Film Archive

Jahr

Camera Lucida 2023
Filmstill Man in Black
Man in Black
Bing Wang
A theatre in Paris becomes the stage of an impressive encounter: The aged composer Wang Xilin is naked – and exposes the cruelties of the communist regime in China.
Filmstill Man in Black

Man in Black

Man in Black
Bing Wang
Camera Lucida 2023
Documentary Film
France,
USA,
UK
2023
60 minutes
Chinese
Subtitles: 
English

Wang Xilin does not enter the stage in a suite, as the title might suggest, but completely naked. He stretches and bends, appears to familiarise himself with his surroundings, does some vocal exercises, sits down at the piano. Wang Xilin is one of China’s most important composers of contemporary music, having written his first symphonies in his youth. Wang Bing gives the 86-year-old more than a little space. For his portrait, he presents him with the entire Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

This is where Wang Xilin reviews his life of torture and oppression, recapitulates the tribulations in communist China, reports knocked-out teeth and nightmares, suicides among intellectuals. His testimony is frequently underlaid, sometimes even drowned out by grandiose musical arrangements. When an orchestra thunders from offscreen, Wang Xilin’s body rears up – “Man in Black” is also an exorcistic oral history. The composer turns himself into his own instrument, into the medium of a violent epoch, sharing his emotions literally unveiled.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Bing Wang
Cinematographer
Caroline Champetier
Editor
Claire Atherton
Producer
Lihong Kong, Sonia Buchman, Nicolas R. De La Mothe
Co-Producer
Karin Chien, Liza Essers
Sound
Erwan Kerzanet, Emmanuel Soland
Score
Xilin Wang
World Sales
Lya Li
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Ying Wang, Xilin Wang, Xiaoxia Zhou