16th(2014)
Bingai
FENG Yan
- China
- 2007
- 117min
- HD
- color
- Documentary
SYNOPSIS
Synopsis
With the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, now under construction, 1.13 million people along the Yangtze River will have been dislocated. The majority of them are farmers. Bingai features one woman farmer who refuses to move away from her village. The audience will follow her seven-year struggle with officials who pressure her to relocate, while a strong devotion to her land compels her to remain in the place she calls home.
Program Note
Bingai begins with the silhouette of a Chinese female farmer ZHANG Bingai, who is washing the laundry by the bank of the Yangtze
River. She narrates that she prefers living on the river bank to living in the hill despite she married against her will. ZHANG Bingai
lives a simple and happy life with her husband and two children. However, with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the
Chinese government orders them to relocate, and offers miserable compensation. A millions of people are being relocated due
to this project, ZHANG Bingai, who doesn’t want to give up her own land that easily, refuses to move, and struggles against the
government. And, her struggle lasts long.
Director FENG Yan spent about 10 years filming the life of ZHANG Bingai, who struggles to refuse to move against the Chinese
government. Bingai as a documentary of the struggle through the close relationship between FENG Yan and ZHANG Bingai constructed
for long time was strongly influenced by OGAWA Shinsuke, a Japanese legendary documentary director. (FENG Yan, who was moved by
OGAWA Shinsuke’s documentaries during her studying in Japan, translated his book Harvesting Films into Chinese) In a sense, Bingai or
the work of making Bingai itself could show that the filmmaker FENG Yan and the subject ZHANG Bingai are unified in this documentary,
because FENG Yan, who makes relentless efforts to film ZHANG Bingai for long time, is comparable to ZHANG Bingai who persists to keep
her own land. Bingai raises an old but, still important question of the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject. [KIM Jung-koo]
PROGRAM NOTE
Synopsis
With the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, now under construction, 1.13 million people along the Yangtze River will have been dislocated. The majority of them are farmers. Bingai features one woman farmer who refuses to move away from her village. The audience will follow her seven-year struggle with officials who pressure her to relocate, while a strong devotion to her land compels her to remain in the place she calls home.
Program Note
Bingai begins with the silhouette of a Chinese female farmer ZHANG Bingai, who is washing the laundry by the bank of the Yangtze
River. She narrates that she prefers living on the river bank to living in the hill despite she married against her will. ZHANG Bingai
lives a simple and happy life with her husband and two children. However, with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the
Chinese government orders them to relocate, and offers miserable compensation. A millions of people are being relocated due
to this project, ZHANG Bingai, who doesn’t want to give up her own land that easily, refuses to move, and struggles against the
government. And, her struggle lasts long.
Director FENG Yan spent about 10 years filming the life of ZHANG Bingai, who struggles to refuse to move against the Chinese
government. Bingai as a documentary of the struggle through the close relationship between FENG Yan and ZHANG Bingai constructed
for long time was strongly influenced by OGAWA Shinsuke, a Japanese legendary documentary director. (FENG Yan, who was moved by
OGAWA Shinsuke’s documentaries during her studying in Japan, translated his book Harvesting Films into Chinese) In a sense, Bingai or
the work of making Bingai itself could show that the filmmaker FENG Yan and the subject ZHANG Bingai are unified in this documentary,
because FENG Yan, who makes relentless efforts to film ZHANG Bingai for long time, is comparable to ZHANG Bingai who persists to keep
her own land. Bingai raises an old but, still important question of the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject. [KIM Jung-koo]
Director
-
FENG YanFENG Yan
A native of Tianjin. With The Dream of the Yangtze River, she gained the Excellent Award in 1998 Taiwan International Documentary Festival. Later, she revisited the place and was deeply moved by the changes in the people and made a feature film, Bing’ai, which won the Excellent Award in the 4th China Documentary Film Festival and the grand prix in the Punto De Vista Festival in Spain.
Credit
- Cinematography FENG Yan
- Editor Haessler MATHIEU
- Sound KIKUCHI Nobuyuki
