Love Song for Living, Love Song for the Dead

Zhang Ping

Release year: 2019

Run time: 69 mins

Film type: Documentary

A report written by my father 28 years ago, the only sound he made in his silent life. In this old book store, there sits a file about a man who was characterized as a Rightist.

ZHANG Ping, writer and filmmaker, born in Hunan in 1978. She worked in Tibet from 2003 to 2012 as a writer and contemporary artist, and has lived in Beijing since 2014, working in film, theatre and writing. She has completed four documentaries independently, including No Land (2015), Healing Balm (2017), Love Song for Living, Love Song for the Dead(2019) and Hei Qi (2021), which have entered film festivals and archival collections at home and abroad. She has published a collection of essays Ten Years of Tibetan Drift (CITIC Press, 2014), and an experimental novel Finding a Grassy Slope with the Wind and Sunshine to Sleep (Shanghai Sanlian Publishing House, 2017).

This is my third film. I don’t talk about my father any more: enough is enough. A report written in 1978 popped up accidently during house cleaning. It was signed by my father at the end. I found a file in an old bookstore, written by Shen Dexing. He was labelled a Rightist, and abandoned in a village for his rest life. From then on, he kept petitioning. This has commonalities with my father’s story; the two different stories support each other, which is the basis of my story.

Film Database

Love Song for Living, Love Song for the Dead