Films

Festival Focus I: Chinese language documentaries

1, Way of Fortune
(China/ 2007/ Director: Chang Chao Wei/ 73 min/ CNEX)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This is a time when business, trade and wealth prosper in China. 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. After more than 20 years of development, the Chinese people have accumulated a considerable amount of money. 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 have increased, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, and the environment has suffered. How do Chinese people see money and wealth? What is the culture of fortune-making through Chinese history? What are the factors that led to the current economic development? This documentary seeks answers to these important questions.

2, Umbrella…  
(China/ 2007/ Director: Du Haibin / 93 min/ CNEX)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

Divided into five segments, this award wining documentary revisits the core groups that have characterized China’s pre-reform society—workers, merchants, students, soldiers and peasants. The film examines their status today when the notion of wealth is undergoing a reformulation and the time-honoured farming culture is nearly erradicated in the name of modernization. Opening on an umbrella factory and using these utilitarian devices as a running theme throughout, Haibin offers an intensely personal close-up of his subjects and their struggles, observing their daily routines, their moments of weakness, their camaraderie and their isolation. Eschewing any interviews, with the exception of an aging farmer’s heartbreaking monologue in the closing scene, this beautiful film employs a startling voyeur’s perspective from which to observe lives physically distant from our own but perhaps not so far removed from the experience of our own heartland.

Selected Awards:
2008 30th Cinéma du Réel – International Documentary Film Festival, Honourable Mention
2007 64th Venice International Film Festival, Orizzonti Section (nominated)
2007 4th Hong Kong Asian Film festival, Non Competition
2007 5th Doclisboa, International Competition
2007 5th Copenhagen International Film Festival, International Competition
2007 20th International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Non Competition
2008 51st San Francisco International Film Festival, International Competition
2008 Rodos International Film and Visual Arts festival ECOFILMS, Feature Film Competition
(nominated)

3,  All’s Right With the World  
(China/ 2007/ Director: King Wai Cheung/ 73 min/ CNEX)
Language: Cantonese + English subtitle

Against the annual celebration of the Chinese New Year, 5 families living on the margin of prosperous Hong Kong tell their stories. Their tragic fates are different in approach, but equal in effects making the audience wonder who’s who and what the relationship is between them. The families’ sole commonality is that all receive major subsidies. They may have different reasons for being poor and different living conditions, but they share a similar state of existence, and are accustomed and have adapted to poverty. The differences and similarities in how they celebrate Chinese New Year are shown in beautiful detail.

Awards:
2008 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Competition
2008 Seoul Independent Documentary Film & Video Festival, Non Competition
2008 20th FIPA International Festival of Audiovisual Programs, FIPATEL

4,    Card Boom  
(China/ 2007/ Director: Lin Hung-Chen/25 min/ CNEX)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This is the first documentary about the credit card phenomena in Taiwan shown from the perspective of two people. Zheng Sanhe is 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. In contrast, Yang Huiru became the first Taiwanese “card legend” who made a killing from a loophole in the credit card point program. Yang, with the 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 cancelled by the bank.

5,    Taxi- A Moving Life with Chinese  
(China/ 2007/ Director: Zhu Jie/ 32 min/ CNEX)
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese + English subtitle

This film looks at the hardship and disparity of taxi drivers living and working in many wealthy Chinese cities. The alleys of Beijing are the lifeblood of the city, but the incomes of the taxi drivers who drive them do not reflect the status of this city. Chengdu is well known for its relaxing and cosy atmosphere apart from the taxi drivers whose hardship cannot be alleviated. An indigenous driver in his sixties still needs to earn money for his children, so that he can see his grandchildren. In Hong Kong many tax drivers also volunteer to act as traffic controllers. Between controlling and being controlled, where is the satisfaction for these drivers in life? The director passively met and then subjectively selected the drivers. The story—if it can be so called—began from outside taxi windows.

6,   Burning Dreams  
(Taiwan/ 2003/ Director: Wayne Peng Wen Chun/ 35 min/ Pure Films)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This stunningly beautiful film is a rare gem. Its subject matter is quite different from many independent Chinese documentaries often seen on the festival circuits. It is a dance film and its story is about dreaming in the most enchanting city in China.

