How to Start Your Own Utopia

Hundreds of villages die each day in China, as cities entice and envelop the rural population. Bishan, a forgotten village in Anhui province, is on the verge of meeting this fate. When Ou Ning, a prominent artist, chooses Bishan village as the site for his new project – equal parts art, anarchy, and agrarian utopia – the village gets a new chance at survival, but also finds itself at the center of a century-long debate about the role of the countryside in China’s modernization.

How to Start Your Own Utopia is a 24-minute documentary following Ou Ning and the Bishan Commune. This short film premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in October of 2017 as part of the exhibition, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World. The film was subsequently exhibited at the Guggenheim Bilbao and SFMOMA in 2018.

Credits

Directed by Leah Thompson
Produced by Leah Thompson and Sun Yunfan
Edited by Alex Bushe and Leah Thompson
Graphics: Noopur Agarwal
Music: Wu Tiao Ren, Lin Sheng Xiang, and Abigail Washburn