Maysles Center Buzz: One Child

They are not “Reborn” in a physical or religious sense. This is strictly a bureaucratic designation for the “substitute” children allowed to parents who lost their first and legally only child in the horrific Sichuan Earthquake. They are already a sizeable and growing demographic. U.S. based Beichuan native Zijian Mu follows the lasting repercussions of the Sichuan quake for one set of parents fortunate enough to have a Reborn child and two grieving mothers who for various reasons remain childless in One Child (trailer here), listed as one of the year's best documentary short subjects, which screens this Monday as part of the Oscar Buzz series at the Maysles Documentary Center.

Out of the estimated ninety thousand Sichuan fatalities, about five thousand are thought to be school children, nearly all of whom were “single children,” as per government policy. Of course, exact figures are unavailable due to state censorship. Many surviving parents have tried to plug the holes in their hearts with an allowable “Reborn” child. Jiang Hongyou and Fu Guangjun were duly blessed with a little girl whom they understandably dote upon. She is now old enough to recognize photos of her big brother, but they are waiting until she is a few years older to explain his heartbreaking fate. It is the kind of tricky parenting question luckier parents of New Beichuan will grapple with more and more.

Yang Jianfen would dearly wish to be a similar position. Still mourning her teen-aged daughter, but no longer able to conceive, she yearns to adopt. However, her increasingly cold and passive aggressive husband Fang Yanggui will not cooperate with her efforts, particularly when it comes to the requisite fees. Old Fang might be cold and insensitive to his wife’s needs, but his concerns about money are not completely unwarranted. After all, the Communist government only loaned the 8,000 Yuan down-payments for displaced residents’ replacement flats in shiny New Beichuan. So much for: “to each according to their needs.”

Despite Fang’s lack of support, Yang continues to pursue avenues of adoption, but that is no longer an option for the older Gu Jiazhen. She lost her grown daughter and husband during the earthquake. Although her grandchild survived, she no longer has access to him after her son-in-law’s remarriage. Instead, the pious convert takes what solace she can from Buddhism. She certainly does not receive any comfort from the state.

Sadly, Mu’s family was also touched by the Sichuan tragedy, so he well understands the raw emotions at play. His treatment of surviving parents is unflaggingly sensitive, but still acutely penetrating. Mu does not ignore the wider political context, but Reborn is still probably best seen in conjunction with more macro-focused films like Alpert & O’Neill’s previously shortlisted China’s Unnatural Disaster and Ai Weiwei’s muckraking Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry, both of which are findable online (except maybe in China). Nor does he ghoulishly dwell on the horrors of the actual catastrophe, even though he incorporates some harrowing footage of the chaotic aftermath.

Indeed, the forty minute documentary packs a powerful punch because of its concentration on the traumatized parents. Highly recommended for general audiences and Academy members, One Child screens this coming Monday (1/5) at the Maysles Center, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker.

Take Two ’14: The Reborn of Beichuan (short)

They are not “Reborn” in a physical or spiritual sense. This is strictly a bureaucratic designation for the “substitute” children born to parents who lost their first and legally only child in the horrific Sichuan Earthquake. They are already a sizeable and growing demographic. U.S. based Beichuan native Zijian Mu follows the lasting repercussions of the Sichuan quake for one set of parents fortunate enough to have a Reborn child and one anguished mother who does not in The Reborn of Beichuan, which screens in New York during the 2014 Take Two Film Festival.

The exact death toll remains unknown because of government censorship, but the province’s children died in disproportionally high numbers due to shoddy graft-laden school construction (as muckraking artist Ai Weiwei and others have documented). Many surviving parents have tried to plug the holes in their hearts with an allowable “Reborn” child. Jiang Hongyou and Fu Guangjun were duly blessed with a little girl whom they understandably dote upon. She is now old enough to recognize photos of her big brother, but they are waiting until she is a few years older to explain his heartbreaking fate. It is the kind of tricky parenting question luckier parents of New Beichuan will grapple with more and more. In contrast, they have no problem grilling nonplussed kindergarten officials with safety questions. Well, they had better get used to it.

Yang Jianfen would dearly wish to be a similar position. Still grieving her teen-aged daughter, but no longer able to conceive, she yearns to adopt. However, her increasingly cold and passive aggressive husband Fang Yanggui will not cooperate with her efforts, particularly when it comes to the requisite fees. (Old Fang probably did not expect to get called out for being a jerkweed in outlets around the world, but that is what he gets). Still, his concerns about money are not completely unwarranted. After all, the Communist government only loaned the 8,000 Yuan down-payments for displaced residents’ replacement flats in shiny New Beichuan. So much for: “to each according to their needs.”

Sadly, Mu’s family was also touched by the Sichuan tragedy, so he well understands the raw emotions at play. His treatment of surviving parents is unflaggingly sensitive, but still acutely penetrating. Culled from a larger documentary project (with the help of co-editor David Barreda), Reborn serves as a teaser and a bite sized introduction to the issues it addresses and has been released to the world for web and festival viewing (it can be seen here via the Asia Society).

Mu leaves aside the wider political context (at least for now), so Reborn is probably best seen in conjunction with films like Ai Weiwei’s Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry, both of which are also findable online. Nevertheless, the twenty-two minute documentary packs a powerful punch. Highly recommended, The Reborn of Beichuan screens conventionally this Wednesday (4/9) at the Take Two Film Festival, with an opportunity for Q&A with Mu afterward.

Sundance ’13: Fallen City

When disaster strikes, government is there to step in and help, right?  In today’s China, not necessarily.  When the 2008 earthquake hit Sichuan, the town of Beichuan was simply leveled to the ground.  Documentary producer turned director Zhao Qi records the ironies and indignities of the city’s rebuilding process in Fallen City (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Once a community of 20,000 strong, the survivors of Beichuan now live in crude temporary housing as they await the shiny new city the state media breathlessly promises them.  Each and every one of them grieves for multiple family members.  Especially heartrending are the Pengs, who mourn their eleven year old daughter.  Watching the inconsolable father pore over her drawings salvaged from their flat like holy relics is truly painful.  They are not alone in their agony.  The audience also sees in clear terms how the teenaged Hong’s behavioral issues are directly related to the loss of his father.

To add insult to injury, when the citizens of Beichuan seek traditional solace on the anniversary of the quake, the police physically prevent them from entering the “old city,” thereby undermining their attempts at closure through ritual.  In fact, the disconnect between officialdom, as expressed by Orwellian newscasts, and reality is a theme running throughout Fallen.

In several ways, Fallen lets the government off the hook, scrupulously avoiding discussion of the so-called “Tofu Construction” causing the disproportionate collapse of school buildings, or the Party’s concerted efforts to prevent the release of an accurate death toll.  Yet, the facts on the ground Zhao captures through his lens are impossible to miss.  We see the media hypocrisy, institutionalized economic inequalities, and corrupt criminal justice system up close and personal.

Constantly documenting events since the 2008 disaster, Fallen represents a work of true documentary commitment from Zhao.  Even those who think they have been de-sensitized by images of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy will be staggered by the ghostly sight of old Beichuan.  Nonetheless, it is the pictures and video of the children (negligently) killed during the quake that will really hit audiences in the gut.  Powerful and profoundly troubling, Fallen City is highly recommended when it screens again this Monday (1/21), Wednesday (1/23), Friday (1/25), and next Saturday in Park City, as well as this Thursday (1/24) in Salt Lake as a World Cinema Documentary Competition selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Ai Weiwei not at YBCA: Disturbing the Peace & So Sorry

Arguably, Ai Weiwei is the single most important artist of our time.  One might expect the Chinese government to take pride in his international preeminence, but instead they are threatening him with specious bigamy and pornography indictments.  While best known for his architecture and large scale installations, he is also a filmmaker—and rather a muckraking one at that.  Indeed, it is easy to understand the Communist regime’s relentless campaign against Teacher Ai after viewing his fearless documentary investigations of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.  Defiantly exposing the hypocrisies of the Chinese justice system, Ai Weiwei’s Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry will screen as part of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ enormously timely retrospective, now underway in San Francisco.

