Si linghun (Teil 1)

For over two decades Wang Bing has chronicled China’s tumultuous history, traumatic memory and neglected populations. In his latest epic documentary, DEAD SOULS, filmed between 2005 and 2017, he speaks to a few nonagenarians – selected from originally over one hundred interviewees – who were sent during the Cultural Revolution for “re-education” in the Jiabiangou labor camp, where many workers died from hunger. Adhering to a straightforward interview format, familiar from his previous films, Wang Bing’s intensely focused film captures the historical moment and its aftermath in its full psychological complexity: Some survivors, humiliated and heartbroken, tell grim tales tinged by fatalism; others prove resilient, defiant against their accusers who were often driven by self-interest. The polyphonic record at times falls to a whisper, due to the interviewees’ fragility, but the portrait of inequities and horrors is nothing if not searing. Footage also shows the current sight of the camp, turned into farms. The haunted land doesn’t yield much beyond stark bones – among them, a human skull, captured like a still life, without commentary. The interviewees’ recent deaths are noted on title cards, their voices urgently summoned so that history isn’t expunged. (Ela Bittencourt)