THE HALL
Experimental documentary, Colour HD, 4mins, 2024.
Co-directed by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Chen Zhan, and Mengfan Wang
Cinematography by Chen Zhan, Mengfan Wang
Editing by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Chen Zhan
The People’s Commune Assembly Hall was once an iconic site of political gatherings and propaganda during China’s collectivisation period (1950s–1980s). Positioned along the village’s central axis, it bore witness to the prime years of the now-elderly women we call “grannies,” yet remained almost invisible to the children who grew up after its decline.
In the summer of 2023, we returned to this long-abandoned hall with villagers from Shigushan, on the outskirts of Wuhan, where we have been working since 2015. Through immersive spatial projection, we screened back to the community images of their everyday lives and our co-created improvisations as part of the RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING project. Almost the entire village gathered, and together we transformed the commune hall—once a political site—into a theatre of the everyday.
This experimental short film amplifies the hall’s narrative capacity by layering its physical space, the projected space, and the reconstructed filmic space. Temporalities converge: the hall as a symbol of the socialist ideal; its decades of abandonment after the commune system dissolved; its recent renovation marking a tentative new life; and its subversion through the collective happening.
Our filmic reconstruction hovers one step beyond reality yet not fully into fiction—a delicate state that lets the hall’s inarticulate complexities resonate without imposing a singular or fixed narrative. Here, the space speaks for itself.
Ripple Ripple Rippling