The Great Chinese film maker and human rights activist Hu Jie has produced another film that bravely chronicles another horrific aspect of China's Maoist past, the past that today's blow-dried, business-suit attired leaders seek to suppress. Here, as with "Lin Zhao", the translation is by the also brave Ye Weiyou.
国营东风农场
State Dongfeng Farm
拍摄时间：2009年
Time for making 2009
拍摄地点：云南省 江苏省 上海市
Place of making: Yunnan, Jiangsu provinces, the city of Shanghai
拍摄设备：DVCAM摄像机
Equipment of making: pickup camera
电影片长: 104分钟
Length of the film: 104 minutes
[影片梗概]
[ The Gist of the Film/Documentary]
1957年的“反右派斗争”在云南省“取得了伟大胜利”，云南全省共揭露出右派一万零七百三十一人。他们大多数都是教师、机关干部、大学生和军官。这些人本来是响应了党的号召：帮助党整风，向党提意见。他们哪里知道这是毛泽东主席治国的圈套，结果这些帮助党的人都被套上了一顶奇怪的帽子，这个帽子的名字叫”右派” 。怎样处理这些介于革命群众与阶级敌人之间的这些右派分子呢？于是全国各地不约而同地划出荒蛮之地,腾出关押刑事犯人的农场来接受他们。
The “Anti-Rightists Struggle” in 1957“won a great victory” in Yunnan province.10,731 people were disclosed to be rightists in the whole province of Yunnan. Most of them were teachers, government functionaries, college students and officers. Those people originally responded to the Party’s call: help the Party with rectification by making criticism, comments and suggestions to the Party. How could have they known that it was Chairman Mao Zedong’s snare to run the country. As a result, all those who helped the Party were put on a strange cap with the name “rightist”. How to deal with the rightists situated between revolutionary masses and class enemies? Thus, to admit them, in the whole country, as if by prior agreement, bleak and desolate places were delimited, farms for criminals to be locked up were vacated.
云南省的弥勒县就腾空了一个关押犯人农场，并收编了陆续押送来了一千个右派，另外，还来了八百名管理人员，这些管理人员是没有戴右派帽子的介于革命群众与右派之间的中右人员。从此，这个荒蛮的地方就有了一个响亮的名字叫国营东方农场。
In Mile county of Yunnan province a criminal-locked farm was vacated and it incorporated one thousand rightists escorted in succession. Besides, there came eight hundred supervisors who were situated between revolutionary masses and rightists but without the rightist label, they were considered middle-rightists by the above. Since then, the bleak and desolate place got a sonorous name: State Dongfeng Farm.
本片通过对东风农场右派群体以及农场管理者的采访，呈现了这些右派在阶级斗争的政治环境和艰苦的自然环境中等级森严的改造的生活，他们经历了大跃进时期的浮夸风、恶性的大炼钢铁运动，经历了人为地铲除粮食种红薯的“自然灾害” ，经历了1959至1962年的大饥饿。在肉体与心灵都得到了改造后，又经历了无产阶级文化大革命。
Through interviewing a group of rightists in Dongfeng Farm and those who managed the farm, in the film is presented rightists’ life, rigidly stratified, ideology-remolded on the tough political conditions of class struggle and in the hard natural environment. They experienced the proneness to boasting and exaggerating during the Cultural Revolution, the galloping nation-wide steel-making campaign, they also underwent the “natural disaster” as a result of purposely uprooting all grain for growing sweet potatoes. Again, they experienced the great famine from 1959-1962. After being remade in both physique and heart, they finally went through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
1968年东风农场作为云南省第一“五七”干校，又接收了上千名在文革中被认为有问题的干部 ——“五七战士”在这里进行劳动改造，在1970年的上山下乡运动中又迎来了1500个从上海、重庆、昆明的知识青年。
1978年年底，这些右派们在经过二十一年的改造后，终于被改正了。最后他们陆陆续续地离开了农场，然而还有近200人永远地把尸骨丢弃在了这片土地上。
In 1968, as the first May 7 cadre school in Yunnan province,
Dongfeng Farm admitted thousand of cadres who were considered to
have some problems in the Cultural Revolution. That group of people’s
status in the farm was “May 7 fighters”. There, the fighters underwent
reform through labor. During the campaign for educated urban youth to
‘go and work in the countryside and mountain areas’ (Mao’s call) that
farm, again, welcomed 1,500 school graduates/leavers from Shanghai,
Chongqing and Kunming.
At the end of 1978, after a twenty-one year’s though-remolding/brain
washing, those rightists’ wronged cases were finally corrected. At last,
they left the farm one after another. However, there were still nearly two
hundred people who forever deserted their skeleton in that piece of land.