Liang Yi is an older man who grew up in Shanghai and moved to Taipei in 1949. At 17 his early exposure to rock and roll and to Gene Kelly movies during the 1950’s has made him a faithful follower of the Broadway dance world. Yang Yang is an iron-willed 30 year old woman who grew up in the 1980’s and is a cultural pragmatist who choreographs crowd-pleasing routines in hopes of becoming famous not only in Shanghai, but in China. Li Chuan is twenty-five and the leader of a group of young dance students from all over China who gather together in Shanghai to dance. She is rebellious and an individualist who has grown up in the 90’s against the backdrop of China’s economic explosion. These three share the same passion for dance, but with different underlying beliefs and approaches to their art. The interplay of their conflicting ideals and faiths reflects the changing dynamics of their times. This is a documentary about young and passionate Chinese, about tap dancing and jazz, mingled with Shanghai’s past and presence, in which you will witness genuine ideals and harsh realities.

7 ,  Mr. Wong’s World  
(Germany/ 2007/ Director: Christian Schidlowski/ 80 min/ Vidicom & PTD)
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese + English subtitle

Shanghai, the centre of Chinese capitalism, has been undergoing an unprecedented building boom. Over 2,000 high-rise buildings have gone up since the 1990’s. As a result, many historic treasures have fallen prey to the wrecking ball. Mr. Wong is a wealthy businessman who has returned to China from Canada. He has made it his mission to spend every penny he can on rescuing old houses, villas, and temples of old Shanghai that are no longer valued by the development-minded Chinese. Whenever Mr. Wong travels the streets of Shanghai, he keeps his eyes open, ready to buy any house worth preserving before the sledge hammering begins. Stone by stone his workers disassemble the old houses and bring them to a large property outside of Shanghai he bought expressly for the purpose of setting up a park for endangered buildings. He envisions a safe haven for lost traditions and ancient arts. This film is an insightful portrait of the divided soul of modern China.

8, Mr. Swan   
(China/ 2007/ Director: Sun Xian/ 52 min/ Beijing Channel Zero Media)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This is a touching story about human and nature. Xueshun Yuan, often called Lao Yuan, is an ordinary farmer living near Rongcheng Swan Lake, China. Rongcheng Swan Lake is not only the biggest winter habitat of swans in the north China, but is also one of the four biggest swan lakes in the world. For over 20 years, Lao Yuan comes to the lake each winter to inspect and save swans of his own accord. His voluntary act has unexpectedly made him a well-known news figure far and wide and has awarded him the First Prize for Environmental Protection from the Ford Foundation. As a result, Lao Yuan’s life is no longer peaceful: fellow villagers expect him to make up for the wheat seedling eaten by the swans; the town government assumes an ambiguous attitude towards Lao Yuan’s acts of swan protection; and the swan lake is being turned into a farm. Against this backdrop of curious and suspicious observers, Lao Yuan, with the persistence of Chinese farmer, keeps on struggling for a larger swan habitat.The film follows Lao Yuan from January 2004 for over three years of his voluntary swan protection work and tells us the true story of his daily struggles as a common farmer with a strong faith in his cause.

Award:
2007 Asian Production Award of the International Golden Panda Awards at the 9th Sichuan TV Festival

9, Kindergarten  
(China/ 2004/ Director: Zhang Yiqing/ 69 min/ Beijing Channel Zero Media)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This film is an intimate portrait of childhood. Shot over 14 months, the film records the everyday lives of children at a boarding kindergarten in Wuhan, Hubei Province. It is pure and simple in style and through the actions and words of its lovable young subjects, it conveys universal themes such as the innocence of children and the loss of this same innocence. The film demonstrates how children are a reflection of the adult world and our values. As the opening line of the film says: “They are our children, but maybe they are us.”

