Images Festival | Pre-Opening: Man in Black

Wang Xilin, 86, is one of China’s most important modern classical composers. The film exhibits the body and soul of a man scarred by a life of suffering, a "man in black" who is still capable of deep and sincere compassion. With excerpts from his symphonies, he revisits some of the horrifying events that still live on in his memory, a testimony to an era that saw the dehumanization of the Chinese nation.

After all, when all is said and done, what else is left but the flesh?

—Wang Bing

Renowned filmmaker and artist Wang Bing has created an incomparable and immersive body of work bearing witness and giving voice to marginalized and persecuted communities in China. With Man in Black, he intensifies his portraiture by focusing on one man, the 86-year-old Wang Xilin. One of China’s most important modern classical composers, Xilin now lives in Germany. In Paris’ Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, with its majestic proscenium and decaying walls, Wang Xilin’s scar-filled, naked body skulks in and out of the light as he narrates his life, discusses his music, and details the physical and psychological horrors of his political persecution at the hands of the Communist Party. Baring all, body and soul, the composer is filmed by Wang Bing and DP Caroline Champetier with compassion and rapt attention to each flinch, recoil, and effort to carry forth the weight of history. A gripping audio-visual experience and work of living testimony, Man in Black makes brilliant use of Wang Xilin’s symphonies as they powerfully swell and recede. Their abstraction is born of pain and suffering, and yet watching his broken body perform is the ultimate proof of resilience, all while reminding us of how artists’ voices continue to be silenced today.

Tickets available at tiff.net. Please note that Images Festival Passes do not work for the pre-opener.

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.

Man in Black

Pre-Opening: Man in Black

(ARTIST)