The Ditch (2010)
3.6 of 5 from 45 ratings
1h 52min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
The background to the setting is Mao Zedong's disastrous Hundred Flowers Campaign from 1956-57, during which Chinese intellectuals were advised to contribute their opinions on national policy issues. During the campaign, thousands of citizens were branded "right-wing deviants" for their criticism of the Communist Party, were sentenced to forced labour. One such "deviant" in the film is a self-proclaimed party member since 1938. One professor says he has been imprisoned over semantics: saying he was detained for saying the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” was “too narrow” and suggesting it be replaced by “dictatorship of the people”. The basically plotless storyline is set over a three-month period in 1960, at the Mingshui annex of Jiabiangou Re-education Camp. Most of the film was shot in a simple underground dugout - referred to as "Dormitory 8" - lined with bedding where the men live; in the daytime, they work on a giant desert project that covers 10,000 acres. They live on gruel, work until exhausted; many then die from the combined effects of extreme physical exhaustion, hostile climate and the great famine sweeping China. A new group of men arrives, are assigned to sleep in a miserable underground dugout and begin the long, slow process of dying. The work is intense, but dealing with hunger is the prisoners' and the film's main focus: shortage means that even rats are eaten; consumption of human corpses is not unheard of. Desperation drives one man to eat another's vomit. To make room for fresh arrivals, bodies of those who die are dragged out daily, wrapped in their bedclothes, and buried in shallow graves. - Actors:
- Zhengwu Cheng, Niansong Jing, Xiangnian Li, Renjun Lian, Ye Lu, Cenzi Xu, Haoyu Yang
- Directors:
- Bing Wang
- Writers:
- Bing Wang, Xianhui Yang
- Aka:
- Goodbye Jiabiangou
- Genres:
- Drama
- Countries:
- Hong Kong
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