Hao Zhiqiang

Bazaar Jumpers

Two Uigur brothers and a friend are in love with parkour, a kind of extreme sport. Regardless of opposition from their worried mothers, the boys train themselves to be the best in an upcoming parkour event in Beijing while managing to iron out additional difficulties. They lose the game, but eventually they learn much more about their true selves.

1966, My Time in the Red Guards

More preoccupied with "history" than Wu's other works, My Time in the Red Guards is a record of his fascination with the missed moment, Mao's Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Red Guards ironically represented the official avant-garde, a movement carried forward by youth determined to become heroes of the Revolution. Wu interviews people who had joined the Red Guards as high schoolers, most now successful professionals, some Party members. The miscalculations and cruelties of this extreme cultural campaign are spread out before us, detailed by personal recollection and further illustrated by old agit-prop newsreels. Misgivings and fond remembrance vie for position as the interviewees seem to confuse the nostalgia of youthful action with the excesses of historical fact.

Big Tree County

"The sulphur-iron mine is located at the common boundary of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou province, with an area of 1774 square meters. The Yong Ning River originated from here, flowing northward 108 kilometers into the Yangtze River. The mine was established in 1950 and its products are mainly exported, with some concentrated uses within in the county. We found this place in the newspaper by accident; it's called Big Tree County. Many years ago, it was part of the forest along the Yangtze River. A sulphur-iron mine was discovered in the 1920s, which started large-scale sulphur smelting. Now the old way of sulphur smelting is ranking first in the country[sic]. On our second day there, in this remote valley in the southern part of Sichuan province with hundreds of thousands of people living there, we met a boy named Tan Cong. We then got to know his family, as well as a local school teacher, and some of the locals smelting the sulphur."

The Great Earthquake

On Tomb Sweeping Day, in 1988, a film crew set out for the monument of the Tangshan earthquake to shoot a memorial ceremony for the victims. This marked the beginning of shooting for a documentary called "The Great Earthquake." The crew continued to shoot through the rest of 1988, even staging a large-scale rock 'n' roll concert and performance art event on the Great Wall, and into 1989, including footage shot at the famous 1989 Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, where one artist fired two gun shots at her exhibit. More footage was shot during the Tiananmen protests, up until the events of June 4th shut down production for good. Shortly before, a two-hour "rough cut" was assembled by main director Wen Pulin and Assistant Director Hao Zhiqiang, which screened only once (and is preserved at University libraries in the U.S.). The footage has been recycled in some of Wen's later films, notably "China Action," but "The Great Earthquake" itself was never finished.

Wind

"An animated short film of its era. It doesn't explain anything, but just serves as the background of an era. It can also be said to be another dimension of China." — Hao Zhiqiang