Awards:
2007 10th Rai International Festival of Ethnographic Film
2004 Most Innovative Documentary Shanghai International TV Festival
2004 Grand Prize Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival

10, Life Among the People of Choni: In the Footsteps of Joseph Rock  
(China/ 2008/ Director: Yongdrol.K.Tsongkha, Don Sonam Dorje/ 110 min/ documentary)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

Choni is a beautiful place on the north-eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Still rarely known to the western world, it was a Tibetan Principality with over 500 years of history and a vital cultural centre on the Chinese-Tibetan Borderlands. Eighty years ago, Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962), one of the last classic explorers, geographer, linguist and botanist, set foot on the Tibetan Plateau, embarking on his extensive expeditions in this area. His remarkable article in National Geographic in 1928, “Life Among the Lamas of Choni,” was the first written piece to vividly reveal to the world the mysteries of the religious festivals in Tibetan monasteries. His works and studies were testimony to a lost culture and tradition. His extraordinary visual materials of the Chinese-Tibetan borderlands and its people is unique and remains invaluable to the history of this region. Beyond this, the man is a fascinating character and his personal papers are rich in the texture and personality of their author.

Eighty years later, this carefully crafted documentary follows in the footsteps of this legendary explorer. By blending over 500 original photographs from Rock’s expeditions with modern images, and by weaving an extensively research chronology via narration and excerpts from his dairies, the film not only shows how eastern Tibet looked in the 1920s, but also portrays how the same places and people look now. It is a memorial meeting of the east and west, a long lasting dialogue between the past and the present.

11, Please Vote For Me  
(Denmark/China/ 2007/ Director: Weijun Chen/ 50 min)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

Wuhan is a city in central China about the size of London, and it is here that director Weijun Chen has conducted an experiment in democracy. A grade 3 class at Evergreen Primary School has their first encounter with democracy by holding an election to select a Class Monitor. Eight-year olds compete against each other for the coveted position, abetted and egged on by teachers and doting parents. Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. The purpose of Weijun Chen’s experiment is to determine how, if democracy came to China, it would be received. Is democracy a universal value that fits human nature? Do elections inevitably lead to manipulation? Please Vote for Me is a portrait of a society and a town through a school, its children and its families.

12, How High is the Mountain
(Taiwan/ 2002/ Director: TANG Shiang-Chu/ 56min/ Deep Ocean)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

In this documentary, director Tang records his own son’s birth and growing up, his father’s recovering from a stroke and a nostalgic trip home to China. (In the 1940′s his father evacuated with the Nationalist troops to Taiwan after it lost the Mainland to the Communist in the war. It wasn’t until 1980′s were people allowed to go home to visit in Mainland China). From his search for the earliest memory of life, with a close observation and sensitivity, he exams the parallels of the different lives of a different time. In his previous work, How Deep is the Ocean; director Tang ends it with the ultrasound image of his unborn child, representing the beginning of a new life. With this work, How High is the Mountain; it is rather a beginning of a series of questions about life and a continuation of examination of his own life and the longing of a perfect world.

Awards:
2002 Distinguished Documentary Film of Golden Harvest Awards
2002 Best Documentary Film of Golden Horse Awards
2002 Taiwan Int’l Documentary Festival (special mention)
2003 Hong Kong Int’l Film Festival (nominated)
2003 Hot Docs Canadian Int’l Documentary Festival (nominated)
2003 Best TV Documentary Film of National Association of Broadcasters Peabody Award

13, How Deep is the Ocean
(Taiwan/ 2000/ Director: TANG Shiang-Chu / 56min/ Ocean Deep Films)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

This documentary is about director Tang’s Tao (Lanyu tribesman) friend, Mamuno. Through Mamuno’s experience of returning to his origin and Tang’s examining of his own life, the film shows how the two people interact and their brotherly caring for each other. Tang and Mamuno, coming from different backgrounds, share the same passion towards the ocean. We see what Mamuno went through a part of his life as a Tao, and Tang’s intent of finding the origin of his own life. The inseparable relationship between man and nature is also observed.