Still prohibited from traveling, the artist will not be present for these screenings.  The series includes several of Ai’s films recording his ambitious artistic projects that are surely well worth your time and attention.  However, Disturbing and Sorry are particularly relevant to the legal purgatory he now finds himself in.  Following the 2008 quake, Teacher Ai and his assistants launched a campaign to tabulate an accurate death toll of the students killed by shoddy so-called “tofu” school construction and record each name.  Yet, every time they asked the authorities for fatality statistics, they were branded American or Japanese spies.

While both Sichuan documentaries cover overlapping events, Disturbing concentrates on Teacher Ai’s direct challenges to the government authorities.  As the film opens, Ai has returned to Chengdu to appear as a witness at the trial of Tan Zuoren, an independent researcher also investigating the Sichuan earthquake.  Denied his day in court, Ai and his party are rousted and detained by the police at three in morning.  Teacher Ai is physically assaulted and one of his assistants is ominously whisked away, without any pretense of due process.

Ai subsequently returns with the woman’s husband and Tan’s fearless attorney Pu Zhiqiang to demand answers.  Finally jumping through enough hoops to meet face-to-face with a reasonably high-ranking bureaucrat, Ai makes it plain they will not leave until they receive a satisfactory accounting.  Frankly, the meets gets rather ugly, with Ai dropping f-bombs and openly questioning the integrity of the man across from him.  He had a right to be irritable though, having not eaten for hours on end, as the apparatchiks stalled and dissembled.  Clearly, Ai and his colleagues believe the only hope they have of securing her release depends on them staying in that conference and in the authorities’ faces.  From what viewers see, they do not seem far wrong in their judgment.

So Sorry also covers the Sichuan earthquake and the scandalous aftermath, but the focus is slightly different.  We see more of the investigation itself and hear from some of the devastated parents, whose grief is compounded by China’s One Child policy.  While Ai again confronts agents of the state not so subtly surveilling him, the grim drama in Sorry centers around Ai’s cerebral hemorrhage resulting from the Chengdu attack, coming while he is in the midst of preparing a major exhibition in Germany.

Not surprisingly, Alison Klayman’s forthcoming documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry draws heavily on Ai’s Sichuan films.  However, if you have only seen the excerpts, you haven’t seen the half of it.  Disturbing the Peace is particularly staggering, as Ai “talks truth to power” in a way officialdom is most definitely not accustomed to.  Especially telling is the way he needles them with the Party’s own rhetoric.  It is also chilling to witness, knowing how dearly he will pay for his boldness.

It is hard to think of two braver, more revealing documentaries than Ai’s Sichuan films.  They are literally video dispatches from an Orwellian police state.  Viewed together, the two films conclusively establish tens of thousands of young lives were needless lost and those who ask questions will find themselves in serious jeopardy.  One would hardly expect them to meet with the Party’s approval, but they make it easy to understand why so many everyday Chinese citizens have rallied to support Teacher Wei during his Kafkaesque ordeal. 

Immeasurably important for understanding contemporary China, Disturbing the Peace screens this Sunday (7/15) as part of the YBCA’s Ai Weiwei series.  Recommended nearly as earnestly, So Sorry screens the following Sunday (7/22) as part of a double bill with Ordos 100, Teacher Ai’s record of a yet unfinished architectural project in Mongolia.  More than just topical programming, the YBCA deserves great credit for keeping Ai Weiwei and his work, both the political and the artistic, in the public eye at this critical period of time.

Best of Clermont-Ferrand: On the Way to the Sea

Marked by denial, obstruction, and spin, the Chinese government’s response to the 2008 earthquake that rocked Sichuan Province bordered on the outright surreal. As a result, the experimental approach of Canadian-based native Chinese filmmaker Tao Gu’s On the Way to the Sea conveys the physical and spiritual enormity of the disaster quite aptly. The winner of the Special Jury Prize at last year’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, arguably the world’s most prestigious fest for shorts, OTWTTS (trailer here) screens tomorrow night in New York as part of a Clermont-Ferrand Highlights program at the 92Y Tribeca.

