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Film and Video
Chronicle of Western Liaoning, A
In 1959, in the desolate Lingyuan area in the western part of Liaoning Province, a group of intellectual rightists from the Shenyang University arrived. There, they were to labor and be reformed alongside criminal prisoners in the prison, while digging mines to build railroads. How did the Communist Party reform the intellectuals? What kind of encounters did these rightist intellectuals go through? Hu Jie's camera restores this history.
Film and Video
East Wind State Farm
In 1957, two hundred teachers, students, and cadres from Kunming, Yunnan were among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people labeled as “Rightists” for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. They were sent to the East Wind State Farm, located in Mi-le County in Yunnan, for 21 years of “thought reform” in the countryside. These inmates witnessed the policies of the Great Leap Forward first-hand: they took part in deforestation, agricultural, and industrial projects in the countryside, which precipitated the Great Famine. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, their camp was visited by large groups of youths “sent down” from the cities, who worked on the farm with the “Rightists.” In 1978, these “Rightists” were finally rehabilitated and allowed to leave.
This documentary examines the policies and campaigns of the Maoist era through the eyes of those who were persecuted and exiled. Director Hu Jie pieces together this long and complex story through collecting dozens of extensive interviews with inmates as well as staff who served through decades of the camp’s existence. These people’s vivid memories and personal accounts shed light on the harrowing lifestyle of not only the two hundred “Rightists” of East Wind State Farm, but also the scores of dissidents and youths who experienced the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
电影及视频
In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul
Hu Jie narrates the life of Lin Zhao, a Christian dissident who was condemned as a Rightist in the late 1950s and executed during the Cultural Revolution. Prior to becoming a mentcritic of the government, Lin Zhao was an ardent believer of communism. She demonstrated talent in writing and speaking as a star student in Peking University. However, after criticizing the government in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, she was cast as anti-revolutionary. Despite the government’s attempts to silence her, Lin Zhao continued to speak and write publicly, including contributing two epic poems to Spark, an underground student-run journal. In 1960, she was arrested, and despite being released briefly in 1962, spent the rest of her life behind bars, under extremely poor living conditions. Nevertheless, she continued to write in prison, sometimes with her blood. In 1968, at the age of 36, she was executed by a firing squad.
In this documentary, Hu Jie showcases many of Lin Zhao’s surviving writings and poetry. These pieces often contain criticisms of the communist regime, as well as commentary on policy issues pertaining to labor and land reform. In making this film, Hu Jie traveled around China to interview friends and associates of Lin Zhao, who knew her as a student, activist, or prisoner. This documentary includes excerpts from interviews with them, which inform us about Lin Zhao’s personality and motivations.
This documentary has contributed to a widespread revival of interest in Lin Zhao, who had almost become a forgotten figure until the film’s appearance.
Film and Video
Spark
<i>Spark</i> tells the story of a group of young intellectuals who risked their lives to voice their opinions about the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957, many intellectuals were branded as Rightists and banished to work and live in rural China. A group of students from Lanzhou University were among those sent to the countryside. There, they witnessed mass famine which resulted from government policies to collectivize agriculture and force industrialization in rural China. Shocked and angered by the government’s lack of response to the Great Famine, these students banded together to publish <i>Spark</i>, an underground magazine that sought to alert the Chinese population of the unfolding famine. The first issue, printed in 1960, included poems and articles analyzing the root causes of failed policies. However, as the first issue of <i>Spark</i> was mailed and the second issue was edited, many of these students, along with locals who supported the team, were arrested. Some of the key members of the publication were sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed, while others spent decades in labor camps.
In this 2014 documentary, Hu Jie uncovers the stories of the people involved in the publication of <i>Spark</i>. He conducts interviews with former members of the magazine who survived persecution, and also shows footage of the manuscripts of the magazine. A digital copy of the original manuscript of the first volume of <i>Spark</i> is also held on our website.
This film was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Chinese Documentary at the 2014 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival and the Award of Excellence in the Asian Competition. Later, it won the Independent Spirit Award at the Beijing Independent Film Festival.
Film and Video
The Gulag Book
This movie records how Zhang Xianzhi went from being a soldier to a prisoner and then to an independent writer. His experience and thought process is compared with that of the Russian writer Solzhenitsyn. The title of the film is taken from the title of Zhang Xianzhi's book <i>Anecdotes from the Gulag</i>, which takes the viewer on a journey to China's Gulag Archipelago, a labor camp in Sichuan. The extreme conditions and little-known tragic history of the camp are presented. The movie is 42 minutes long and was filmed in 2012.
Film and Video
Tribute to Gao Hua
Gao Hua was a renowned Chinese historian who died of liver cancer in Nanjing in 2011 at the age of 57. During his lifetime, Prof. Gao Hua focused on modern Chinese history. He was an expert in the history of the CCP and Mao Zedong. Several of his books were published overseas, and his book “The Revolutionary Years” was the only one published on the mainland. His masterpiece, “How the Red Sun Rises - The Ins and Outs of the Yan'an Rectification Movement”, was considered a classic work on CCP history when it was published in Hong Kong, but it soon became a banned book. Through this documentary, director Hu Jie records Gao Hua's voice and laughter during his lifetime, expressing the deep feelings of people mourning and commemorating Gao Hua.
