I should also mention that Tribeca is doing a screening of the 1983 hit "War Games" (MGM, dir. John Badham), with Matthew Broderick, a film prescient about today's issues with hacking and cybersecurity. I saw the film in Dallas at Northpark when it originally appeared.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
"High Tech, Low Life" documents the difficulties for political bloggers in China, still a long way off from real capitalism
On Wednesday, April 25, I attended a nearly sold-out performance
of “High Tech, Low Life”, by Stephen Maing, at the Tribeca Film Festival at a
vertical Loews complex in the East Village in NYC (on 3rd, Avenue,
across 10th street from a café-bar called “The Pourhouse” – lunch but
no coffee!). At this venue, the Tribeca
section was segregated from the general population with a separate entrance.
The 87-minute documentary traces the activities of two
bloggers who, while operating technically within the law in China, face
harassment and disruption from the Chinese government and sometimes from
family. Both bloggers want to document
careless behavior by the state and companies in this new “People’s Republic of
Capitalism”. The Chinese government
fears both of them as it prepares for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
The younger man, Zola, apparently around 20 or so in 2008,
has grown up in rural China and decides to go on a motorcycle tour on his own
and blog. His family objects, his
grandmother at one point saying he doesn’t consider the effect of his
attention-getting behavior on his own family (my mother has said that to me). He follows his own heart though, and
eventually attracts attention from authorities.
When he tries to go to Germany for a blogger’s conference, he is kept
from leaving the country, even though he hasn’t broken the law. But later China relents a little, and he does
go to Romania for another conference, and hosts one in southern China.
The other "featured" blogger is “Tiger Temple”, a retired 60-year-old on a
bicycle tour. He names his blog after his personable and “human” tabby cat, who
becomes a bit of a character in the film (just as in “Cirkus Columbia”). The
government forces him to leave Beijing for the countryside during the Olympics,
but does not harm his site or infrastructure.
The film also focuses on a dispute in Chongxing about a
homeowner who resisted eminent domain when corporate interests tried to build
apartment complexes around him.
Zola has a lot of charisma, and is quite able to get other
people to cooperate with him and help him. He seems quite able to survive with very
little as he travels, staying in warehouses. At one point, he says “I am a blogger, not a
journalist”; but we all know that there is a cultural battle over the notion
that “bloggers are journalists” as Electronic Frontier Foundation writes.
Toward the end of the film, Zola returns home, not exactly “the
prodigal son”, and has another fight with his family, having attracted
particular attention with a comical shot of him doing jumping jacks near the
Great Wall. His grandmother says they will be gone soon. His older brother has a wife and house. Zola asks, “What does that have to do with
me?” When is he going to find a wife
and continue his leg of the family lineage?
I could not find a full entry for this film in imdb yet. Tribeca's formal site is here. Visually, it is quite striking, giving the
impression that visiting China would be like going to another planet.
Zola, and Stephen Maing were present for the Q&A. Zola says he now lives in Taiwan and has
recently just married. His remarks gave
a strong push for libertarianism, along the lines of what you would see at the
Cato Institute in the US.
I asked if a controversial blogger in the US or the West
(me!) would face risk if he or she traveled in China. Could I be arrested there if my blogs were
publicly available. (Right now, Facebook
is still banned in China, and I think Blogger is, too; but it’s pretty easy for
programmers to work around the “Great Firewall of China”). Zola said there would not be a problem unless
I represented or was part of a “political organization”.
I'm going to check soon to see which films from the Festival are also available for paid (usually $4) rental on YouTube. A lot more of them look interesting, particularly "Knuckleball", "The Girl", "The Giant Mechanical Man", "The Fourth Dimension", "Journey to Planet X".
I should also mention that Tribeca is doing a screening of the 1983 hit "War Games" (MGM, dir. John Badham), with Matthew Broderick, a film prescient about today's issues with hacking and cybersecurity. I saw the film in Dallas at Northpark when it originally appeared.
I should also mention that Tribeca is doing a screening of the 1983 hit "War Games" (MGM, dir. John Badham), with Matthew Broderick, a film prescient about today's issues with hacking and cybersecurity. I saw the film in Dallas at Northpark when it originally appeared.
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