Al-Jazeera produced this interesting investigative piece on Chinese businessmen and migrants living and working in Senegal, provocativlely titled, “The Colony.” It’s interesting to compare this take on overseas Chinese migration with a recent article in the New York Times about how tens of thousands of Chinese migrants have transformed the Italian city of Prato into a low-end textile and garment hub of Europe, with mixed-to-negative reactions by the Italian locals. But for al

By Isabella Tianzi Cai In the article, Teng gives a comprehensive overview of the civic documentary movement in China for the past few decades. While the facts are impressive in both volume and numbers, the ideas aren’t all new to us. He writes, Information monopoly is designed to benefit those in power, while Citizens Documentary can eliminate the cover-ups in certain extent. Only a few documentaries can already make the dictatorship pay a huge price. One can imagine that wi

Lan (dir. Jiang Wenli) The ScreenOut Film Exhibition, hosted by Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, is China’s first (and so far only) campaign to introduce art films into commercial-run cinemas. It has presented a number of indie films by many acclaimed Chinese directors, such as Jia Zhangke, Gu Changwei, Lv Le, Wang Quanan, and Wang Xiaoshui. This year, a special retrospective programme at UCCA will screen selected films from past years and a special screen of this y