Fated Calamity

Overview

Unreleased Hu Jie film. Shot in Shandong and completed in July 2020. This film takes as its point of departure the 94-year-old Mr. Liu Yuxuan's being labeled as a Rightist in 1957 at the Qingdao Federation of Literary and Art Circles in Shandong. Mr. Liu graduated from the English Department of National Central University during the Republican era (1948), and he has kept a diary for 70 years. We follow his diaries and his correspondence with his wife as its main thread, presenting his experiences from 1958 to 1962, when he was first sent to the Qingshuibo Reform-through-Labor Farm and later to the Wangcun Mining District for re-education through labor. The film shows the process by which a free intellectual is “remade” into a socialist “new person,” in both spirit and body. It conveys that this is an inescapable karmic burden / fated ordeal in the destiny of this nation.