Guochang

Summary

Fruit Farm

"Fruit Farm"("Guochang") is where Nana Xu, now studying in Hamburg, comes from – a place that initially only bore a number, not a name. Set behind high mountains in south-west China, in her memories the farm evokes dry air, burial mounds, ghost stories, policemen and prisoners. The historical contours of the place are outlined by sound recordings, Nana Xu returns to the real place by bus to find people of advanced age who, perhaps for the first time in their lives, reflect on this very place for someone from the outside. "Fruit Farm" ("Guochang") is the oral history of a non-place: it was set up as a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution – built by prisoners, including the director’s own father. Later, all traces were erased. First the place was a village-cum-prison, then a drug treatment centre. A temporary arrangement as a permanent state for many. For Nana: family history, ghost story, nightmare, dream. Little by little, this brave film against forgetting and concealment also unveils the ghostly history of violence in the People’s Republic of China. An open journey home. Conversations with the last witnesses in their homeland, shaped by a repressed past.

Source: 75. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)