Wang Bing

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Wang Bing ( Chinese  王兵 , Pinyin Wáng Bīng ; * 1967 in Xi'an , Shaanxi Province ) is a Chinese film director. He is considered a radical documentary filmmaker of the so-called sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers, who are known for their tough realism.

life and work

Training and first work

At the age of 14, Wang Bing lost his father; henceforth he felt responsible for the family's advancement. From 1992 to 1995 he studied photography at the Lu-Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang , then film and camera at the Beijing Film School . He describes the feature films by Fellini , Pasolini , Bergman , Tarkowski and Fassbinder as his favorite films .

In 1999 he started working as a freelance documentary filmmaker, although he had no opportunity to watch documentaries during his studies or later. His equipment consists of little more than a digital camera with video and autofocus functions and various lenses . His documentary productions manage without actors, largely without a team and with a very small budget; He does not care about state filming permits. Wang Bing's first major work, the three-part film Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks), documents the collapse of Chinese heavy industry in Shenyang. With a running time of over nine hours, the “most political and at the same time darkest of Wang's films” illustrates how the privatization of state-owned companies is turning the former industrial plants into ghost towns . The first part of the project takes place in a factory where production has almost come to a standstill. While the second part of the documentation deals with the dreary residential silos of the workers, the third part focuses on an individual fate: the life of the one-eyed junk collector you. The documentary Caiyou riji (Cruel Oil) about oil workers in Inner Mongolia , completed in 2008, has a running time of 14 hours.

First feature film

His first feature film, Jiabiangou (The Hole in the Ground ) from 2010, describes the brutal life in a Maoist labor camp for “counter-revolutionary deviants” in the late 1950s. Aesthetically based on his documentary works, Wang Bing shows the mass deaths of inmates in the camp, caused by the hard work in the fields in the Gobi desert , the harsh climate with temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius and a devastating famine. The film ran in competition at the Venice International Film Festival 2010 . The shooting took place on the original locations.

Documentaries since 2010

Wang Bing aroused interest in the art world with his documentary Wu ming zhe (Man With No Name), which is based on preliminary work for his first feature film. Wang had discovered a man who lived lonely underground outside of Beijing. He filmed the hermit in order to pass the material on to his actors as a template. The Parisian gallery owner Chantal Crousel saw the material by chance and encouraged Wang to make an independent film out of it. In its simplicity, Wu ming zhe is “probably Wang's most radical film.” Despite his success in art circles, Wang sees himself “more as a filmmaker whose work sometimes ends up in museums”.

With his next documentary, San zimei (Three Sisters), he again dealt with social outsiders who contradict the official narrative of progress and the economic boom in the People's Republic of China. This time, the focus is on three girls from Yunnan Province aged ten, six and four who have to raise each other because their mother has run away and their father has to work as a migrant worker .

In his work Ta'ang (2016), Wang Bing documents the forced nomadic existence of the De'ang , an oppressed ethnic group in Myanmar . Flare-up violence in their home country led to the flight of nearly 100,000 members of the ethnic group to the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, where they live in unsteady camps with no constancy or perspective. The film was invited to the Forum section of the Berlinale 2016 .

Gloria-Kino in Kassel, location of the Wang Bing retrospective during documenta 14

Wang Bing was awarded the Golden Leopard of the 70th Locarno Festival in 2017 for his documentary film Fang Xiu Ying (Mrs. Fang) . The film observes the death of an old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease .

The documenta 14 paid tribute to Wang Bing's work in 2017 with a retrospective. He also exhibited diaries, poems, photos and drawings of people who were abducted during the Cultural Revolution . The material is part of a larger labor camp project that Wang is working on.

Filmography (selection)

  • 2003: Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks)
  • 2007: He Fengming
  • 2008: Caiyou riji (Cruel Oil)
  • 2010: Jiabiangou (The Hole in the Ground )
  • 2010: Wu ming zhe (Man With No Name)
  • 2012: San zimei (Three Sisters)
  • 2016: Ku Qian (bitterly deserved)
  • 2016: Ta'ang
  • 2017: Fang Xiu Ying (Mrs. Fang)

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c In the shadow of the economic miracle , Spiegel Online, April 6, 2016.
  2. ↑ Wang Bing , documenta14.de (accessed August 13, 2017)
  3. ↑ a b c d "And then I just start" - Interview with Carin Storch, Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 16, 2017, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Michael Guarneri / Jin Wang, Interview: Wang Bing , Film Comment, February 22, 2017
  5. ^ The Ditch - Film Review , hollywoodreporter.com, October 14, 2010.
  6. ↑ Program of the 13th Documentary Film Week Hamburg, Hamburg 2016, p. 45.
  7. ^ Three Sisters (San zi mei) - Venice Review , hollywoodreporter.com, September 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ Program of the 13th Documentary Film Week Hamburg, Hamburg 2016, p. 42.
  9. ↑ Golden Leopard goes to Alzheimer's Documentation , faz.net, August 12, 2017.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wang, Bing
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese film director
DATE OF BIRTH 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Xi'an , Shaanxi Province