| The Ditch | |
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Film poster, with logos of the 67th Venice International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival |
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| Directed by | Wang Bing |
| Produced by | Wang Bing K. Lihong Hui Mao Philippe Avril |
| Written by | Wang Bing |
| Cinematography | Lu Sheng[1] |
| Editing by | Marie-Helene Dozo |
| Release date(s) | 6 September 2010 |
| Running time | 109 minutes |
| The Ditch | |||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 夹边沟 | ||||||
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| Goodbye Jiabiangou | |||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 告别夹边沟 / 再见夹边沟 | ||||||
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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.[2]
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.[2]
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The film, based on Goodbye, Jiabiangou, a book by Yang Xianhui about the life and toil of inmates sent to the Jiabiangou 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.[3]
The background to the setting is Mao Zedong's disastrous Hundred Flowers Campaign 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.[4] 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”.[2]
The basically plotless[2] storyline is set over a three-month period in 1960, at the Mingshui annex of Jiabiangou Re-education Camp.[4] 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.[3] 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.[4] bodies of those who die are dragged out daily, wrapped in their bedclothes, and buried in shallow graves.[1]