“World Documentaries Today” Film Screening

An eighty-six-year-old man stands naked in the empty gallery of Paris’s historic Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord—a setting that presents him as both an actor in and witness to his own memories. This is the film’s titular “man in black,” a figure scarred by years of political persecution. Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important modern classical composers, endured fourteen years of imprisonment, abuse, and torture during the Cultural Revolution under the Chinese Communist Party. This hour-long art piece serves as both a poignant tribute to his creative legacy and a testimony to the dehumanizing trauma inflicted upon him and countless others.

World Documentaries Today celebrates new and cutting-edge nonfiction films that bring urgent global issues—from political disinformation to cultural repatriation—into sharp focus through innovative storytelling. 

Series curator: Lora Maslenitsyna, Ph.D. student in Film and Media Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures