Participants & Projects 2010
FROM AUSTRALIA
SAVING AMERICA
by Elizabeth Tadic & Selene Alcock, Shoot Me Pictures
Following 9/11 and the global financial crisis, is the American dream dead?
FROM CHINA
A CLASS OF THEIR OWN
by Haryun KIM
Guangzhou, modern day Canton, has been a prime destination for migrant workers – the main contributors to China’s dramatic economic growth. But under current law, residents without a local household registration – mostly these poor migrant workers – are excluded from basic social services such as healthcare and education. This film will follow the crucial final year of a group of migrant children at a privately-run primary school and portray their passion, struggles, frustration and dreams. And it will watch those children make life-changing decisions; whether to go back to their hometowns alone for further education, continue their studies in the city placing great financial burden on their parents, or become migrant workers themselves.
MR. JIU'S SECRET
by Sarah ZHENG, Shaoguang HE and Michel Noll, Grand Entertainment
The Secret of the Roasted Pigeon is a film about the way culinary skills and heritage are passed along in China for thousands of years. The master here possess a famous recipe for making roasted pigeon that he would happily pass to his son if his son expressed any interest at all. Meanwhile, his apprentice, boss and wife are each scheming to acquire the recipe…The master is at loss right now…
SONG OF THE MULBERRIES
by Zuolong SHAN & Richard LIANG, Peak & Galaxy Communications
Silk has become a declining industry. The chain of family silk workshops is developing into an unusual spectacle, besides an industrial and mechanized system of production line combining sericulture, filature, weaving, dyeing, tailoring, exportation and domestic selling, creating an economic miracle together with a high-speed running machine, China. In Donglin, a small town in Huzhou city, there are over 1000 silk family factories with nonstop dreams of weaving a better life.
THE CHINESE RICH 2.0
by Kevin SHEN Weiwei & Alex ZHANG
Wenyi Cinema & TV department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
If persons had the right to choose their own parents and family, there is little doubt that most of them would be willing to be born in a rich family without worrying about back and belly. The Second Wealthy Generation is just that kind of persons who owns a big fortune only by inheritance. A car accident caused by one of them in Hangzhou in 2009 made this generation, which a lot of people are jealous of, become the focal point once again. The resentment of the rich among most of Chinese people and the negative reports by mass media – adding fuel to the flames – make people’s understanding of the Second Wealthy Generation gradually biased. This documentary film tells a story about four individuals who belong to this special group, which interprets their Happiness and sorrows in many aspects such as life, business, marriage and ideas to the most real extent, presenting the audience the most unfamiliar and touching things about them.
THE WELL-BEING AREA OF THE ELDERLY
by Fu CHEN & Zhen TAO, Chongqing Olmec Culture Communication Co., Ltd.
Hongyadong is a folk scenic spot in Chongqing (Chungking). Every Sunday morning, the area is very busy and noisy, but few know it’s the gathering place of hundreds of old ladies and men that make this open space of a few hundred square meters full of a great tumult of noises.They are searching, looking at and observing middle and old aged men and women around them, and always stay for a long time.They are always nervous, afraid of being seen by others, or have an adrenalin rush due to the beauty they are “hunting for”.
FROM EUROPE
AFRICA : ENTER THE DRAGON (a.k.a. The Angola Project)
by Jeremy Xido & Marlies Pucher, ma.ja.de. / Cabula6
A road movie through the new world order: The Chinese have landed in Africa and are ushering in a vibrant and unexpected vision of 21st century. Cutting through the middle of world history from the Atlantic coast deep into the heart of Africa is the Benguela Railway – the jewel in the crown of the old British transcontinental rail system, destroyed in the Cold War, now being rebuilt by Chinese construction companies. “AFRICA: Enter the Dragon” (a.k.a. The Angola Project) is a film about people – African and Chinese – whose lives are intimately intertwined with the reconstruction of this railway.
CITY OF WOMEN
by Karin Totterman & Simo Brotherus, Pain In The Real Productions
Sixty years ago, China instigated what were - at the time - the world's most advanced laws guaranteeing women's rights, with Chairman Mao conceding "half the sky" to Chinese women. City of Women is a story about the crossroads of women's lives in today's China. The story is told through the eyes and lives of three Chinese women, the lives of whom represent the changes and realities of women in today's Shanghai, China's biggest city and the spearhead of its economic success. Director Karin Totterman moved to Shanghai in 2002 and lived there for five years, trying to figure out both the Chinese language, culture and society. Karin can thus provide an insight into the film that is neither Western nor Chinese, but includes an understanding about both.
