could have kept the camera rolling without offering his subjects a scrap of food at the very least. - Rober Breams at Obsessed With Film praised the film's high-end documentary aesthetic and said: "It is cinematic and classy, like a prestigious and artful documentary film. There is no music and a very realist use of sound design. It all feels authentic. Indeed, I suspect the only reason he made The Ditch as a work of fiction at all is due to the fact the reality is now impossible to film." However, he was critical of how the film dwelled (for 15 minutes) on the scene of a visiting wife who wailed inconsolably upon discovering that her husband had just died a few days before.
External links
- The Ditch Jiabiangou Wang Bing
- The Ditch (Il fossato), Mouse d'oro
- 开卷八分钟20091104 -- 《夹边沟记事》 (Jiabiangou documentary), Phoenix Television broadcast 4 November 2009