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Filmmaker Wang Bing confirms his standing as one of China’s, and the world’s, most revelatory documentarians in this monumental and little-seen 2013 work, which chronicles the lived experience of inmates in a decrepit mental institution in China’s Yunan province. Holed up in the squalid, urban asylum, Wang’s nearly four-hour documentary closely observes its cast-off subjects’ often unfathomable behaviors, inscribed with an uncanny blend of voyeurism and empathy. Achieving a profound degree of access, and attentive to the most intimate and mysterious phenomena, the haunting film confronts the role both of institutions and of film art in reckoning with abject humanity.
Digital Video, color, in Mandarin (Yunnan dialect) with English subtitles, 228 min. Producer: Louise Prince, Wang Bing. Director: Wang Bing. Cinematographer: Wang Bing, Lu Xianhui. Editor: Adam Kerby, Wang Bing.
