Simple but sumptous - film set in China "My Village 2007"

Living in Nyon is reviewing a selection of films on at the Visions du Réel film festival which is on in Nyon until this Wednesday 21 April. "My Village" had just the one screening, but other films reviwed in previous posts will be shown again. My Village 2007 China by Shao Yuhzen - Film review by Trish Thalman. “Are you filming again”? The question asked by nearly all the people in the rural village of Shaziyun near Beijing had become used to the assertive, kind-hearted, sensitive woman with the video camera who was there to “record my life and my village" and because she wanted to "see the changes”. This delightful, sumptuous, yet simple film about the daily lives of people in a hard-working farm community is eye-catching, humorous, and sensitive and gives us a vital glimpse into the constant modern changes being made at breath-taking speed for the majority of people in rural China. The film captures the activities and changes during the year 2007. The old way of life is passing too quickly. A specific change is measured with the main road that goes by the village. In January, with icy fog and hoar frost on the trees, the road is mostly dirt and partially paved. It supports the cyclists, a few trucks and cars. By late summer heat, there is a four lane, paved, marked and divided road with many more trucks and cars, but few cyclists. The road is too fast and dangerous for them. They have to find alternative routes to travel. The staple crops of the village are healthy looking watermelons, twice the size of footballs, with light green, delicately patterned rinds and ‘Barbie' pink interiors. Weighty sweet potatoes and abundant clusters of peanuts are planted in the early, cool spring and harvested in the hot and humid summer and autumn, The village committee reluctantly welcomes a young, recent graduate from the Beijing Agriculture University who has been sent to live and work in the village. He will “help to improve the way you farm for better income returns”. With the expected increased income, a tantalising concept is promoted: they (the men) will be able to afford Western style T-shirts and suits to wear when they go into town. That way people will be unable to tell they are from a farming village. Modern times. The greatly anticipated Spring Festival involve outdoor rehearsals in winter weather by local women who will perform the songs and dances dressed in village costumes while singing Communist party songs. One of the women in the group is also the village ‘stand-up comedian’ telling her greatly appreciated and applauded, earthy jokes at the festival. A visit to the village’s ‘oldest person’, a spunky, tiny woman of 92, painfully hunched over after her life in the melon, potato and peanut fields using old farming methods, fiercely insists on having a drum to beat while she joyfully performs her song and drum act. Greatly frustrated that she can no longer sing like she used to, she informs the camera that years ago she was better than the singers in the Beijing Opera. It’s voting day in the village to elect a District director and Committee members. Shao Yuzhen and video camera are there to record the men with their ever-present cigarettes, casting their vote in order to receive the 10 Yuan they are paid to vote. They cynically already know who has won the ‘election’. New babies drinking from plastic bottles, old women slowly dying, small children riding fluorescent-coloured tricycles, husbands sleeping on the couch, a woman grieving after the death of her daughter. Men painstakingly folding the plastic covering they will reuse next year to protect the melon seedlings, young educated communist party leaders visiting the village to see who is a registered member. The Down’s Syndrome children helping with the harvest, and Shao Yuhzen confronting the Beijing TV crew who want to rehearse the village people before doing an interview (she refuses!), all feature and contribute to the reality of changing life in small, rural villages of China. Shao Yuhzen is well known to Beijing Radio and TV journalists, as part of the ‘Villager Documentary Project’ which began in 2005. Fools and charlatans beware – she is filming life and truth.