Sunrise over Tiananmen Square

Shui-Bo Wang offers a personal perspective on the Cultural Revolution in China through the form of an artist’s visual autobiography in this part documentary, part animated narrative. A Red Guard in his youth, Wang grew up in the years of the Cultural Revolution and beyond, a life’s journey that saw him serving in the military as a propaganda artist for the cause of a society based on equality and cooperation until he became an artist and then teacher in the 1980s and witnessed the protests which changed the symbolism of Tiananmen Square for years to come. A powerful statement on an individual, and a generation, grappling with the idealism and intolerance of a revolutionary society this artist’s testimony traces this period in China’s history through a combination of original artwork, family and archival photographs as well as animation and documentary footage.