Joint Programme in Communication in Culture MA Project & Project Paper Project: §)5<I)I;:::.:s<.1:". (spring wind will bring life again) Student: Amelia Bryne Potter Date Submitted: March 30, 2007 The project is a film about Beijing, and through Beijing, a snapshot of the present moment: of the relation between China and the United States, fears and concerns, and where the future seems to be going. Of a moment where it feels like the order of the world is shifting under our feet, where things are growing and decaying, where things seem to be changing, but it's not exactly clear how, where there is some kind of crisis, one that we can only name pieces of, where everything we do only seems to make it worse, and it's not clear if anything can be done. The project is made from digital video images shot in Beijing in December 2005 to June 2006, spoken-voice stories about the city, and questions about larger world relations. The stories are told from the perspective of a person from the US living in China. She knows Beijing. and speaks Mandarin. Together, these images and words, English, Mandarin, and sounds of the city, form a rhythmic poem, 42 minutes long. In the tradition of Chinese poetry, the film speaks through concrete images and examples. It is dense, and covers many topics: I want the film to lead people to talk, think and ask questions about the world at this moment, and our roles in it. Contact: Contents Film ~JXlIl}:3l.1:. (spring wind will bring life again) The Project - Context and Development What the project is, how it was made, what I have learned. Project Timeline Overview of stages of project development. Film Script The text of the film. Stories Project journal excerpts. Amelia Bryne Potter March 2007 The Project - Context and Development What is the project? How was the project made? What have I learned from it? How does the project break new ground in professional practice? Who has influenced me creatively and intellectually? What have I learned from the program as a whole? How willi carry this work into the future? References Amelia Bryne Potter March 2007 What is the project? The project is a film about Beijing, and through Beijing, a snapshot of the present moment: of the relation between China and the United States, fears and concerns, and where the future seems to be going. Of a moment where it feels like the order of the world is shifting under our feet, where things are growing and decaying, where things seem to be changing, but it's not exactly clear how, where there is some kind of crisis, one that we can only name pieces of, where everything we do only seems to make it worse, and it's not clear if anything can be done. The project is made from digital video images shot in Beijing in December 2005 to June 2006, spoken-voice stories about the city, and questions about larger world relations. The stories are told from the perspective of a person from the US living in China. She knows Beijing, and speaks Mandarin. Together, these images and words, English, Mandarin, and sounds of the city, form a rhythmic poem, 42 minutes long. In the tradition of Chinese poetry, the film speaks through concrete images and examples. It is dense, and covers many topics: I want the film to lead people to talk, think and ask questions about the world at this moment, and our roles in it. Conceptually, the film is divided into three parts. Each part explores different questions. Part I: Things Are Changing Part I is a preface - a space before entering the film and the city, and a glimpse of the Beijing of the present/future. The images are at night, minimal, black and white, black screen. The viewer is coming into the city, slowly, seeing Beijing at night and glimpses of the city's powerful and impressive spaces, of what the city has the potential to become. This section introduces Beijing as the subject of the film. It challenges ideas about the relative standard of living in China and North America, and raises questions about what defines a good standard of living. It also talks about fears about the future of the United States, questions whether our own actions could be, slowly, influencing our futures, and, also, if it is possible to change the future by changing our actions. Part II: China in America, America in China As Part /I opens it takes the viewer into Beijing itself. It maps out key elements of the city, its roads, people, restaurants, parks, construction sites, grocery stores, bars, sounds, and transportation. Beijing is a metaphor for the larger world. Like the world, it is 2 changing rapidly, and, in Beijing. this change is constantly and physically evident. This section traces complex and unanticipated ways that globalization takes shape: the ways that China and the US are interlinked through the things we buy, through our militaries, and encounters between people. It also questions mantras of US business and politics, namely, the drive to make capitalism global, and to make the world in our own image. Will these dreams come back to haunt us? Part III: Acceptance of Change Part '" begins with a sequence at the Old Summer Palace about growth and decay. This part illustrates a specific, and pervasive, aspect of change occurring now in Beijing. As older homes and shops are tom down to make room for new buildings, families are displaced to developments like the large government-built suburb north of the city shown in the film. The benefits and drawbacks of this are not clear-cut. Ultimately, change, in the larger world, may be similarly inevitable, and similarly ambiguous. If so, how should we approach change? This section asks related questions about economic growth, stagnation and decay. What does "growth" mean? What does "decay" mean? What is the difference between the two? Is decay a necessary part of growth? Is there any way to stop decay? Would this be wise? This section suggests that there are not necessarily any easy answers to these questions, and that living through political or economic growth and decline is uncomfortable. How was the project made? (For an overview of this process, please see the project timeline, included at the end of this paper.) Although I officially began work on this project during the summer of 2006, it is the result of a process that began in 2003. The fall after finishing my undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology at Columbia University, Barnard College, I found work, to my surprise, as a market analyst for the automotive industry. Over the period of a year I tracked news stories about manufacturing contracts and plant openings, as well as oil and metal prices. Everyday I read about China. While at first the stories were about the opportunity the China market provided for foreign automakers, this enthusiasm gradually began to shift to worries about an eventual slowdown of the Chinese economy, the growth of Chinese auto companies, and even the possibility of export of Chinese companies' cars to the United States and Europe: a reversal in the profit chain and a new challenge in business competition. At the beginning of 2004 I traveled to Beijing and Shanghai, with a company looking to invest in the Chinese automotive manufacturing market. Despite everything I had read about China's growth, I imagined that the China I would see would feel and look communist materially poor and authoritarian. I felt nervous about bringing a video camera, thinking that filming could get me into trouble with the communist authorities, or that it that might be in danger of being stolen as something that would seem materially unreachable to local people. A two-hour walk in Shanghai changed my mind. Next to our hotel, a Marriot with English-speaking staff, there was a complex of shopping malls, the main building six floors high. Across the river in the older part of the city women followed us hawking bags of Louis Vuitton socks and scarves. On the outskirts of the city there was an IKEA, and on television there was the Shanghai version of MTV. I thought again and again, "I've never seen anything like this. China is the epitome of capitalism. " I was intrigued because China itself (the small part of it that I saw) was at the same time so much more different and so much more similar to home than I had imagined. China was surprising and bewildering, even everyday ways of moving and talking were foreign. At the same time, China and the US seemed to share a similar orientation towards the future, and also to have a special relationship towards each other in relation to this future. So much was happening between China and the US economically and politically that was well documented in the news - currency battles, trade relations, presidential talks, human rights investigations. But, I started to wonder: How is this shift in the relationship between these two countries playing out on a human level? Are individuals' lives affected by these changes? What are peoples' lives in both places like? What do people in China and people in the North America think of each other? How do they view what is happening? I think it was, simply, this sense that something important is happening between China and the US that sparked and carried forward this project. After my trip to China, without a specific intention for what might come of it, I decided to learn Mandarin.