Though I am Gone

In the film, the story of Bian’s death is told by various eye witnesses, including her colleagues, one of her daughters, and her husband Wang Jingyao. Wang took photographs of her body after she was killed, of big character posters condemning her, and has kept other kinds of documentation and evidence such as her bloodstained clothes. The film also includes archival footage of radio broadcasts announcing the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Bian Zhongyun was the principal of the Girls Middle School attached to Beijing Normal University. She was beaten to death by girl Red Guards who were students at her school. They used wooden clubs, spiked with nails. The school was an elite institution and many of the students were children or relatives of senior government officials. Bian was one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution, on the fifth of the Bloody August of 1966, and her brutal treatment set the tone for the madness that followed. —danwei.org