Unlike more conventional documentaries, OTWTTS does not rake the mock of the shoddy school construction practices that exacerbated the quake’s death toll or challenge the state’s dubious fatality statistics. Instead, Tao Gu gives a personal-impressionistic sense of the catastrophe and aftermath, through the eyes of his survivor parents. Bearing symptoms of post-traumatic shock, they do not sound merely displaced, but bereft of their sense of belonging in the world.

Through grainy black-and-white images, he captures a devastated Wenchuan that brings to mind London after the Blitz, coastal Japan after the tsunami, or even a post-Atomic Hiroshima. Despite their terrifying memories of the actual quake, it might even be more painful for his parents to watch the authorities raze the not inconsiderable extant remains of their home.

Ironically, Tao Gu’s visuals might arguably be too artistically composed, giving the disaster area a patina of scarred beauty. Clearly a talented eye, his contextual shots of the surrounding countryside could make striking covers for ECM Records.

Deeply felt and arrestingly rendered, OTWTTS is a haunting film. While it certainly eschews the standard techniques of traditional documentaries, viewers should not be scared away by the “experimental” label. Indeed, the nearly twenty minute short stirs audience emotions rather directly. Highly recommended, it is the highlight of the 92Y’s Clermont-Ferrand highlights, screening as part of program 2 tomorrow night (3/2).

Submitted By China: Aftershock

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was not simply a tragedy—it was a scandal. Average citizens were appalled by the government’s ineffectual response and the corrupt state building practices that amplified the quake’s severity. Yet, what most outraged many survivors was the extent to which the Sichuan quake and its controversies paralleled that of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. Clearly, lessons had not been learned. However, the People’s Liberation Army and a liberal dose of revisionist history ride to the rescue in Feng Xiaogang’s disaster drama Aftershock (trailer here), which China has officially submitted for Oscar consideration in the best foreign language film category.

The summer of 1976 began as a happy, peaceful time for Yuan Ni and her family. Evidently, there was no Cultural Revolution to worry about in Tangshan, but the devastating earthquake made up for it in spades. Saved by her husband at the expense of his own life, Yuan Ni is faced with a devastating Sophie’s choice. Both her twins are trapped under a concrete slab, but to save one child, the other will surely be crushed in the process. This being China, she chooses her son Fang Da.

Cruelly, his sister Fang Deng hears her own mother consigning her to death. Yet, through some twist of fate, Fang Deng lives, discovered relatively unscathed within a mountain of corpses. Having understandable abandonment issues, the young girl claims to have no memory of the traumatic events when asked by her adopted parents, a kindly couple in the PLA. Years pass and much melodrama happens, but when the 2008 quake hits Sichuan, both Fang Deng and Fang Da rush to join the Tangshan volunteer relief workers. Right, you should definitely be able to guess where the third act is headed from there.

Aftershock is billed as the first commercial IMAX film produced in China. The first fifteen minutes or so are probably pretty cool, as the Tangshan buildings fall like houses of cards, but the next two hours of family drama must feel like overkill on the giant screen. Though relatively brief, Feng’s Irwin Allen scenes are tense and convincing. Indeed, he is a talented “big picture” director, but he is also something of a propagandist for the PLA. 2007’s Assembly, a really well done war film that follows a grizzled army officer as he fights in the Chinese Civil War and the Korea War (against us), is a case in point.

The young Zifeng Zhang is absolutely heartrending as Fang Deng. As the adult Fang Deng, the striking Jingchu Zhang also tugs on the heartstrings quite effectively. Unfortunately, much of the plot depends on characters deliberately making life harder than necessary, which quickly taxes viewer patience. It is like the film hopes the overblown angst can somehow fill up the giant IMAX screens.

