Screen/Society--Memory Project--"Reading Hunger": Performance by Four Filmmakers

Performance by Four Filmmakers: "Reading Hunger" / Conception & Direction: Wu Wenguang / Text, documentaries & performers: Zhang Mengqi, Zhang Ping, Liu Xiaolei, Wu Wenguang / Duration: 70 minutes / Production: Caochangdi Workstation // About the performance: Chinese Documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project in 2010 to collect oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine (1958-1961) in rural China. Since then, several young filmmakers have joined the project. They have been to 246 villages in 20 provinces and interviewed more than 1,220 elderly villagers. The Memory Project aims to shine light on one of modern China's most traumatic episodes, the Great Famine of 1958-1961. For this project, the performers took video cameras and went back to their respective villages. They went in search of the old generation that was still living there in dim, stark houses, to uncover the memories hidden deep inside them. For the elderly in the villages, this was the first time anyone had come to ask them to open their memory chests. This is their story. // Presented by Duke University Libraries