Awards:
2000 Best Documentary Film of Golden Harvest Awards
2000 Taiwan Int’l Documentary Festival (nominated)
2000 Vancouver Int’l Film Festival (nominated)
2000 Hawaii Int’l Film Festival (nominated)
2000 Hot Docs Canadian Int’l Documentary Festival (nominated)
2000 Hong Kong Int’l Film Festival, 2000 (nominated)

14, My Homework
(Taiwan/ 1998/ Directo: Wen Chen TSENG/ 40min)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

The director is a student of the Tainan National College of Arts. Her motive to make this video is that she has an assignment to make a documentary. So she began a process to record the daily life of her own family. Her mother is the major narrator of this work and the center of the family. She talks about the hard time in the past. All the toil is to buy a house to shelter the children. She wishes all the children will have a happy marriage.
The mother, as the object of filming, is very curious about the camera. The interactions and communication between the subject of filming and the object being filmed are revealed spontaneously.The family is ordinary and simple, like a microcosm of most families. In the mean time , the work reveals a mother’s persistence and strength in facing difficulties, her contentment with the better living condition and her wishes for her children.

Awards
1998 Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Taiwan Award)
1999 Museen Dahlem Muesum für Völkerkunde 4 EthnoFilmfest Berlin

15, After Championship
(Taiwan/ 2000/ Director: Wen Chen TSENG/ 60min)
Language: Mandarin + English subtitle

It’s summer of 1998 in Monterey and the players’ last game.
The crowd thunders out applause. The young ball players on the field smile, yell in excitement, and run about.
The young ball players are met at the airport by all sorts of media, dazzling lights, and a showy welcome parade. People pack the streets to welcome them.
The teens count their fingers in earnest, counting out the hours that they’ve practiced each day. They have some complaints as to their life with no vacation, but it is all for the championship. They don’t need to be too serious about school, just focus on practicing their game. They neglect all their summer homework. After all they can just become coach if they don’t become national champions. If not that, then there is always framing houses.

Awards:
The 23th Golden Harvest Awards for Short Film and Video
2001 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival

Festival Focus II: A Salute to Asian Canadian Filmmakers

16, An Offer  
(Canada, 2005, Director/Writer: Marcus Sim/ 13 min/ Drama)
Language: English

Rob Lee, a martial arts movie fanatic and lackadaisical husband, opens his front door one morning to find his idol, martial arts movie star, Ringo Lee. Flabbergasted at first, Rob soon finds that this seemingly dream come true is taking a dark turn when Ringo makes him a life altering offer.

Awards:
2005 1st place Citytv/VAFF Mighty Asian Moviemaking Marathon
2006 Vancouver Asian Film Festival
2007 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

17, Food for the Gods  
(Canada/ 2007/ Director: H. Scott Hughes/ 10 min/ Science Fiction)
Language: English / Kyontawa (fictional, derived from Japanese) + English Subtitle

2057 AD: On a mysterious alien planet, three NASA astronauts discover the human descendents of a lost Asian civilization. Sheenyana (Yvette Lu), a beautiful mystic warrior, engages in a passionate, forbidden affair with the dashing Lieutenant O’Conner (Danny Dorosh). However, despite her lover’s good intentions, Sheenyana’s psychic visions foretell a coming danger from Earth. When her manipulative rival, Princess Xionko (Beverly Wu), is nearly killed by an Earth firearm, Sheenyana’s king orders her to serve the visitors the sacred “Food for the Gods”—a lethal poison to any mortal. Taka Hiro and Battlestar Galactica’s Shaker Paleja co-star.

Although it takes place in an otherworldly setting, the film is rich in Asian themes, including a backstory referencing prehistoric Japan, and a fictional subtitled language that is loosely derived from Japanese and other Asian language influences.

18, Shattered  
(Canada/ 2007/ Director: Karin Lee/ 20 min/ Experimental/ Top Dollar Sisters Productions)
Language: English

100 years after the Anti-Asian Vancouver race riots, media artist Karin Lee questions the relationship between immigration, labour and business while commenting on the current phenomenon of globalization. This experimental video brings together two historic perspectives of the riots while locating it within contemporary Vancouver.

Shattered was created during an artist-in-residency at VIVO Media Arts in Vancouver. It was originally a 10-minute video installation set in two site-specific locations in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Japantown for SWARM – the city-wide Artist-run-Centre’s events that took place in September 2007.