Of course, there was plenty of significant heaviness going on in China during this time, but Aftershock scrupulously ignores the death rattle of the Cultural Revolution, the downfall of the Gang of Four, and the Tiananmen Square massacre. However, scenes of Mao’s funeral are shown with reverence and PLA soldiers are regularly hailed as heroes of the Tangshan rescue effort. Granted, not every film needs to address political issues, but the lack of context in Aftershock is as glaringly obvious as a film set in 1940 Germany that never mentions the National Socialists.

Though not unwatchable, thanks in large measure to its Fang Dengs, Aftershocks is definitely a flawed film. Too long and too white-washed, it is more of a curiosity than a contender in this year’s foreign language Oscar contest.

Online Cinema: Buried

The Chinese Independent Film Festival has something of an identity crisis. For the rest of the world, it is a small but scrappy film festival. However, in China, it bills itself as an “exhibition” because all proper “festivals” fall under the purview of the state film authority. It is a safe bet the government bureaucrats would not have been too keen to program the fest’s 2009 winner for best documentary. Fortunately, dGenerate Films, the leading international distributor of independent Chinese film, has made Wang Libo’s Buried available in its entirety on youtube, (with all twelve parts embedded on their website here).

Much like 1428 (also distributed by dGenerate), the tragic earthquake that shook the Sichuan region on May 12th, 2008 was also the impetus for Buried, but Wang takes a radically different tack, looking back to the even greater devastation of the 1976 Tangshan quake. As it turns out, the 2008 earthquake was neither unprecedented nor wholly unexpected.

Globally, the practice of predicting seismic activity with any real precision is highly controversial. The American scientific community remains dubious, which is why we have concentrated on earthquake-proof construction rather than prognostication. Given our resources, this is in fact a logical decision. Conversely, China had devoted considerable wherewithal to forecasting, even largely sparing their seismic researchers the pain of the Cultural Revolution, at least according to the film. Yet, in 1976, their seismologists’ warnings repeatedly fell on willfully deaf ears.

Buried might look like it was shot by a closed circuit security camera, only offering late middle aged scientists and government documents as its visuals, but Wang methodically assembles a damning indictment of the Chinese government. Time and time again, concerned seismologists approached their superiors and various state and party leaders with what they considered compelling signs of an imminent quake in the Tangshan-Beijing region, only to be told to go back and give the matter more study.

Regardless whether their methods had validity, if the Chinese government was supposedly in earthquake predicting business than one would think the authorities would listen to their scientists. Instead, in at least one case, a particularly outspoken seismologist was reassigned to cadre school shortly after pressing the matter with his supervisors.

Unless Wang fabricated Buried out of whole cloth, he presents an airtight case of government negligence and craven bureaucratic cya-ing. Of course, the kicker is that similar warnings were ignored leading up to the Sichuan quake, which is why the veteran seismologists interviewed on camera are so angry. An estimated 240,000 people died in the 1976 and another 80,000 to 100,000 died in 2008, but despite their warnings, they and their colleagues were blamed for not foretelling these disasters.

Buried is not particularly cinematic, but it is certainly convincing. It is also about as independent as cinema gets. To understand contemporary China, viewers should check out it, as well the other films like it that dGenerate specializes in.

LAFF ’10: 1428

For China, the earthquake that devastated Sichuan province on May 12, 2008 has been like Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill combined. It has laid bare public corruption and put the local and national authorities on the defensive. Like Katrina, it has also been widely documented in films like the Oscar nominated short China’s Unnatural Disaster and Du Haibin’s feature 1428 (trailer here), the winner of the 66th Venice Film Festival’s Best Documentary Award, which screens this coming Sunday and Monday at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival.

At 14:28 hours (2:28 pm) China was hit with what is considered the nineteenth worst earthquake in history just three months before the Beijing Olympics were scheduled to open. The Communist government’s official response has been controversial to say the least. Despite the quake’s severity, many suspect it would not have been as deadly had government construction been less shoddy, particularly at schools. Promises have been made to Sichuan survivors, usually by politicians orchestrating media ops, but the delivery of relief has been slow and problematic.

