J.B. Spins  Jazz, film, and improvised culture.  Thursday, May
23, 2013  Chinese Realities: Though I Am Gone  Wang Qingyao’s
words have an eerie resonance.  He is determined that his wife’s
murder during the Cultural Revolution will not be denied or
forgotten by the guilty and embarrassed parties.  Despite his
personal pain, he documented his family’s tragedy with
remarkable thoroughness.  It is an acutely personal story, but
one with national significance for China that unfolds in Hu
Jie’s Though I Am Gone (trailer here), which screens during
MoMA’s Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions film series.
During the Cultural Revolution, Beijing schools were the
incubators of the institutionalized insanity.  Unfortunately,
Wang’s wife was a middle school vice principal in the wrong
city, at the wrong time.  When the Red Guards began terrorizing
the country, their children followed their lead.  Even though
Bian considered herself a loyal Communist since before 1946, she
was forced to endure physical beatings and pu