Tracing Forbidden Memories

Tracing Forbidden Memories is a personal journey through the history of banned books in China. Traveling from city to city and digging into old bookstores in back alleys, painter Xiaoze Xie searches the country to find original versions of books that were forbidden during various periods of Chinese history. A risky voyage to undertake in the present political climate, Xie finds scholars, writers, readers, and editors willing to speak about their experiences and perspectives on literary censorship. These are loaded conversations with moments of deliberate silence speaking as suggestively as their voices. The film is a testimony to Xie's artistic and intellectual Odyssey — a native son returned home to China from abroad to explore the social, moral, and political history of censorship, where things stand now, and the unsettling clues as to where they might be going.