Film Screening: “Summary of Crimes: A Documentary on Peasant Counter-Revolutionaries from the Cultural Revolution”

Xu Xing’s documentary searches out primarily a group of peasants of the lowest stratum who were labeled “active counter-revolutionaries” during the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976). They have been left with no means to recount what they suffered decades before, or to tell what has befallen them since. As the years pass, they have simply been forgotten.

XU Xing  徐星  is a writer, documentary film maker and public intellectual currently residing in Beijing. As a writer he announced his literary presence with a collection of short stories, Variations Without a Theme, that established his iconic status in the new modernist movement in the 1980s. His short stories and novel, All That is Left Is Yours, have been translated into many languages and he has been called the “Chinese Jack Kerouac” by foreign critics. His film work focuses on subjects such as the Cultural Revolution and the poor, marginal, and abject in Chinese history and contemporary society.