The Memory Project Oral History collection comprises digital video recordings and written supporting documentation of interviews spanning 2009 to 2016. The interviews were conducted by filmmakers associated with the Work Station, a film studio run by Wu Wenguang in Caochangdi, Beijing, China. Memory Project interviews were conducted with Chinese people about mid-20th century rural life, primarily experiences during the Great Famine (1958-1961), but also the Land Reform and Collectivization (1949-1953), the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the Four Cleanups Movement (1964), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The interviews show regional variations in famine experiences and rural culture. They add intimate detail and humanity to the story of the deaths and starvation of millions of Chinese, providing a unique perspective on the unofficial history of the Great Famine.
Due to the geographic scope and rural focus of the Memory Project, the interviews are frequently conducted in regional dialects. In many cases, the filmmakers provided Chinese language transcripts. Many recordings are also accompanied by prose reflections written by the filmmakers, the text of which originally came from the Work Station blog or email communication between filmmakers. The notes and blogs written by the filmmakers and the interview footage preserve the fading memories of people who lived through the Great Famine, ensuring that their stories are not forgotten.
The interviews described in this collection guide are arranged geographically by Province and Village. While multiple filmmakers may have worked in a single province, in most cases, only a single filmmaker traveled to each village represented. Approximately 500, nearly one half, of the interviews and supporting documentation are described as of January 2021. These interviews include those conducted by Wu Wenguang 吴文光, Zhang Mengqi 章梦奇, Zou Xueping 邹雪平, Li Xinmin 李新民, Jia Nannan 贾楠楠, Luo Bing 罗兵, Lin Tao 林涛, Zhang Ping 张苹, Li Yushan 李雨珊, Guo Zhihua 郭志华, Qu Yufeng 屈玉凤, Gao Runxiang 高润香, Guo Rui 郭睿, Hu Tao 胡涛, Jia Zhitan 贾之坦, Shao Yuzhen 邵玉珍, Shu Qiao 舒侨, Wen Hui 文慧, Wu Haizhu 吴海珠, Ye Zuyi 叶祖艺, Yi Yangmin 易旸敏, and Zhang Haishen 张海深. Other interviews will be published incrementally as each filmmaker's material is arranged and described.
Most materials are available in Chinese. A smaller number of interview transcripts have been translated into English. Those interviews that have English translations are noted in the individual interview descriptions below. All digital files are available online. Videos may be played directly through this collection guide while additional text documents and transcripts can be accessed clicking links next to the embedded videos in this collection guide, or directly via Duke Digital Collections at https://repository.duke.edu/dc/memoryproject/.
In 2010, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project to collect oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine that devastated rural China between 1958 and 1961. Officially known in China as the "Three Years of Natural Disasters" or "The Difficult Three-Year Period," the Great Famine caused the death of between 20 and 43 million people. More recently the project has also covered the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960, the Land Reform and the Collectivization of 1949-1953, the Four Cleanups Movement in 1964, and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.
Wu's studio in suburban Beijing, known as the Work Station, is the home for this project. More than 150 young filmmakers have joined the project, and since 2010 they have visited 246 villages in 20 provinces and interviewed more than 1,100 elderly villagers. These filmmakers, many of whom returned to their families' rural hometowns, developed new intergenerational relationships with elderly relatives. During the process of interviewing the villagers, they reconciled the official history taught in schools with each family's experiences.
Wu Wenguang was born in 1956 in Yunnan Province, China, as is considered a founding figure in Chinese independent documentary films. His other work includes Bumming in Beijing: the Last Dreamers (1990), 1966: My Time in the Red Guards (1993), At Home in the World (1995), Jiang Hu: Life on the Road (1999), Dance with Farm Workers (2002), Fuck Cinema (2005), Treating (2010), Bare Your Stuff (2010), Investigating My Father (2016), and Gao Bo between Beijing-Paris (2019).
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