The Memory Project
Caochangdi Workstation
草场地工作站
Production date
2010 {ongoing}
Object Detail
Media
documentary film
Notes
The Folk Memory Project is an innovative, multi-year, ongoing project combining oral history, documentary film, dance, performance, and activism. In 2010, Wu Wenguang, one of the founding figures of Chinese independent documentary, and the founder of the 'Caochangdi Workstation' co-operative arts organisation with choreographer Wen Hui, initiated the 'Folk Memory Project' to encourage the preservation of personal stories of China’s history; since then, hundreds of film makers have returned to their towns and villages as part of the project to interview elders who lived through the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and other traumatic events from the country’s recent past. Judith Neilson has provided support to Wu Wenguang to continue the project, recognising its significance as a social history archive of a changing China. The films held in the White Rabbit Collection cover the earlier 'Villager Documentary' project, started in 2005 and ongoing, in which villagers become the creators of the films, and the 'Folk Memory Project' in which artists and film-makers since 2010 have recorded hundreds of important stories encompassing oral history and ethnography.
Accession number
2013.267