Du focuses his lens on the haunted faces of Sichuan’s dispossessed. They live in shanty towns and temporary housing, enduring shortages of food and power. Many would like to return home, but following a truly perverse plan of action, the government has begun demolishing houses that withstood the quake. Such is the efficiency of China’s emergency management. For many survivors, it appears all the authorities have to offer is an opportunity to wave at the Premier’s tour bus as his motorcade blows through town.

Stylistically compatible with China’s so-called D-Generation (D for Digital), Du eschews conventional documentary techniques, like formal interviews and voiceover narration. Instead, he lets the camera roll capturing the unfiltered reality of the quake’s aftermath at intervals of ten and two hundred ten days after the disaster. It is not pretty.

There is clearly a lot of anger in Sichuan that survivors do not seem to know how to express. One frustrated old man offers perhaps the most direct censure of the government, complaining: “The policies of the Communist Party are good in essence but they have been carried out wrongly.” In fact, the survivors seen in 1428 are much more guarded in their grievances than the grieving parents featured in Unnatural. Of course, it is worth bearing in mind Du’s footage was shot a mere nineteen years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, so he might well have been more circumspect in what he choose to include, for his subjects’ sake.

Like many of the D-Generation films, 1428 obliquely criticizes the Chinese Communist government from a perspective that would be considered left of center in the west. One elderly Taoist mystic (with much prompting) links the earthquake to the lack of observance of the Earth-God (perhaps implying a corresponding paucity of respect for the Earth by extension). However, the most heartbreaking footage of 1428 involves bereaved parents searching for the remains of their missing children amid the wreckage of their schools.

1428 is an eye-opening dose of reality, straight-up without any external editorializing. It is not the popular image of contemporary China the government has worked to cultivate. In truth, it does require some patience (though not as much as Du’s previous film Umbrella) because it so scrupulously represents life as it is for the Sichuan survivors. Highly illuminating, it is definitely recommended to anyone in the City of Angels when it screens at the LA Film Fest Sunday (6/20) and Monday (6/21).

Oscar Shortlist: China’s Unnatural Disaster

If revolution ever comes to China, it will probably start in Sichuan Province. That is because there are roughly twenty thousand parents there whose anger will not be bought off or otherwise placated without real justice. Such is the impression left by a recent HBO-produced documentary about the Chinese government’s maddening response to the “Great Sichuan Earthquake” of 2008. Recently, the Academy winnowed this year’s Oscar eligible short-form documentaries down to a shortlist of eight films. While most of the list is basically “eh,” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill’s China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (pop-up trailer here) deserves special consideration for a nomination and ultimately the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Approximately 70,000 people died in the earthquake that rocked Sichuan, of which an estimated 10,000 were children. While the quake wrecked destruction throughout the province, schools and dormitories were particularly hard hit. In the immediate aftermath, shoddy government construction practices, like support walls made of loose bricks without any cohesive mortar, were apparent to even to the untrained eye. Parents wanted answers but were met with stonewalling by the local government and Communist Party.

It is always heartbreaking when a parent looses a young child, but the pain of the Sichuan parents runs even deeper, because of the Communist government’s rigid one-child policy. Those parents mourn not just a son or daughter, but their one sanctioned child.

At times, Disaster frankly feels intrusive as directors-cinematographers Alpert and O’Neill film the raw grief of the parents. However, the filmmakers bear witness to the injustice of the local authorities’ corruption and the courage of common people seeking justice. They name names too, like Party Secretary Jiang Guohua, seen literally trying to run to the front of the parade when Sichuan parents set off on a protest march.

The film is also an instructive look at all the Party’s methods for suppressing dissent, including telling attempts at outright intimidation. In fact, Alpert and O’Neill had their cameras cupped and were apparently physically jostled by Party enforcers several times. Clearly, the Communists were not keen to have a record of their response to the Sichuan protestors.

Disaster is a worthy and legitimate act of cinematic journalism. Though classified as a “short,” it is still a relatively substantial thirty-eight minutes in length. It will make viewers both profoundly sad and deeply angry. It is the class of the shortlisted documentary shorts. Disaster airs again on HBO in January and ought to be screening with other eventual nominees in the run up to the Award ceremony.