[BCSA SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM – Author: Hadrien Giral-Ghattas]
About Wang Bing
Early life and education
Wang Bing was born in 1967 in Shaanxi Province. He grew up in a country in mutation and was a witness of the opening of China to the world and the development of the industries that go along this development. Wang Bing studied photography at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang before specializing in filmmaking at the Beijing Film Academy, one of the country’s most prestigious institutions. Despite this classical training, Wang quickly distinguished himself with a nonconventional approach, determined to break free from the cinematic norms imposed by the industry and government authorities.He began his career at a time when independent cinema in China received little support and was often constrained by censorship. Contrary to what we often think, his work was still published even though it was criticized (however, he was indeed not directly criticizing the government otherwise his work could not have been published but he was still depicting the problems of the society).
Wang Bing’s style
Wang Bing is often regarded as a master of observational cinema. His style is characterized by long takes, a mobile camera, and meticulous attention to everyday details. His films capture the struggles, joys, and sorrows of individuals left behind by China’s rapid economic development. He adopts a non-interventionist approach, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions. Wang Bing focuses on economic transformation in a fast-moving country who’s transitioning to a market economy, particularly on workers and peasants. He gives a voice to marginalized groups such as the mentally ill, the homeless, rural peasants, and migrant workers but also to the forgotten part of history as in The Ditch (Jiabiangou, 2010), which addresses labor camps during the Great Leap Forward.
West of the Tracks
For example, Wang Bing’s debut film, West of the Tracks (Tie Xi Qu), made between 1999 and 2003, is a monumental nine-hour documentary. The film chronicles the deindustrialization of Tiexi, a region in northeastern China that was once a hub of heavy industry.
青春 (Youth)
General information
Wang Bing’s Youth (青春) is a sprawling and deeply intimate documentary that delves into the lives of young migrant workers employed in garment factories in China’s industrial zones and was filmed between 2014 and 2019. Premiering in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the film epitomizes Wang’s signature observational style.
The story
The documentary is set in Humen, a town in Guangdong Province known for its bustling garment industry. Here, Wang Bing follows a group of workers, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, who have migrated from rural provinces in search of better opportunities. They spend long hours in poorly ventilated workshops sewing, cutting, and assembling clothing that will be sold worldwide. The factory becomes both a space of labor exploitation and a fragile social microcosm where friendships, romances, and fleeting moments of joy emerge as we follow them in their everyday life.
Personnel opinion
Those workers have an aspiration of a better life despite bad living conditions (no isolation, multiple rooms, bad hygiene). We clearly see the downside of China’s rapid industrialization but also their intimate life. Personally, I was surprised by the differences between how friendships but mostly romance life works between westernized countries and Humen. For example, flirting is mostly expressed by annoying each other. What I also thought was interesting is how we live the evolution of China with the documentary. As it progresses, we see that the workers manage to gain independence and even go see other factories to compare salaries. We clearly observe that despite the poor living conditions there might be some possible amelioration in the future.
Sources:
I had the opportunity to study this author at school as well as seeing the documentary and had the enormous opportunity to assist in a Q&A session with him. For complementary information on the author I used wikipedia but my main source still remains the notes I previously wrote.
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