The Ditch

Wang Bing’s critically acclaimed 2007 film, He Fengming: A Chinese Memoir, depicted the harrowing account of one woman’s experience in Mao’s labour camps. His latest film lays bare an equally dramatic hidden chapter of China’s communist history.

During the “Great Leap Forward” from 1958 to 1961, Mao’s Anti-Rightist Movement resulted in the “re-education through labour” of middle-class intellectuals and government officials that were declared to be “rightist.” Some three thousand political prisoners were arrested and sent to the Jiabiangou labour camp – which was only built to hold fifty inmates – in the middle of the Gobi Desert. The conditions were beyond inhumane and more than 2,500 people starved to death.

Partly inspired by Yang Xianhui’s novel Goodbye Jiabiangou, The Ditch recounts the harrowing story of life at the labour camp. Wang devoted several years to interviewing survivors of the camp, who shared their devastating and chilling experiences. Prisoners were forced to scrounge for scraps of food. Leaves, dirt and even vomit and human feces were often the only sustenance available. As the prisoners were too weak from malnutrition, the bodies of the dead were never buried, but were simply piled among the dunes and ditches that flanked the camp.

A potent work of riveting authenticity with a startling documentary sensibility, The Ditch offers an unflinching look at what happens to people when they are deprived of their dignity and pushed beyond the limits of humanity. Left to question the absurdity of their punishment as they awaited death in the arid loneliness of the desert, many inmates were forced to resort to eating the bodies of the dead in order to survive.

A political ghost story that gives voice to atrocious memories, The Ditch draws equally from classical Chinese drama and Wang’s experience as a documentary filmmaker. The film’s realistic style perfectly balances the intensity of the subject matter. This is an exceptional work of ascetic cinematic poetry. –TIFF