INDIAN SPACEMEN
by Sue Sudbury & Gillian McCredie, Sequoia Films
A character-driven film about passion and endeavour against the odds. Indian scientists with their feet in the slums of Mumbai and their heads in the stars. India‘s space programme is due to launch a satellite in November 2011 to photograph and study black holes. With unique access behind the scenes, Indian Spacemen follows the tensions and humour in the team as launch day approaches. This high-tech 21st Century world of space research sharply contrasts with their traditional family lives at home.
SHANGHAI SAUERKRAUT - HOME AWAY FROM HOME?
by Michael Chauvistré & Niklas Bäumer, Happy Endings Film
In the 1990s two German brothers moved as brewmasters to Asia. Mostly in China’s boomtowns, the emerging business and professional classes discover the enjoyment of original German beer and food as part of their privileged lifestyle. René and Helmut belong to that sunny side of China, Singapore and Indonesia. René has found his German wife in Shanghai, Helmut has a little child with a Chinese woman in Malaysia. But Helmut is already going back to his German province because there no longer is any local beer in his hometown. And “Coming home” becomes now the real adventure for him.
THE PROMISED ISLE (LA ISLA PROMETIDA)
by Stephanie von Lukowicz & Abel Garcìa Roure, Polar Star Films
Terua, a young Tahitian researcher, travels around the islands of French Polynesia in search of clues about a mysterious German traveller who was there in 1930. An international group of researchers, led from Berlin by Bernd Eichhorn, an expert from the Deutsche Kinemathek examine Terua’s discoveries. The legend of an ancestral Polynesian curse as the cause of death in strange circumstances of the traveller, gravitates around everything related to our search. It emerges that the traveller whose trail Terua is following is none other than F.W. Murnau, the German genius of silent movies. His long journey across the Pacific culminated in the shooting of a film on Bora Bora his legendary, posthumous masterpiece “Tabu”. Our film develops the parallels between the present and the past, between the journey and the research and an ironical documentary view of the reality of artificial paradises today.
FROM KOREA
HERE COMES UNCLE JOE
by Wooyoung CHOI & Sinae HA
Here Comes Uncle Joe is a journey into the heart and life of a very friendly delivery man, Uncle Joe (55, Byung-gi Joe), in An-dong, a rural community in southeastern Korea. We follow him and his old truck as he makes his rounds between 15 remote villages. Uncle Joe‘s delivery service is extraordinary. He reaches isolated villages that have neither markets nor public transport. Uncle Joe delivers to their door – or even into their refrigerator – anything his customers order. Because of his sincere attitude and warm-hearted concern, the elderly people always look forward to his regular visits. In this film, we see how Uncle Joe spreads his love and affection to their neighbors, what makes him serve these communities, and how love and friendship are infused in life.
FROM MALAYSIA
THE MAGELLAN CONFIDENTIAL
by Mohd Naguib Razak & Catherine Bate,
Blue In Green Productions
A film about a famous European and an unknown Malay… whose friendship and mutual respect for each other led to what would probably be the most important expedition and discovery in world history – a discovery that dramatically revised what we knew of our world then, and changed the course of history forever.
The European… was Ferdinand Magellan, whose name today invokes GPS systems, remote & forbidding places, space probes and faraway galaxies … and the Malay… his slave, Enrique de Malacca, who, unbeknown to most, came from a people with a 4000 year old seafaring tradition.
FROM SINGAPORE
THE WORLD’S MOST FASHIONABLE PRISON
by Chun Kit MAK, The Moving Visuals Co.
Award-winning fashion designer Puey Quiñones and his dresses make regular appearances on red carpet events and celebrity weddings. For the past 3 years, the petite gay 30-year-old has been leading a double life. Away from the celebrity and public adoration, he escapes weekly to the most unlikely venue: Bilibid Prison, the largest maximum-security facility in the Philippines. Run by gangs and home to over 12,000 inmates convicted for the most vicious crimes, this is where Puey conducts his weekly fashion workshops. In a few weeks, his class will stage the most spectacular event of the year: a runway competition in the heart of the prison.
