Umbrella...

Story
Zhongshan, Guangdong Province.Many young off-farm workers are busy working for orders of next year. They work day after night, repeating monotonous tasks just like machines, they have to finish their tasks at the highest speed, since maximum output per unit time means that they will earn as much money as possible; but in fact, even that is rather slim. While they make numerous numbers of umbrellas in various colors and styles, they have no idea how much an umbrella earns for others. more...
All's Right With the World

Story
All’s Right with the World describes a few families in Hongkong. Their tragic fates are different in approach but equal in effects, making the audience wander who’s who and what’s the relationship between them when viewing the film. As a matter of fact, the sole relation is that all five families receive comprehensive subsidies, while each story has its own development. They may have different reasons to be poor and different living conditions, but they share a similar state of existence, almost accustomed and adapted to poverty. Their ways of celebrating the Chinese New Year is described, which have many differences and similarities to the typical New Year celebration. more...
My Last Secret

Story
On an ancient Suzhou street with traditional white walls and black tiles,an old lady in her nineties lives with her caretaker who is in her sixties. The old lady comes from a prestigious family and was a national athletic star during her college years. After fleeing to Suzhou from Shanghai together with her lover, her life was filled with hardship. Her husband didn’t leave her, but always betrayed her, and in the end passed away before her. After her husband’s death, the old lady, who has no children, wrote a will that she will give all her money to the local university for a scholarship. more...
Taxi- A Moving Life with Chinese

Director: Zhu Jie
Running time: 32 min
Format: DVCAM
Screening format: 4:3
Year: 2007

Story
poster This is not the story about one person, but rather, it is a cross-section of a group and a city. The majority of them are the one sitting before the steering wheel, while their families and dreams are moving forward with the rolling wheels.

Alleys of Beijing, this seems to be the center, but incomes of tax drivers do not match the status of this city. Chengdu, well known for its relaxing and cozy atmosphere, but for taxi drivers the hardship can not be avoided. It’s only though a sax-playing driver we discovered the unique sentiment impossible else where; Taipei, the Blue-Green divide can even be found between taxi drivers. An indigenous driver in his sixties still wants to earn money for his children, so that they will come to see him, bringing along his grandchildren. Hong Kong, many tax drivers also volunteer to act as traffic controllers. Between controlling and being controlled, what is the satisfaction for them?

The director passively met and then subjectively selected them. The story—if it can be so called—began from outside taxi windows.

Production Team
Director Profile
Zhu Jie
Zhu Jie Zhu Jie obtains his bachelor’s degree from Nankai University and master’s degree from Beijing Normal University. Currently he is studying directing at the Beijing Film Academy and also acting as a director with Special Programs Team of News Review Division, CCTV.

Film Festivals
Way of Fortune

The 2007 CNEX Editorial Film
Director: Chang Chaowei
Running time: 73 min
Format: HDV
Screening format: 16:9
Year: 2007

Story
poster This is a time when business, trade and wealth prosper.

In the early spring of 2007, the Chinese stock market plunged, leading to a global panic in the world stock market. This has shown that the Chinese economy has already been integrated into the process of globalization. Later on the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) were convened and issues related to people’s well-being and the enlarging gap between the rich and the poor became the focus of discussion; in the government work report presented by Premier Wen Jiabao, great attention has been given to environmental protection, issues concerning with agriculture, countryside and farmers, education, health care and other public services. Therefore, after more than 20 years of development, the Chinese people have accumulated a considerable amount of money, yet they are also confronted with issues such as the distribution of wealth and the position of social values.

For the past 20 years or so, with the “white cat or black cat” theory from the Mainland China or the philosophy of struggling to win or taking the second place from the Four Asian Tigers, the Chinese people have made their fortune through exports and processing trade under the globalized framework in which Britain and America takes the lead. In this process, what the Chinese people are after is also of western style or even the American consumption and economical development model.

At the same time, the concept of a well-off society or common wealth which used to be the prerequisite of the economic boom has been overlooked, the discrepancies between rural and urban areas enlarged, the gap between the rich and the poor widened and the environment worsened. Under these circumstances, how should we see the meaning of wealth, the value of business and trade as well as money in the beginning of the 21st century? How should we see the history and the culture of the Chinese people’s fortune-making through setting up businesses?

As is known to all, in the past, the huge domestic market demand in ancient China under the status divisions of scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants provided enough space for the businessmen to display their talents. They developed complicated business skills and mature financial tools and some of them, like businessmen in Shanxi and Anhui provinces, also participated in the creation and promotion of cultural activities. Although they did not initiate an industrial revolution like what the westerners did so as to better integrate with the western capitalist market, they subconsciously formed, under the divisions of scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants, a kind of dynamic balance with agriculture, countryside and farmers as well as the environment in both the economic and cultural spheres.

However, as a matter of fact, what has led to the current economic development among Chinese societies is something that has rarely been under discussion. For the last 1000 years or so, businessmen from Fujian and Guangzhou have been integrated into the global market. With great creativity, they have played the role of middleman in dealing with businessmen from various cultural backgrounds, thus becoming a major player in the global trade. They are adventurous and open-minded and their businesses get integrated into the Western colonization and the industrial revolution, and then spread from the southeastern coastal areas of China to Japan and areas beyond the South China Sea. They devoutly believe in the Goddess of the Sea: wherever there is a Matsu temple, it is either a trading port, capital of the colony, a concession area in history or a current Export Processing Zone and a Special Economic Zone.

Such kind of a historical reality have formed the foundation of the current wealth of the Chinese people, but at the same time did they also bring some problems related to natural resources, brands, rural area, or the ecology in the process of following the western industrial civilization and becoming prosperous?

