Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts
Haizi bu jupa siwang, danshi jupa mogui: Haizi bu jupa siwang, danshi haipa mogui
SECTION: International Competition 2017
SCREENINGS
Saturday, 30.09., 8 p.m., kommkino, Q&A with Rong Guang Rong
Monday, 02.10., 10 p.m., kinoeins
SYNOPSIS
Personal, impressive emotional documentary in which the director investigates a group suicide by children
in a poor village in the mountains of Guizhou. His journey confronts him with his own fears and memories, but also with the surviving children, government officials and organised crime. Four brothers and sisters, aged five to fourteen, collectively commit suicide by drinking pesticide: what could drive children to such an act of desperation? In 2015, shortly after this horrific event, documentary maker and artist Rong Guang Rong travelled to the village where the drama took place in the hope of finding an answer to this question. He was not made to feel welcome, however: he was arrested, intimidated and sent away, and his footage seized.
He was nevertheless able to finish his film, and the result is an experimental, poetic documentary in which the filmmaker reflects, principally on the basis of his own children and his fears and dreams, on the demons in the lives of the four brothers and sisters: hunger, poverty, insecurity, parents who let them down, and the indifference of those around them. (International Film Festival Rotterdam 2017)
RONG GUANG RONG
Rong Guang Rong is a filmmaker and artist born in 1984 in China. He studied photography at 3W Photographic Studio before moving to Beijing in 2003 to study in the 798 Art District and then at Yang Jingsunās 3 Photo Studio. In 2008, he started to exhibit his work in China and abroad. He is one of the founders of Zajia Lab, one of the earliest and most important independent creative spaces and artists-led organisations in Beijing. Rong lives in Beijing and works as professional photographer and documentary filmmaker.
FILMOGRAPHY
Farce (2013), A Nameless Soldier (2016), Children are Not Afraid of Death, Children are Afraid of Ghosts (2017)
WEBSITE
http://www.rgr.today/