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Timber Gang

Yu Guangyi

Release year: 2006

Run time: 90 min

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

The film documents the life of a group of loggers in Helongjiang Province, China. It records life amidst the ice and snow, and serves as a document of a disappearing mode of production. Patches of forest have disappeared. Logs from the forests are made into coffins. In the spring, one of the coffins in which an old logger was buried returns to the mountains. A centuries-old tree is also buried with the old logger in the field where it grew.

 

Director biography

Yu Guangyi was born in 1961 in China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province. After graduating from the Chinese Academy of Art in Hangzhou, he worked for many years as a woodblock print artist. He began making independent documentary films in 2004. His first film was Mu Bang (Timber Gang).