Zeitgeist Films of NYC is releasing “Up the Yangtze,” a compelling new documentary about China in the 21st century. It uses the Yangtze River as the metaphor for change, comparing the building of the world’s largest dam,the Three Gorges Dam,  with the life of a poor rural girl who is trying to advance her position in life by working on a tourist river boat. The ugly American tourists are only matched by some of the young Chinese who confess that they want all the money they can accumulate.

As China has become a capitalist-style superpower in the last twenty years, some of its many excellent filmmakers have somehow made films about the reality that is denied by the ruling Communist Party. Other great films like “Blind Shaft” about two men who murder coal miners and claim the insurance money was a hit several years ago. Another film, “The World,” also distributed by Zeitgeist, shows the downside of the tourist explosion that has gripped China lately.

After watching many of the History Channel films about Chinese history, and seeing some of the sites on the Travel Channel, I definitely have a different view of China. Sadly, the Chinese people have suffered under perhaps the worst rulers in all of human history - equal to Hitler, Stalin, and the Russian czars. Watching a documentary about the giant terra cota army that is now a world tourist attraction reveals that the ruler who had them made to protect him in the next life ordered all of the workers murdered - in the style of the pharoahs who built the pyramids. 

Director Yung Chang has created a masterpiece of a film in “Up the Yangtze.” Perhaps the 2008 WV International Film Festival will show the film. I hope that they do. China has produced some of the best films of the last quarter century, but most of them have been fictionalized treatments of recent Chinese history, e.g., “The Blue Kite.”

 Watching “Yangtze” I realized that China is now going through its own industrial revolution like the U.S. did during the Great Depression with the TVA finally bringing electricity to the rural South, but thanks to their 5,000 year history of absolute leaders, the people are treated virtually as animals. This film puts a very human face on the suffering masses of our time.

Earlier this year I programmed another film distributed by Zeitgeist, “Jellyfish”for the 2008 WV Jewish Film Festival. This small film company often distributes some of the best films of the year, and has done so now for decades. I preview almost all of their new films thanks to Nancy Gerstman, one of my oldest NYC film friends. She also sent me a preview of another film about China that is sensational, “Manufactured Landscapes.” Whenever you see that a film is distributed by Zeitgeist Films, be sure to see it. ( I screened “The World” several years ago at The South Charleston Museum thanks to permission by Nancy. A small crowd attended with several people walking away…after they realized the film was about the hollowness of the Chinese Disney world being created.)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.