Wang Bing Interview – Director of the ‘Youth’ Trilogy

Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy, which documents the lives of migrant textile laborers in China, is a work of epic proportions. The films (Spring, Hard Times, and Homecoming) were shot over five years and are boiled down to seven hours from over 10,000 hours of footage. Not one but six cinematographers are credited, each of whom documents moments spread across a factory complex in Zhilli, China.

Wang’s style is unique but not disruptive. His work ethic, visuals, and how he moves between characters are nothing short of masterful. At the same time, he maintains a certain respect for the stories he portrays, never letting his visible love for the craft get in the way of chronicling a forgotten but crucial side of his home country China.

For Projektor, I spoke to Wang about his unique filming process, migrant work, and representation in contemporary China.

Projektor: When I was watching the movies sometimes I wondered, who was working harder, you or the textile workers?

Wang Bing: Of course, I’d say they work much harder than me. If I’m too tired, I can stop and leave before most of them, if not all of them. They need to be there for at least 12 hours a day without any breaks.

But there are many ways to make a documentary, so to cover this particular subject—textile workers who are also migrant workers—it definitely has to be labor intensive. That’s the only way a filmmaker can do these stories justice.

With this trilogy, I wanted to go back to the original purpose of cameras: as a concept to record, to chronicle, to document something. And that’s why I was vehement about this idea of being very close to my subject. This closeness is not only about physical closeness, but [emotional] connection, too, and how we connect on a human level. I wanted to capture everything, including the mundane and day-to-day moments. The only way I can do that is by following them for long periods of time. That way, I can really observe, document, record, and chronicle
what they’re going through.

At the same time, I’m also very cognizant of the fact that the mere presence of the camera, especially in such close proximity, can have a negative impact on the subject. There is almost like a visual violence that has been exercised on them. So on the one hand, I wanted to tell a certain narrative, while on the other hand, I wanted to protect my subjects against this visual violence. Throughout the entire production, I was in a constant state of anxiety and uncertainty trying to reach that balance.

“I’m also very cognizant of the fact that the mere presence of the camera, especially in such close proximity, can have a negative impact on the subject.”

Focusing on a few subjects and digging deeper into their lives would be the traditional approach for most documentarists. Why did you choose to cover as many characters as you did? Was this because of your “visual violence” concerns?

The balance I was trying to strike was between being close enough to capture everything the workers did and giving them enough room to express themselves naturally. It was a constant struggle.

There are so many migrant workers in this particular city, and each one has his or her own story to tell. The challenge was to capture this multitude without getting too deep because that just wouldn’t be manageable if you’re making a documentary with time constraints.

That was another balance I had to strike. How do I paint this group picture in such a way that captures the essence of the entire city and the people in it, despite all the narrative structures and constraints I have to conform to as a filmmaker?

I also think about it in terms of film history. There is this conventional way of making documentaries, but I wanted to see how I could find my own style, filmic language, and approach to it. That added another layer of anxiety to the project: how do I create something new and innovative, not a generic documentary that has been done so many times before?

How would you summarize the narrative you were trying to capture?

The narrative is simple. I wanted to capture the reality of China since it implemented major economic reforms in the 1980s. More specifically, within the Yangtze River Delta.

A lot of people came to urban centers from rural areas upstream of the Yangtze River to look for work. Most of them were farmers who eventually became migrant workers. With this documentary, I didn’t just want to empathize with them; I wanted to place myself in the same position. I wanted to be on equal footing with them so I could accurately capture their reality. Instead of trying to look down on up to them, I just wanted to see them as my peers.

I grew up around family members who also moved from the countryside to work in textile factories in Morocco. How much would you say is this film about China and how much is it about the textile industry?

I do think that migrant workers—the way they work and get paid—are similar across the world. It’s not always textile, but it is usually manual labor; highly intensive and lengthy work that is paid by the quantity of output. That experience is the same across all sectors and industries for migrant workers.

Morocco was in the past divided into “useful Morocco” and “unuseful Morocco.” Would you say that your film is about “unuseful China”?

What you see in my films, you can see everywhere in China. It’s ubiquitous. It’s omnipresent. And the reason why it is so hard to imagine something like this happening in contemporary China is because these people are marginalized in such a way that erases them from mainstream media. They don’t have spaces to be seen or heard, even though we all know they exist.

“What you see in my films, you can see everywhere in China. It’s ubiquitous.”

The media does not have any interest in portraying them or telling their stories to a wider public, much less to the people outside of China, and I do think that’s why people feel like there is a gap. “Is this really the other side of China?” Well, to me, it’s not the other side. It is just a ubiquitous way of living. It’s just that these people do not have the voice to be covered by the media and to be seen on the big screen.

The films sometimes feel like capsules made for future generations. When people in the future watch Youth, do you think they’ll realize how much has changed? Or will they realize nothing at all has changed?

I don’t see a filmmaker as a fortune teller or someone who can somehow predict the future. What I focus on is very much the “here and now” of China. I don’t know what the future will bring, but what I can do is document what is going on right now.

I read that you only stopped shooting because you ran out of budget. Are you considering going back to the project?

Originally we only had a budget for half a year. We did the best with what we had and stretched that out to five years, until the end of 2019. But now we’ve exhausted all our resources. And like any project, it will be harder to restart this than it is to start from scratch.