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director Nong Ke, Zhang Huancai, Zhou Cengjia, Shao Yuzhen, Ni Lianghui, Cili Zhuoma, Jia Zhitan, Fu Jiachong, Wang Wie, Yi Chujian
country China
year 2006
duration 95 minutes
media MiniDV
color Color
language OmeU
production Caochangdi Workstation Wenguang Wu 105 Caochangdi Chaoyang District Beijing 100015 China Fon: +86 10 6433 7243 Fax: +86 10 6433 6143
cinematography Nong Ke, Zhang Huancai, Zhou Cengjia, Shao Yuzhen, Ni Lianghui, Cili Zhuoma, Jia Zhitan, Fu Jiachong, Wang Wie, Yi Chujian
editor Caochangdi Workstation
distribution
Caochangdi Workstation
Wenguang Wu
105 Caochangdi
Chaoyang District
Beijing 100015
China
Fon: +86 10 6433 7243
Fax: +86 10 6433 6143
"For the first time public and political lives of Chinese villages are captured through the lens of the people who belong there. Villages can never be so real if filmed by an outsider.
This video is a collection of ten short documentary films, each of ten minutes in length, made by ten villagers (ages ranging from 24 to 59 at the time of filming) from around China. The ten filmmakers were the successful candidates selected among villagers who sent in their proposals for the competition. Each of them was awarded a DV camera (which ?is worth something like at least an equivalent of the costs of raising 15 handsome pigs back home?) by the EU project. They are eager to rediscover their home villages through the DV lens and to tell stories and be heard, for the first time in their lives.
It is the first time that Chinese villagers took up a DV camera to shoot a documentary of their own on the changing rural public lives and the changing countryside dynamics in their home villages within the developing democratic system known as ?village selfgovernance.? The interaction between the villagers in front of the DV camera and the one who is holding it from behind can never be the same if the film were to be shot by a ?professional? from outside the village."
biography
The selected villager filmmakers are diverse in their background: their ages range from 24 to 59; two of them are women; the eldest man in the group is an ethnic Zhuang from Guangxi and the youngest filmmaker is an ethnic Tibetan girl from Yunnan; eight of the ten filmmakers live and work in their home village, while the other two are currently making a living in the city; the villagers come from nine different provinces, ranging from the impoverished Northwestern province of Shaanxi to the prosperous coastal province of Zhejiang.
None but two of the ten villagers had ever touched a video camera before they received the awarded digital video (DV) camera from the project. One of the two who did have some previous experience is the 24-year-old Tibetan girl and the 26-year-old man who left his home village a few years ago to earn a living doing camerawork for a wedding company in a nearby town.