19, Partition  
(Canada, South Africa, UK/ 2007/ Director: Vic Sarin/ 116 min/ Drama)
Language: English

This is a love story played out against a backdrop of political and religious upheaval. At the end of the Second World War, 38 year-old career soldier Gian Singh resigns his commission with the British Indian Army and returns to his childhood village, near the border with Pakistan. Haunted by the memories of war, he seeks a quiet life of farming, solitude and prayer. His peace is shattered in August 1947, however, when India is granted
independence. A new border is drawn between Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan, and the region is torn apart by massacres fuelled by ancient animosities. In the midst of one such massacre, Gian finds Naseem, a 17-year-old Muslim girl, and takes her under his protection. They gradually find themselves drawn to each other but, as their remarkable story plays out, the obstacles to their happiness prove all but insurmountable.

Selected Awards:
2008 Best Cinematography in Theatrical Feature (Canadian Society of Cinematographers Awards) (Nominated)
2008 Best Achievement in Cinematography (Genie Award) (Nominated)
Best Achievement in Costume Design (Genie Award) (Nominated)
2007 Best Production Design in a Feature Length Drama (Leo Award) (Won)
Best Sound Editing in a Feature Length Drama (Leo Award) (Won)

20, My Floating World: Miyuki Tanobe  
(Canada/ 1979/ Director: Ian Rankin, Stephan Steinhouse, Marc F. Voizard/ 26 min/ documentary/ NFB)
Language: English

This documentary film is about Miyuki Tanobe, a Japanese painter who has chosen to make Québec her home. She works in the Nihonga style, applying centuries-old techniques to scenes drawn directly from the working-class neighbourhoods of Montréal. The film records the progression of one of her paintings from a preliminary sketch to its completion, showing how thoroughly she has grasped the essence of her new homeland. Tanobe portrays Montréal and Québec life in a lively and perceptive fashion.

21, Shepherds Pie and Sushi  
(Canada/ 1998/ Director: Craig Anderl, Mieko Ouchi/40 min/ Documentary/ NFB)
Language: English

Filmmaker Mieko Ouchi is half Celtic, half Japanese… and all Canadian. In 1993, Mieko, an actor, began researching a documentary about her grandfather, Edward Ouchi, a Japanese immigrant in Canada. Then she was cast to star in The War Between Us, a film on the World War II internment of 22,000 Japanese-Canadians–re-enacting a key episode in her own community’s history. Part Japanese-Canadian history, part autobiography and family chronicle, Shepherd’s Pie and Sushi looks at complex questions of personal and cultural identity with a light touch. Using archival material, dramatic re-enactment, powerful scenes from The War Between Us and moving interviews with members of the Ouchi family, the film relates the early history of Japanese-Canadians and looks at Mieko’s and her family’s struggles with their own identities.

22, When Strangers Re-Unite  
(Canada/ 1999/ Director: Marie Boti / 52 min/ Documentary/ NFB)
Language: English

Every year thousands of women enter Canada as domestic servants, the majority of them from the Philippines. Leaving their own children and families behind, they can spend many isolated years cooking, cleaning and caring for others. Sending much of their wages back home, they dream of the day their families can join them. When Strangers Re-Unite looks at what happens after years of separation and sacrifice. Virtual strangers at the airport, family members face a confusing journey of rebuilding relationships while adapting to an often unwelcoming environment. Filmed in Toronto, Montreal and the Philippines, this candid and touching portrait reveals three families in the midst of healing and coping with the strangers they love. Produced nearly 9 years ago, the theme of this film still has a lot relevance to the new immigrants’ present-day experience.

23, Sleeping Tigers  
(Canada/ 2003/ Director: Jari Osborne/ 50 min/ Documentary/ NFB)
Language: English

In pre-World War II Vancouver, the Asahi baseball team was unbeatable, outplaying the taller Caucasian teams and winning the prestigious Pacific Northwest Championship for five straight years. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government sent every person of Japanese descent, whether born in Canada or not, to internment camps. Faced with hardship and isolation, the former Asahi members survived by playing baseball. Their passion for this quintessential North American game soon attracted other players, including RCMP and local townspeople, and the game of baseball helped to break down racial and cultural barriers. In Sleeping Tigers, award-winning director Jari Osborne skilfully weaves archival film and dramatic re-creations along with candid interviews with the last surviving members of the Asahi baseball team to tell a remarkable true story of Asian Canadians.

