The Abandoned Lives of the 'Inmin'... Not Just a Problem Unique to China

Korean Film Archive Special Exhibition 'Short Films by Wang Bing'
Screening Ten Masterpieces by World-Renowned Documentary Director Wang Bing

Wang Bing is a documentary filmmaker who has consistently captured the abandoned people (人民) in Chinese society. The faces of the marginalized do not exist only in China. Many people around the world are isolated due to regime transitions, ideological conflicts, and more. It is a universal issue that anyone can relate to.

Documentary 'Heug-ui-in' Still Cut

Wang Bing does not simply shed light on these subjects. He pays close attention to the camera’s position and distance in every scene. He contemplates how to capture them from an ethical perspective. From an aesthetic perspective, he also offers a new sensibility by capturing moments that have passed or are unnoticed.

The Korean Film Archive will hold a special exhibition titled "Wang Bing’s Short Films" at Cinematheque KOFA in Mapo-gu from the 30th of this month until the 11th of next month. It will showcase ten of Wang Bing’s documentaries with relatively short running times.

The lineup includes Coal Money (2009), which captures the harsh realities of coal trading; The Ditch (2009), which depicts the daily life of an unknown man over four seasons; Three Sisters (2012), portraying family disintegration caused by poverty; and Father and Son (2014), showing the life of a worker’s family with his son.

Documentary 'Appa wa Adeul' Still Cut

Also screened are Ta’ang - The People on the Border (2016), documenting the journey of the Ta’ang ethnic group fleeing civil war; Bitter Money (2016), showing the life of workers in small-scale garment factories; Mrs. Fang (2017), capturing the death of a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; and Black’s Territory (2023), featuring the music and testimony of Wang Xilin, a Chinese-born musician exiled in Germany.

A representative from the Film Archive described it as "a special opportunity to grasp the formation and evolution of Wang Bing’s camera work all at once."

Wang Bing was born in 1976 in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China. He studied photography at the Liu Xun Art Academy and majored in cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy. His documentary debut was West of the Tracks (2002), filmed over two years in a declining industrial area in northeast China. It gained significant attention by winning the Grand Prix at the Marseille International Documentary Film Festival.

Documentary 'Ireum Eomneun Namja' Still Cut

He has continuously produced twenty documentaries, including Crude Oil (2008), China Woman’s Chronicle (2007), Dead Souls (2007), Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), and Wind and Sand (2010), establishing himself as a master of documentary filmmaking. He won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for Mrs. Fang, and last year, his film Youth (Spring) was invited to compete at the Cannes Film Festival.