24 City

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:25:00 +0000

24 City, a film that expertly mixes documentary footage and fictional reenactments, follows several generations of women living and working in Chengdu City for Xinda Machinery’s Chengfu Group. Factory 420, a not-so-well-kept state secret, has since been turned into residential housing. The film chronicles the lives of several women whose personal and professional lives are inextricably linked to the longstanding behemoth factory cum apartment complex, a throwback to Mao’s communism.

Director Jia Zhangke is perhaps best known stateside for his 2004 film, The World. He is also one of the leaders of Chinese cinema’s Sixth Generation movement, a loosely connected group of independent filmmakers responsible for some of the more innovative works coming from China’s underground and state-sanctioned mainstream.

To add to the striking archive footage in 24 City, the film stars several well-known actresses, including Joan Chen. Best known for her role in TV’s Twin Peaks, Chen also starred in 2007 films Lust, Caution and The Sun Also Rises. Zhao Tao, Zhangke’s longtime muse and frequent star of his films, also has a leading role.

As beautiful as 24 City is, it overwhelming appeals to film buffs and cinema theorists. It’s also helpful to have working knowledge of Chinese history and communist labor. The necessity of knowing so much back story left me and my viewing partner a bit confused at times, as though we’d missed an introductory interview or establishing footage. The film was nominated for the 2008 Palme d'Or at Cannes, and knowing this going in, I hesitated to find fault. Yet 24 City moves slowly and sometimes lacks audio precision. It is a truly gorgeous film, expertly framed, but no one should expect an action-packed adventure from the docu-narrative piece.

More than mainstream appeal, or relying on special effects, the film offers a meditation on dystopian modern life in post-Mao China. After 4,000 workers were laid off from the factory, many tried to make ends meet with odd jobs. One seamstress profiled explains that more than income, she believes, “If you have something to do, you age more slowly.” One unemployed worker illegally sold flowers on the street. Another tells of gathering old work gloves from the factory, only to unravel them and send the thread to her sister so new clothing could be made from the remnants.

An important, visually stimulating film, 24 City tells a meditative, multi-layered story about work, personal space, home, and gender across generations. Its uneven pace likely won’t charm mainstream movie lovers, but it’s worth a viewing for cinema geeks.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, August 18th 2009

Where Underpants Come From: From Checkout to Cotton Field: Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:48:00 +0000

By Joe Bennett

Overlook Press

It’s absolutely astonishing to realize how much junk people in North America consume only to throw away. Most of it is from China. When I started to read Where Underpants Come From, I picked up various objects in my office—from the mechanical pencil I write with to my iPod—and I discovered that yes, everything had been made in China. Author Joe Bennett, who is based in New Zealand, does a fantastic job of describing his experience of traveling to that far off land to discover the process of how his cheap underpants were manufactured. The idea is absurd, but he runs with it anyway.

China is the cheapest bidder on manufacturing most of the convenient items we consume at an exhausting rate. It comes as no surprise that the giant nation is, as a result, driving its peasant labor force for meager wages and polluting the air, land, and water at an even faster rate. Statistics aren’t necessary; just take a look at the dirty grey-brown clouds of smog that hover over Chinese cities.

Bennett does more than observe the grainy air; he physically visits various places in China to see for himself what the industrial giant has created in order to keep the Western materialist appetite satisfied. It isn’t pretty, but his encounters are often humorous. As other journalists (such as Anderson Cooper, in the Planet in Peril series) have pointed out, China’s bid to create the cheapest industrial production of everything from underpants to machinery is creating environmental destruction on an astronomical level.

Chinese citizens are also just as disposable. When I was a little girl (in Canada) during Mao’s time, I became interested in not only American Vietnam War veterans, but in the Vietnamese and Chinese soldiers who—as the National Geographic displayed them—were left rotting in dilapidated vet hospitals. Bennett’s descriptions of countless health and safety hazards and substandard machinery show that while Mao may have died in 1976, the view that Chinese workers are easily replaceable has not.

Bennett’s account gets past the stats and much-repeated talk of China as an economic giant. He offers readers glimpses into people’s lives. He goes where the Chinese won’t—places like Urumqi south, where Muslim populations exist—and tries to communicate with the locals. His angle lends compassion and a sincere urge to understand all sides. He admits to his own prejudices against China and its peoples before he actually arrives and notes that people are people everywhere.

As I sit here and type my review on my ‘Made In China’ laptop, the darkness is lit by my ‘Made In China’ lamp, and I drink Chrysanthemum tea (grown and harvested in China) from my ‘Made in China’ glass, I hope that people will take the time to read Bennett’s work. Despite the pollution and slack labor laws and high rate of labor deaths, Bennett finds the people he encounters to be generally happy. Yes, they are driven, but they take time to live for the sake of living and family takes care of family. We Westerners monetarily benefit from the fruits of their hard work, but materialism has only left us miserably wealthy, fat, and insecure.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, July 8th 2009