Production Team
Director Profile
Chang Chao-wei
Chang Chaowei, born in Taiwan, 1966, Chang Chao-wei both writes and produces for television, print and web in Taiwan and China. An accomplished author, he has published three books to date. He has also written widely on international and local current affairs and culture for various magazines.

His TV work includes documentaries on Taiwan modern history. He has worked on the History of Taiwan pop music industry,and a series of history of Taiwan IC and PC industry. He has also been invited to be a judge in Taiwan International Documentary Festivals and Music Documentary Festival.

In 2004, he co-produced and researched Rome: The Lost City of China for Discovery Channel Asia and shot on location in China. The documentary will also air on la7, an Italian Channel.

He presently works as Chief Producer of CNEX. on developing various documentary projects in Great China area .

Film Festivals
Duckweed

Director: Peng Hui
Running time: 74 min
Format: BETACAM
Screening format: 4:3
Year: 2007

Story
poster He got drunk once. With tears, Wu Yu told the director, “Peng Hui, now I’m rich, but I have no root, I float in Shenzhen, just like duckweed.”

Twenty years ago, Wu Yu came to Shenzhen with his dream. As he earned RMB 300 a month by huckstering unmarketable beverage with his bike under the burning sun, he never expected to be a billionaire.

For many “rich people” in Shenzhen, their paths to wealth two decades ago was nothing more than smuggling, stock market and real estate market speculation. Wu Yu followed a similar path. A decade ago when he was penniless in Shenzhen, he made a killing in the then unregulated Chinese stock market. Later he turned to the property industry, in which he became a billionaire very quickly.

He said, “In China, I will not do unlawful things, but I will never be a law-abiding citizen. Violator of law will be imprisoned, while law-abiding doesn’t make any money.” He became rich, well known in Shenzhen’s business circles, and served on the board of a famous university. But now he began to miss his literary ideal during his early years. He wanted to break away from a “sheer businessman”, get involved in cultural investment, and seek some self-esteem in being a “literate person”. He chose to invest in low-budget films and operate a “clean” KTV…

Production Team
Director Profile
Peng Hui
Titles and positions: vice secretary-general to Documentary Film Committee of China Television Artists Association, vice secretary-general to Documentary Film Committee of China Broadcasting and Television Association, and Class-II Director of China. Besides, Peng Hui also receives special subsidies from the government in recognition of his achievements.

Since his engagement in creating television programs, Peng Hui has won more than 80 international and national prizes with his 32 works, including 12 international prizes and 8 domestic ones. His representative works including BALANCE, HOLLOW MOUNTAIN, and PACKBASKET CINEMA were selected in international film and television festivals in France, Hungary, Italy, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Four of his works were collected by the Taipei Film Archive and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

International Film Festivals
Adward:
Top 10 Chinese best documentary, 2007
Selected in:
The 20th FIPA International Festival of Audiovisual Programs, FIPATEL, 2008
Brave Father

Director: Li Junhu
Running time: 55 min
Format: DVCPRO
Screening format: 4:3
Year: 2007

Story
poster In 2002, Han Peiyin’s son Shengli was accepted in a university, and arrived to the city of Xi’an from his rural home. To pay for Shengli’s living expense and tuition, the Han sold off all valuable things in his home and came to work in Xi’an to make money. Though a lifetime peasant, Han firmly believed knowledge had the power to change destinies, and expected his son to be successful.

Job for peasant workers was getting harder to find as more and more peasants came to the city. Han could barely make RMB 400 a month, yet Shengli needed RMB 9,000 a year for college. The place Han stayed at cost one RMB a night. At night, he used a brick as his pillow. His son Shengli would think what to eat after class. He saw the bottled water his classmate was holding and could only think of taking the empty bottle and sell it for money.

Graduation was near. A shy youth, Shengli’s job prospect was dim. He felt this city was becoming further away from him. Despite his education, he might end up earning less than his father. For years elder Han carried with him a notebook, in which he entered records of his borrowings. Most of them were small sums of 10 or 20 RMB. He also noted his expectations for his son: “Around the year 2013 or so, that is, roughly in my sixties, Shengli will take our family to Beijing for a sightseeing visit. We will have plenty of money by then…”

Production Team
Director Profile
Li Junhu
Li Junhu graduates with a degree in photography. He currently works for the International Division of Shaanxi TV Station.
International Film Festivals
Selected in:
The 20th FIPA International Festival of Audiovisual Programs
Card Boom

Director: Lin Hung-Chen
Running time:25 min
Format: HDV
Screening format: 4:3
Year: 2007

Story
poster The film traces the consumption experiences of two extreme individuals, and takes the audience on a tour to explore the credit card phenomena in Taiwan: Zheng Sanhe, the first Taiwanese “card slave” to successfully apply for bankruptcy. Not realizing what he had gotten into at first, Zheng was startled to find himself owing millions of Taiwan Dollars (TWD). Pressure from banks and threats from asset management companies forced Zheng into the vicious circle of sustaining one card with another; Yang Huiru, the first Taiwanese “card legend” who made a killing from a loophole in the credit card point program. Yang, with help from relatives and friends, took advantage of the loophole and accumulated huge amount of points through pooling together airline and consumer goods purchases. She then sold the points through online auctions. She earned over one million TWD before her card was canceled by the bank.

Speaking from her own experiences, Yang Huiru advised card slaves to face reality: “cut up the cards as soon as possible. The interest rate is too heavy. And don’t you think of paying back debt with more cards. It will only make yourself fall even deeper.”

Production Team
Director Profile
Lin Hung-Chen
As a senior video worker, Lin Hongjie is good at creating drama in his work, reminiscent of Japanese filmmaking. In 2006 he was candidate for Best Director of Golden Bell Award with his DETECTIVE STORY.



Film Festivals