Periodicals
The Ladies Journal
The Ladies Journal was founded in January 1915 by the Commercial Press Shanghai. It was a monthly magazine primarily targeting upper-class women. It ceased publication in 1932 when the Commercial Press was destroyed by Japanese bombing. The magazine was distributed in major cities in China and overseas, such as Singapore. The magazine was considered an influential forum for the dissemination of feminist discourse in modern China, given its long operation and large readership.
The magazine spanned important historical periods such as the May Fourth Movement and the National Revolutionary period, and readers can see how the political environment and social trends influenced the political stance and style of the publication.
Although it was a women's magazine, the chief editors and the authors of most of the articles were men. According to Wang Zheng, Professor Emeritus of Women's and Gender Studies and History at the University of Michigan, the early articles of The Ladies Journal were more conservative. Although it advocated for women’s education, the goal was to train women to be good wives and mothers. Later, under the influence of New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Student Movement, the magazine was forced to reform itself and began to publish debates on women's emancipation as well as to call for more women's contributions, spread liberal feminist ideas, and support women's movements across the country.
1923 saw the beginning of the National Revolutionary period, and the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalist-Marxist discourse on women’s emancipation started to challenge liberal feminism, and the magazine's influence waned. In September 1925, the magazine ceased to be a cutting edge feminist publication after it changed its chief editor again and shifted its focus to ideas more easily accepted by conservative-minded readers,such as women's artistic tastes.
Although the <i>The Ladies Journal</i> was run by men, and some articles displayed contempt for and discrimination against women, it pointed out and discussed many issues that hindered women's social progress, such as lack of education, employment, economic independence, marriage freedom, sexual freedom, family reform, emancipation of slave girls, abolition of the child bride system, abolition of prostitution, and contraceptive birth control. It was also open to many different ideas and views, all of which were published. It is a valuable historical source for the study of women's studies and modern Chinese history.
Yujiro Murata, a professor at the University of Tokyo, founded the The Ladies Journal Research Society in 2000, along with a number of other colleagues interested in women's history from Japan, Taiwan, China, and Korea. The two main goals of the Society are to produce a general catalog of all seventeen volumes of the Magazine and to bring together scholars from all over the world to conduct studies based on the magazine. With the assistance of the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, the magazine was made into an online repository, which is stored on the Institute’s “Modern History Databases” website, and can be accessed by the public.
Link to the database: https://mhdb.mh.sinica.edu.tw/fnzz/index.php. Thanks to the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, for authorizing the CUA to repost.
Database
Modern Women’s Biographies Database
The Modern Women’s Biographies Database is part of the Modern History Digital Database of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. The goal of the database is to create biographical information on women in modern China, in order to counter the dominance of biographies of male figures in modern China history. The database includes biographies of 1,848 women in modern China, a few of whom were not Chinese but were included because they taught at universities in China or Taiwan.
In addition to browsing and searching for biographies, the database provides two additional functions: 1. “Biography Connections”: users can select multiple biographies to generate a map displaying social connections among selected figures; 2. “Place of Origin Map”: a map presenting the places of origin and eras of the figures, and users can click the markers on the map to read the biographies of the figures. By visualizing the biographical information, users can have an overview of the organizational networks of modern women's groups, as well as the development of women's discourse.
Link to the database: https://mhdb.mh.sinica.edu.tw/women_bio/index.php. Thanks to the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, for authorizing the CUA to repost.
Database
Modern Women Journals Database
This database is part of the “Modern History Databases,” operated by the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The "Women and Gender History Research Group" of the Institute endeavors to collect, digitize and categorize related books and journals from libraries worldwide, and established the Modern Women Journals Database, which consists of 214 journals and 110,000 individual items. The database has been made available for public use since 2015.
In 1919 and the years that followed, women’s movement in China was on the rise, and as a result, many women's magazines appeared, a lot of which were run by women. Most of the journals collected in this repository were published between 1907-1949, with some published after 1949; there are comprehensive publications, as well as those focusing particularly on women's movements, family, health, employment, etc.; nearly a quarter of the publications were published in Shanghai, followed by Beijing, Guangzhou, and Nanjing. As can be seen from the Database, most of these journals have a relatively short duration, ranging from one to five years. Through this database, readers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the history of women and women’s movements in modern China.
In addition to browsing journals and searching the database, users can also conduct author research and journal analysis. Under the author research section, users can read author biographies, as well as see the number of articles written by a particular author, and a map displaying their family and social relations. Under the journal research section, users can generate maps by keywords, eras, and article categories, which can provide more multi-dimensional information about a specific era or topic.
Link to the database:https://mhdb.mh.sinica.edu.tw/magazine/web/acwp_index.php. Thanks to the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, for authorizing the CUA to repost.