A Breath

Clip 3: China’s Cultural Revolution

Taken from the documentary A Breath (1998)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG

Curator’s clip description

The Cultural Revolution started in 1966 and lasted ten years. Artists Huang Miaozi and his wife Yu Feng were arrested along with other artists and writers. Many were imprisoned without trial. Communist leader Mao Tse Tung issued ‘the little red book’ that became the only authority in China. The masses were told to destroy any history that did not conform.

Curator’s notes

The filmmaker effectively uses Chinese percussion instruments to accompany the re-enacted and archival footage, giving an emotive sense of the cultural revolution.

Damien Parer, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–76) and re-enacts the arrest of artists Huang Miaozi and Yu Feng during that period. The clip uses archival footage, black-and-white photographs and staged re-enactments (by Nathan Young and Vina Lee) to recreate the drama of mass demonstrations led by the Red Guard, the widespread arrests and public denunciation of intellectuals, artists, writers and Communist Party officials, as well as the destruction of cultural artefacts. The clip includes black-and-white photographs that show Yu and Huang with their family prior to their arrest in 1968, and uses Huang’s illustrations to depict their imprisonment. The director, Christopher Tuckfield, provides the narration.

Educational value points

The decade-long Cultural Revolution in China, part of which is shown in the clip, was instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966. His goal was to return to the basic principles of the revolution that had first brought the Communist Party to power in China in 1949. He wanted to purge both the Party and the country of what he claimed was a new elite class of liberals whose bourgeois ideas were undermining Chinese society. The Cultural Revolution enabled Mao to purge his opposition within the Communist Party and consolidate his position as leader.

Mao called on the student movement, known as the Red Guard, to start a nationwide mass campaign of social reconstruction. The students, who were joined by other civilians, organised ‘great debates’, produced ‘big-character’ posters and held public meetings to criticise and solicit self-criticism from suspected ‘counter-revolutionaries’. The clip depicts mass demonstrations in support of the Cultural Revolution, many of which led to physical violence.

People are shown waving copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. Known in the West as ‘The little red book’, it was a collection of Mao’s speeches and writings, and became one of the most visible icons of China at the time. More than 1 billion copies were printed and it became unofficial policy during the Cultural Revolution for every Chinese citizen to own and study the book and to carry it with them at all times. Those who failed to produce a copy on demand were often beaten on the spot by Red Guards.

During the Cultural Revolution anyone suspected of liberal tendencies, including artists, intellectuals and writers, was persecuted, imprisoned and sometimes executed, and the clip provides a re-enactment of the arrest of artists Yu and Huang. Mao urged the Red Guard to replace the ‘Four Olds’ (old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits) with the ‘Four News’ (new ideas, new culture, new customs, new habits) and as a result, works of art and literature and objects of traditional Chinese culture were destroyed.

The Cultural Revolution is now referred to in China as the ‘decade of chaos’, as it had a disastrous effect on the nation and its people, and the clip evokes the enormous social, economic and cultural upheaval. Revolutionary zeal was misused, factional battles and personal attacks against innocent people were common, millions were imprisoned, forced into manual labour and re-education programs, and tens of thousands were executed. In 1968 Mao officially declared the Revolution over and sent the army in to control the students, but most historians feel the ‘Revolution’ continued until Mao’s death in 1976.

The clip refers to the Gang of Four, the name given to Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, four hardliners who played a dominant political role during the later years of the Cultural Revolution. They attempted to seize power after Mao’s death but were arrested and blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Sentences for their ‘anti-party’ deeds ranged from death (later commuted to life in prison) to 20 years jail. Jiang Qing committed suicide in prison.

A Breath is an example of a film made in the performative documentary style. Such documentaries emphasise the subjective and emotive qualities of memory and experience in shaping our understanding of the world. The film views the turbulent history of modern China through the experiences of Huang and Yu. It addresses viewers on both an emotional and an expressive level using a highly stylised and theatrical integration of archival footage, music, re-enactments, images of the artists’ work, and Huang’s subjective narration.

The documentary makes use of actual and imagined representations. In the clip the movement in the archival footage correlates with the movement in the re-enacted scenes and this works to heighten the drama and bring the outside historical world of the footage into the imagined space of Huang and Yu. The percussive score reflects a state of alarm and turmoil, but also reinforces a sense of the action being carried over from the historical footage into the re-enactments.