Cine-East Film Screening: Investigating My Father

Film Screening: The U.S. Premiere of “Investigating My Father” (Wu Wenguang, 2016, 80 min, China, in Chinese w/English subtitles, Color, Digital) / “Investigating My Father” is a film made by a son to investigate his father’s history. It documents the process of the son’s investigation over twenty years into his father’s history before 1949, which he had kept from his son. The father was a landowner’s son and an ex-Kuomintang Air Force pilot, who remained in mainland China after 1949. In order to survive, he tried to transform himself from a man of the “old society” to a man of the “new society.” “Investigating My Father” is however not a film just about a father. Since the filmmaker is the subject’s son, the film also inevitably tells a story that unfolds between a father and a son./ About the filmmaker: Wu Wenguang was born in South-Western China’s Yunnan province in 1956. Wu was sent to the countryside, where he worked as a farmer for four years. He studied Chinese Literature in Yunnan University, then worked as a junior high school teacher for three years, and he worked in television as a journalist for four years. Wu moved to Beijing in 1988 to be an independent documentary filmmaker, freelance writer, and creator and producer of dance/theater. In 2005, Wu co-founded the independent art space Caochangdi Workstation with Wen Hui in Beijing. Since then, Wu has founded two main projects: the Village Documentary Project (in 2005) and the Folk Memory Project (in 2010).