My Village in 2007(Wang Wei)
Directed, filmed, edited by Wang Wei
Organized & Produced by CCD Workstation
75 mins./2008
About the film:
My Village 2007 is a film featuring some scattered shots that I filmed in the year 2007, during meaningful and not so meaningful times. From my perspective, village life is just very everyday like this?so everyday that it frustrates me a little. Although my fellow villagers?living as 21st century Chinese farmers?use cell phones, watch television, and may even have computers (for the more well off), the identity of a farmer is still etched onto his body, etched onto my body.
As farmers, we can only look on helplessly as the agricultural duties are cancelled, as grain farmers are given more > >
My Village in 2007(Wang Wei)
Directed, filmed, edited by Wang Wei
Organized & Produced by CCD Workstation
75 mins./2008
About the film:
My Village 2007 is a film featuring some scattered shots that I filmed in the year 2007, during meaningful and not so meaningful times. From my perspective, village life is just very everyday like this?so everyday that it frustrates me a little. Although my fellow villagers?living as 21st century Chinese farmers?use cell phones, watch television, and may even have computers (for the more well off), the identity of a farmer is still etched onto his body, etched onto my body.
As farmers, we can only look on helplessly as the agricultural duties are cancelled, as grain farmers are given subsidies. We watch helplessly as the prices of seed and fertilizer skyrocket, and as the price of meat follows the steady climb of the price of pigs, not to mention prices of feed, kerosene, pesticides, and coal. We like to chat about what prices aren’t rapidly climbing, but there are fewer and fewer topics that fit the bill. We also watch helplessly as the village’s sand, worth tens of thousands of yuan, is given away to other people when it shouldn’t even have been sold; or when those who should be elected are never elected, and a small village director beats someone until his eardrum burst and no one did a thing. I had no choice but to watch helplessly as a band of strangers came to my chicken shed in the middle of the night, chased away my guard dogs, and made a show of hitting me over the head with a rod. I could only watch helplessly as my blood flowed form the wound.
I can only watch helplessly. I watch. I am watching.
These events make up our lives. I can’t always capture everything and weave it into my film. I recognize that I am far from being a professional, so much so that I can’t even say I am filming all that diligently or conscientiously. I can only comfort myself with this thought: that I never chose this life.
Filmmaker’s words:
This is my second feature length film, if you can truly count this as a documentary film. In this great era of violent change in China, I think being born as a villager offers no escape. In fact, you could say that we are struggling in the lowest depths. The village where I live is very simple. I spend most of my time working to make money and survive, occasionally picking up my small camera in order to capture the people and events around me.
Little by little, I sense that I’m getting old. As each hellish situation plays out, I no longer thrust myself into it without a care, but find myself considering the consequences, considering where the lines have been drawn. Maybe in a few more years, I’ll become just like them: only discuss things behind people’s backs, no longer have the courage to argue, and no longer believe that everything can change for the better. Then again, maybe there’s still some difference: I know that our silence encourages this kind of society. This society’s every problem should not be the responsibility of just a few people, but the undertaking of the flesh and blood citizens. I am not an innocent victim, but a silent accomplice.
As my life slowly aubmerges me, I’ve used all my energy, struggled to expose even just a tiny bit of my voice?and this film is the result.
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