"A monumental achievement: as a documentary, as a humanist tribute and as a [great] effort at historical rectification." Grasshopper Film + Icarus Films has released an official US trailer for a documentary titled Dead Souls, the latest from prolific Chinese doc filmmaker Wang Bing (Father and Sons, Ta'ang, Bitter Money, Mrs. Fang). This documentary runs a total of 495 minutes, which comes out to about 8 hours, 15 minutes in total, and first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Dead Souls is about a lost generation of Chinese, deemed "ultra-rightists" in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, most of them starved to death in the Jiabiangou & Mingshui reeducation camps. This film spends time with the survivors, and has been compared to Claude Lanzmann's iconic doc Shoah in its grandeur, elegance, and ability to capture the voices lost to the atrocities of history. This is a very simple trailer, but it's compelling.
Here's the official US trailer (+ original poster) for Wang Bing's Dead Souls, direct from YouTube:
In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Deemed "ultra-rightists" in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui reeducation camps. Dead Souls invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure, and what became their destiny. Dead Souls is directed by prolific, legendary Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing, director of numerous docs including Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, Crude Oil, Coal Money, Man with No Name, Three Sisters, 'Til Madness Do Us Part, Father and Sons, Bitter Money, and Mrs. Fang previously. This first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and played at the Toronto, Busan, and Vienna Film Festivals this year. Grasshopper Film + Icarus Films will release Wang Bing's Dead Souls in select theaters starting December 14th this month. For info, visit the film's official website. Anyone?
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