HFA Screens Film on Quake in China

The director of “1428”—a documentary about the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, that killed about 70,000 people—spoke yesterday night about his experience filming the trauma of those who suffered.

The winner of the Orizzonti Prize for Best Documentary at the Venice International Film Festival in 2009, “1428”—named after the time of day when the earthquake struck—was screened at the Harvard Film Archive as part of a documentary series called “Emergent Visions.” The series was sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

By observing the survivors’ daily experience of mourning and reconstructing, director Du Haibin captured the relative lack of aid provided to the residents portrayed in the film, the moral dilemmas faced by victims as they struggled to survive, and the rise of “disaster tourism” in some of the worst hit areas.

Many of the scenes in the documentary depart from the state version of the reconstruction progress and the lives of the survivors, including a scene in which one of the survivors watched the China Central Television Spring Festival Gala—where they showed a video of survivors happily celebrating Chinese New Year with indoor fireworks in a brightly lit new home—from a dim and shabby tent.

“When people watch this, they feel that they’re able to get an alternative version of reality,” said Jie Li, a College Fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. “It provides visual evidence for those who take television with a grain of salt.”

Sebastian Zapisek, an audience member, said that the account of the documentary differed from what he had seen in Western media, which he said was likely due to media restrictions in China.

According to Li, the film is part of the New Documentary Movement, which emerged in China in the late 1990s. Unlike American documentaries, Li said the movies of this movement are not trying to make political statements and are more open to interpretation by the audience.

The Emergent Visions is a series that brings in the productions of this New Documentary Movement, Li said.