Opening the Door of Memory with a Camera Lens: The Folk Memory Project and Documentary Production

The following text is an introduction to the Folk Memory Project (Minjian jiyi jihua), a multidisciplinary memory initiative aiming at producing textual and visual records of the historical experience of rural populations, especially during the Great Leap famine. Written by its founder, independent documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang, the article presents the project and the works of individual filmmakers, four years after its launch. It provides an account of the work method and goals of a specific unofficial memory project, which is further discussed in the article “Performance, Documentary, and the Transmission of Memories of the Great Leap Famine in the Folk Memory Project” p. 17.