Selected Awards:
2004 Banff Rockie Award – Category: Sports Programs (Jury award)
2004 Golden Sheaf Awards /Short Film and Video Festival
2003 International Film and Video Festival (Best Feature Documentary)
2003 San Diego Asian Film Festival

24, Between: Living in the Hyphen  
(Canada/ 2005/ 43 min/ Director: Anne Marie Nakagawa Documentary/ NFB)
Language: English

In Canada, diversity often means “one ethnicity + hyphen + Canadian,” but what if you don’t fit easily into one category? What if your background is a hybrid of ancestries and you live somewhere in between, where cultural identities overlap? Between interweaves the experiences of a group of Canadians with one parent from a European background and one from a visible minority. They are all struggling to find a satisfying frame of reference. Cultural identity, it seems, is more complex than what our multicultural utopia implies. Here seven individuals share stories of being multi-ethnic in a world that wants to put each person into a single category. Among them are award-winning poet Fred Wah, who recalls being told by his elementary teacher that he was Chinese, even though his background also includes Irish, Scottish and Swedish ancestry. When visiting China, however, he finds that he is not accepted as Chinese because he is mixed.

Selected Awards:
2006 Golden Sheaf Awards /Short Film and Video Festival
2006 Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association – AMPIA

25, What are you anyway?   
(Canada/ 2005/ Director: Jeff Chiba Stearn/ 10 min/ Animation/NFB)
Language: English

What Are You Anyways? is a classically animated film that was entirely hand drawn. Following the adventures of the Super Nip as filmmaker, Jeff explores his cultural backgrounds growing up as a mix of Japanese and European in a small white-bred Canadian city. This short animated film looks at particular periods in Jeff’s life when he battled with finding an identity as a half-minority. From his childhood origins to the epic showdown against the monster truck drivin’ redneck crew, this is a humorous yet serious story of struggle, love and finding one’s identity through the trials and tribulations of growing up.

Awards
Best Animated Short Subject — Canadian Awards for the Electronic & Animated Arts
Best Animation – Los Angeles ARPA International Film Festival
Edith Lando Peace Prize & Most Innovative Film – Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth
NFB Kids Prize for Best Animated Film — Freeze Frame International Film Festival for Kids of All Ages
People’s Choice and Best Overall Production — Okanagan Film Festival

26, Yellow Sticky Notes  
(Canada/ 2007/ Jeff Chiba Stearns/ 6 min/ Animation)
Language: English

After realizing that “to do” lists on yellow sticky notes were consuming his life, animation filmmaker Jeff decided to reflect on his journey as a filmmaking byanimating on the very same sticky notes that distracted him from the major world events over the last nine years. Animation-meditation is blended with image, text, and an original musical score through the creation of a classically animated experimental film that was drawn straight ahead with only a black ink pen on over 2300 yellow sticky notes.

Awards
2008 Best Animated Short Subject — Canadian Awards for the Electronic & Animated Arts
2008 Youth Jury Honourable Mention – 12th Freeze Frame International Film Festival for Kids of All Ages
2008 Remi Award Winner for Best Animated (Classic Cel Animation): 41st WorldFest – Houston Remi Awards
2007 Animasian Award for Best Animated Film: 11th Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival

27, In Search of Gandhi  
(India/ 2007/ Director: Lalit Vachani/ 50 min/ 2007)
Language: English

In the early decades of the twentieth century Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy of non-violent revolution or Satyagraha inspired a mass movement of millions of Indians to rise up against the British colonial state and successfully agitate for the establishment of a democratic and free India. In 2007, the country is preparing to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its existence as an independent nation. But what kind of a democracy does India have today? What does it actually mean to live in the world’s largest democracy? In road-movie style the film crew travels down the famous trail of Gandhi’s salt march, the remarkable mass campaign that galvanized ordinary Indians to join the non-violent struggle for democracy and freedom almost a century ago. Stopping at the same villages and cities, where Gandhi and his followers had raised their call for independence, the film documents the stories of ordinary citizens in India today. Although inspired by a historical event In Search of Gandhi is not a journey back in time. Instead it is a search for the present and future of democracy in India.