Wu Wenguang founded this artist’s collective with choreographer Wen Hui. Wu Wenguang is a Chinese independent documentary filmmaker, known internationally as one of the founding figures of Chinese independent documentary. His first film, Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers, featured handheld camerawork and unscripted interviews, viewed as very innovative in the history of Chinese documentary film-making, which was previously very controlled and tightly scripted. In 2005 he and Wen Hui founded Caochangdi Workstation as a Beijing independent art space involving performance art, documentary film/video, and video art, located in the Caochangdi art district and now relocated to Changping. Ijn 2005 they organised rural villagers to become film-makers for the ongpoing ‘Village Documentary Project’. In the summer of 2009, they initiated a documentary film project to chronicle the events that took place between the “3 year famine” period of 1959 and 1961. “By the summer of 2010, we had 21 people participating, making this Caochangdi Workstation’s landmark ‘Folk Memory Project.’ These 21 participants went back on their own accord to their respective villages to interview and take notes for this event. Among the participants were people aged above 60, people with experience in making documentaries, theatre and other arts-related individuals, as well as existing university students.” This project had a snowball effect, with an increasing number of participants creating a large volume of records and village interviews for the archives as a significant social history document.Currently, they have had more 200 participants going back to their villages for interviews, with more 1400 interviewees coming from 22 provinces and 190 villages. Interview topics ranged from the “3 year famine”, the “Great Leap Forward,” “Land Reform” and the “Cultural Revolution”. In summary, this project is a trial in creating folk memory archives.

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