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Rooms with Mao's Images

Cong Feng

Release year: 2015

Run time: 138 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

I shot this film in Gulang, Gansu Province, where I also made two other films, When I returned to this footage, I realised I’d been to the houses of many farmers who still had Mao Zedong pictures hanging on their walls. Though the Maoist era ended decades ago, Mao himself is retained in folk belief, a quasi-deity in this formally atheistic country. This film is about these people.

 

Director biography

Poet and filmmaker Cong Feng was born in Chengde in 1972. He has previously worked at the National Satellite Meteorology Centre of China and as cultural editor for The International Herald Leader. He has also published two volumes of poetry and taught English to secondary school students. Since 2008, four of his documentaries have screened at the Beijing Independent Film Festival, including the film shot at the school where he taught, The Unfinished History of Life (2010).