Did
you have a bad commute today? Maybe you woke up late, traffic was bad, or your
train was stuck in a tunnel. Zeng Jinyan’s morning was worse. Every day since
her husband, Sakharov Freedom of Thought Prize-winner Hu Jia was placed under
house arrest, she has had to run a gauntlet of hostile State Security Police
just to go to work. Sometimes they block her from leaving, while others days
they just cruelly mock her, but Hu captured it all from his flat window and together
they assembled the damning footage into the short documentary Prisoners in Freedom City, which screens
during the Ai Weiwei-curated Turn It On: China on Film series now underway at the Guggenheim.
Arguably,
house-arrest represented a slight improvement for Hu, after he was held incommunicado
for forty-one days, much like Teacher Ai. Technically, Zeng was free to come
and go, but she was not free of harassment. The veritable siege was not
particularly fun for Hu’s neighbors in the “BOBO Freedom City” complex either,
because the SSP officers left their take-out and rubbish strewn throughout the
grounds. Yet, they could hardly blame Hu for that, because he would have been
happy to go elsewhere.
Prisoners is not just a film—it
is evidence. While filming Beijing’s tax dollars at work, Hu regularly
identifies officers by name who were previously present during his illegal incarceration
and records all the license plate numbers of SSP vehicles. Yet, it is also an
inspiring example of film as genuine “resistance.”
Technically,
the thirty-six-minute Prisoners predates
Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film by
roughly four years, but the Iranian auteur’s document of his house-arrest is
more of a personal statement and feature length. Of course, it is not like
either filmmaker set out to claim the house-arrest documentary as their
signature concept. They just responded to the condition imposed on them by
unjust regimes.
Perhaps
nothing better illustrates the aggressive pettiness of the thuggish SSP intimidation
squad than the theft of the “free Chen Guangcheng” magnets from their front
door. Chen, often dubbed the “blind, barefoot lawyer” is a friend of the
couple, who was then serving a prison term for specious charges.
Given
the hand-held, guerrilla nature of its production, Prisoners is often a shaky, no-frills viewing experience, but it is
over-flowing with hard truths. Watching the defiant dignity of Zeng and Hu is truly
humbling and infuriating (especially considering their situation has gotten
worse, not better, since they captured his house-arrest experiences on film).
Very highly recommended, Prisoners in
Freedom City screens again this Saturday (11/25), as part of Turn It On, at the Guggenheim.
