Man in Black

The empty, semi-dark gallery and stage of the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris resonate with the voice and naked body of the eighty-six-year-old Chinese composer Wang Xilin. Xilin, a major contemporary Chinese classical musician, recounts his painful trajectory from Communist Party member (he joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1949) to dissident determined to defend freedom of expression. His naked body bears the marks of the beatings he was subjected to during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Signs that Caroline Champetier’s photography, reminiscent of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, imbues with cinematic intensity. From his words we understand how his wounds have found symbolic representation in symphonies he composed, which form the film’s soundtrack. In an extraordinary shot, Xilin performs the music on the piano at center stage. With Man in Black Wang Bing, prominent figure in the international panorama of documentary cinema and artist whose Youth (Spring) was in competition at the last Cannes Film Festival, offers a lucid portrait of a man who made art his form of protest and resistance.