Wang Bing’s The Ditch: Spaces of history between documentary and fiction

Wang Bing's Jiabiangou/The Ditch premiered as a competition entry at the Venice Film Festival 2010 after a six-year-long production process. It is Wang Bing's first full-length feature film after he established his reputation as a leading documentary film-maker on the international film scene thanks to the worldwide acclaimed Tiexi qu/West of the Tracks (2002) and He Fengming (2007). This article provides a reading of The Ditch (2010), based on a contextual investigation of the interplay of documentary and fiction, an high-end film aesthetics, and Wang Bing's concern with the role of the film-maker vis-a-vis a sensitive historical subject, here the Antirightist movement (1957-1960). Comolli's discussion of historical films and Pasolini's approach to cinema as a way to engage with the present provide relevant theoretical basis for this study. Parallels are drawn with Pedro Costa's work which also moves away from cinematic realism to challenge the boundaries of representation.Wang Bing's Jiabiangou/The Ditch premiered as a competition entry at the Venice Film Festival 2010 after a six-year-long production process. It is Wang Bing's first full-length feature film after he established his reputation as a leading documentary film-maker on the international film scene thanks to the worldwide acclaimed Tiexi qu/West of the Tracks (2002) and He Fengming (2007). This article provides a reading of The Ditch (2010), based on a contextual investigation of the interplay of documentary and fiction, an high-end film aesthetics, and Wang Bing's concern with the role of the film-maker vis-à-vis a sensitive historical subject, here the Antirightist movement (1957-1960). Comolli's discussion of historical films and Pasolini's approach to cinema as a way to engage with the present provide relevant theoretical basis for this study. Parallels are drawn with Pedro Costa's work which also moves away from cinematic realism to challenge the boundaries of representation. © 2012 Intellect Ltd