Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists

Streaming video - 2017

This documentary series recounts the persecution of inmates at the Jiabiangou labor camp in Jiuquan, Gansu province, and examines the way the victims’ final affairs were handled. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–59, more than three thousand people were sent to Jiabiangou for re-education through labor. These people were labeled rightists, counterrevolutionaries, and anti-party dissidents. Over a three-year period, more than two thousand died from abuse and hunger; only a few hundred were rescued in the end. JIABIANGOU ELEGY includes interviews with the few remaining Jiabiangou survivors and their children, and presents the conflict between the preservation and destruction of memory. "*Ai Xiaoming applies her unique observa...tional approach to the exploration of a terrifying chapter of recent Chinese social history that has long been concealed. She relates this history from multiple perspectives while engaging in a difficult documentation of the truth of the matter in the present day.*" – ***Ai Weiwei*** more